Two years ago, Eli Reich was a mechanical engineer consultant for a Seattle wind energy company when his messenger bag was stolen. The environmentally conscious Reich, who rode his bike to work every day, decided that instead of buying a new one, he would simply fashion another bag out of used bicycle-tire inner tubes that were lying around his house.
Soon compliments on his sturdy black handmade messenger bag turned into
requests. "That was the catalyst," says Reich, who obtained a business
license, gave up his day job, and quickly launched Alchemy Goods in the
basement of his apartment building. The company's motto: "Turning useless
into useful."
For a slew of new entrepreneurs, garbage is not just a matter of personal
opinion, it is, ahem, their business. In other words, they're creating new
companies out of other people's junk.
WORKING SOLO. While innovation has always been
the entrepreneur's trademark, a growing interest in the green movement is
propelling small business owners to create new products and services that
also happen to be inventive recycling solutions for the country's vast waste
heaps (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/19/06,
"Do You Need to Be Green?". "The sustainability and restoring of our
environment are providing opportunities in many fields of small business,"
says John Stayton, co-founder and director of the Green MBA program at San
Francisco's New College of California.
Reich's Alchemy Goods grew quickly. At the outset, he worked solo, making
about 5 to 10 bags a month. Now there are three employees. "In our first
year, we probably made about 125 bags," he says, "since last year we've
probably made another 1,000."
Initially marketing consisted of word of mouth, and the products were sold
on the company's Web site. Today the bags can be found in retail outlets in
Washington, Oregon, Pennsylvania, California, Montana, and two stores in
Japan.
SECOND LIFE. And the products, made from
materials found at local junkyards and bike shops, have grown, too. Alchemy
now offers different styles. The classic messenger bag ($148) and the
smaller Haversack bag ($88) are made from recycled inner tubes and seat
belts. The Adbag, a $30 tote, is fashioned from old mesh outdoor advertising
banners.
Reich says he is looking to broaden his product line and expand his
distribution channels. "After we started the company, I didn't see a lot of
other recycling [products]," he says. "I've learned quite a bit about
companies taking similar innovative approaches to product design. It's a
niche now, but it's a growing field. People are becoming more aware of what
products are made of and where they go after they are done owning them."
It is estimated that America produces about 380 million tons of waste a
year. This also generates a number of harmful gasses and emissions into the
atmosphere and maintains the nation's dependence on landfills. Entrepreneurs
who have taken to creating businesses based on the trash of others are not
only launching new livelihoods but giving a second life to discarded rubbish
while helping the environment.
RUBBER RESULTS. In 2001, outraged at seeing 26
trees marked for destruction in her Gardena (Calif.) neighborhood because
their growth was damaging area sidewalks, Lindsay Smith, a Hollywood
screenwriter, unwittingly became an activist and an entrepreneur, soon
launching Rubbersidewalks. "These were healthy, mature trees that were being
destroyed because the city couldn't afford to repair the broken sidewalks,"
she says. "We weren't even given the opportunity to weigh in on the choice."
Smith went into action. "It turns out this was a really big problem," she
says. And not just in her neighborhood. According to Rubbersidewalks,
330,000 miles of U.S. sidewalks are damaged annually. Moreover, many
municipalities simply cut down the trees because it has become too costly to
constantly repair the sidewalks.
After doing some investigating, Smith got a grant from the state of
California to do research on using rubber pavers as a substitute for
concrete sidewalks. Smith spent two years in R&D, eventually coming up with
a product made entirely of recycled rubber tires.
PILING UP. The pre-molded, prefabricated rubber
squares are cut to fit and are installed over a layer of crushed granite.
Interlocking dowels connect the pavers. For repairs, individual pavers can
be unlocked and removed.
Smith's rubber sidewalks created a solution to four problems. First, they
reduce the number of tires piling up in dumps—according to the Rubber
Manufactures Assn., every year more than 250 million scrap tires are thrown
out in the U.S.
Second, using rubber pavers, which are unbreakable, reduces the cost of
repairing sidewalks, as well as the number of lawsuits resulting from
injuries sustained from people tripping on broken concrete. Rubber sidewalks
also help preserve trees, and they don't add to what's called heat-island
effect, the increase in urban air and surface temperatures due to pavement,
asphalt, and building infrastructures.
According to Smith, Rubbersidewalks have been installed in 60 cities across
the country and Canada. She says she's gotten requests from metropolitan
centers in Asia, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand as well.
Moreover, Smith says she has heard from senior citizen homes interested in
installing rubber sidewalks because they are safer and easier on limbs.
"We've had 1,000% growth this year," she says. "We will have more growth
next year—it has skyrocketed."
WASTE STREAM. Four years ago, Dan White, a
naturalist, decided that he wanted to start a company that helped the
environment. He founded Rapid Refill Ink, in Springfield, Ore., which
remanufactures and sells inkjet and laser toner cartridges at a 40% to 70%
savings to consumers.
"There are 1 billion cartridges in landfills," he says. "We can refill one
cartridge over 20 times— that's a huge environmental savings." Today the
company has expanded to include 70 stores and an additional 300 franchise
contracts nationwide (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/28/05,
"Upstarts Spread in the Ink Wars").
In addition to creating an environmentally friendly product, White went even
further, making sure the stores themselves were made of repurposed
materials. Rapid Refill's walls are made of corn stalks, the marble-looking
countertops are made of sunflower seed shells, and the carpets are composed
of recycled materials like milk cartons.
"There are so many products generated in our culture," says the Green MBA's
Stayton. "Consumers are encouraged to purchase more and more, but what
happens to all those products? Without being mindful of the final
destination, we are going to end up with a world full of junk. We need
companies that are creative and innovative and will take products out of the
waste stream and turn them into something new." In doing so, they prove that
one man's garbage can be an entrepreneur's goldmine (BusinessWeek.com,
07/20/06,
"Green Growth Areas for Entrepreneurs").
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