 Green Think Tech Hawaii is a very, very reusable video today because we have Quinn Vitam, president and CEO of Reuse Hawaii. These are the people who, instead of knocking down an old building or an old home, go in and deconstruct that structure and reuse everything they possibly can. We'll get into the details shortly. So welcome, Quinn, thanks for being my guest today. Thanks, Howard. Yeah, great to be here. I appreciate it. And since I'm an energy guy, let me look at reuse first through energy eyes. If you go up to the mountains of the Northwest to harvest timber, you have to have these great big trucks going up, saw, saw, saw, saw, cut all the branches off, load the logs onto a truck, take the trucks down to a mill, get rid of the waste and mill the lumber to different specifications, then it needs to go from the mill to a ship, on the ship to Hawaii from the pier to the warehouse, then to the construction site, and then it needs to be built. All of that is one heck of a lot of energy. It's called the embodied energy. It's everything that went into there, and we're not counting all of Mother Earth's energy that went to making the tree in the first place. And then when the building gets old, its use has expired, boom, it gets bulldozed, and guess what? A lot of the lumber has been treated. Treated lumber cannot be burned at H-Power. It goes into the landfill. Do we have a need for more fill in our land? No. It's a subject of eternal controversy. What are we going to do with all this stuff? So the old building material is adding to this stuff. So that's yet another problem, whereas with yourself, you and your crew go in and you deconstruct. So why don't we go to the first slide, and that'll lead your conversation there. So you are president, CEO, over here, so why E? Yeah, executive director, yeah, and we work to keep building materials out of the landfill. It makes up about 30% of Hawaii's waste construction and demolition debris. So yeah, we work to disassemble buildings as an alternative to conventional demolition, and we redistribute all the material through our warehouse in Kakaako. And I see where this gentleman is tied down. That's a safety feature. Anybody who goes up on a building needs to have this tie. So if he falls over, he's not going to be comfortable, but at least he's not going to fall to the ground. Correct. Yeah. So and our next slide will be, yeah, so conventional demolition uses excavators, to basically smash down a building and to get it into small pieces so that it can be packed into dumpsters or dump trucks, and then it's hauled to the landfill and non-acouly. So it's a quick process, but extremely wasteful in terms of all the material that's left in the building just gets destroyed. So if the demolition practice is rethought by doing deconstruction, then we can save material up to 70% of the overall house can be usually saved for reuse. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's an impressive number. So why don't we move to the next slide and just see what in the world else you're doing here? Yeah? Could have been... Well, I mean a rise and a typical single wall house that gets taken down because someone wants to build a bigger one or one that fits their needs better, so we do probably at least two or three of these a month, and they're great because they're pretty lightly built all single wall redwood material that you can't find unless you salvage it from an existing house, so great stuff, and also the homeowner gets a tax deduction for the value of the salvage material, so on a 1,500 square foot house there can be tens of thousands of dollars in tax benefit for the homeowner. That sounds pretty good, and you mentioned the redwood and cedar. I have... My house was built in 1956, and I'm in the back of Manoa. And bless redwood and cedar, how old is that? That's 50-something years old. I have done almost nothing to really, really preserve it, an occasional termite treatment for non-redwood wood, and that lumber is still in virtually perfect shape. And I'm in an area that gets 120 inches of rain a year. This is remarkable, remarkable wood, and it seems it's kind of like teak. We value in Hawai'i teak, or not teak, yeah, teak so much, and if we destroy it, that's almost a criminal waste. Sure, right, yeah, not only do we want to prevent waste, but there's also lots of community resource within the houses they get demolished, so that's what we're working towards. Yeah, yeah. But we go to the next slide here. So as you talked about embodied energy, yeah, all the energy that was put in to create the material in the first place gets preserved. This brings to mind the fact that especially in Indonesia and certainly also in Brazil, the hardwoods, the tropical hardwoods are just being cut, deforested, deforested. And to the extent that we can reuse existing high-grade wood, that preserves those ancient rainforests, which is one of the major causes of global warming. Right, yeah, yeah, it's a huge issue. So the next slide is talking about more benefits of reuse and recycling. When we deconstruct buildings, we create a lot more jobs than with demolition. So a typical project has like four to five people on it for two weeks, whereas demolition is like a couple of people for a few days. And also disassembling buildings, you learn a lot about how construction works and you learn about tools, and so it's a great way to get into the building industry and learn the skills. Yeah, because one of the newsletters that I read is the national newsletter for the American Roofing Association, and one of their laments is that now that the economy is booming again, they can't find enough skilled workers. They hire semi-skilled and they get in trouble, whereas this is a great way of training people on the job. Especially for the roof work, because you have to be pretty confident up there, huge safety considerations. And so I imagine your workers are getting just slightly more than a waky-key dishwasher? No, well, yeah, you know, we work hard to pay as much as possible, but it is difficult because we're a nonprofit and we're kind of forging a new industry, but yeah, for the folks at Excel, you know, we like to think that it's a pretty good wage at the warehouse as well. Do they get benefits by any chance, sir? Yeah, right. We have health benefits, you know, with vision and dental and also paid time off and sick time. And also a lot of folks feel good about working for an organization that is making a difference in working for sustainability. Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably all of your guys believe in sustainability. And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we have 35 people now, so. Wow, so you're moving up in the world then. Yeah. Good, good for you, yeah. And getting a decent wage is so important in our economy. Right, yeah. Yeah, especially here in Honolulu. So the cost of living is pretty hard for some folks. So heading to the employment base and good healthy outdoor work, my goodness, those guys don't have to go to the gym after. No, right. Quit your gym membership and come work for Reeves, Hawaii, yeah. Okay, let's go to the next slide then. Yeah, so the local resources is kind of an obvious one. We take apart the buildings and then all the material becomes available for people to reuse. So these are a bunch of beams that were salvaged from the top of a parking garage and then they were reused to frame a house in Palo Alto. So it's kind of a neat story where it was quickly reused and kept out of landfill and made a resource and helped somebody who was building a house, saved money and all the rest so worked out great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we need to take a break now, but we will be back in a minute with Think Tech Hawaii Code Green. See you soon. Aloha. I'm Kawe Lucas, host of Hawaii Is My Mainland here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 3 p.m. We address issues and importance for those of us who live here on the most isolated land mass on the planet. Please come join me Fridays at 3 p.m. Mahalo. Hi, I'm Stephen Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist in Hawaii and I do a show called Shrink Wrap Hawaii where shrinks and sometimes other people come on and talk about the art and science of psychology, talking to people, relationships. So if you are curious about shrinks and want to be shrunk and don't know where to go, tune in to Shrink Wrap Hawaii. All right? All right. Good afternoon, Howard Wade, Code Green, Think Tech Hawaii. My honored guest today is Quinn Vittum, president and CEO of Reuse Hawaii and we've been talking about the fact that we continually lament our needing to import virtually everything. We talk about food all the time but building materials, we have to import virtually all of our building materials except thanks to Quinn and his crew of 35 we don't need to import all the building materials because we reuse them from existing homes and one of the points, very good points that he made was the lumber coming off of older homes is very, very high grade. If it weren't high grade it wouldn't have lasted all this time. So that adds to the quality of the new buildings there and oh go ahead. So to show folks what it looks like when we deconstruct a house, we have a time lapse video of us doing a Kahala house so we can show that to give people a sense on what it's all about. Yeah, yeah, but let's take a look at this video. So this is a typical project that we would do, I think it was 1500 square feet, had a crew of five doing it for about ten working days. So the roof is the hardest part. This one had a pitching gravel roof so it takes a lot of time to get through it but we're basically scraping the roof off so that we can get to the wood that's underneath it. And we use a compact telehandler machine to manage some of the material and all the lumber goes into the special stack racks that we have so you can see those kind of coming and going. We haul them out of the flatbed so all the wallboards coming out. It looks like those guys are pretty darn busy. They are, yeah, you have to touch the entire house piece by piece so it's a lot of labor. We spend about 400 person hours on a project like this. Now talk about labor intensive. Yeah, so the walls come down quick and this one had an oak flooring so you can see them taking up the oak flooring. It's tongue and groove so you have to be really careful not to break it. Yeah, wow. Yeah, that oak again is a very, very, very valuable lumber. Yeah, so there's the TMG flooring coming up. Then underneath it was all true dimension 2x6 so it's like thicker than a 2x6 that you would find new these days. Wow, so lots and lots of lumber also like all the cabinets and there was some nice like Japanese style like doors and fixtures in this one. Yeah, so then we just leave the site bare and usually sometimes there's a slab or some walkways still there and those get taken up by whoever is prepping the site for the new foundation. You know it would be ideal, well I guess it wouldn't happen very often but if you could use the existing slab, usually people do, not often I think it's just easier for folks to pour a new one. Yeah, I was just thinking of ultimate resource efficiency there, of course most people want bigger homes. So yeah, that was really interesting and it gives a good illustration of exactly what happens and you do keep those guys busy by George. Yeah, but again I think it's probably enjoyable labor for them. Yeah, it's really fun work, it's kind of something new every day too and you're jumping around to different projects so yeah it's really fun and also like really strengthens you and there's something about that kind of makes you feel more alive. I like it, I like it, yeah because I and so many other people just have desk jobs and sometimes they'll be sitting there, wow do I really, I want to get out, I want to do something. Yeah, most of the guys are living that dream. How about a think tech show? That's why you're here, huh? Yep, yep, nice. Yeah, I love this part, yeah. So why don't we go to another slide, I think we've got a couple more, ooh. Yeah, so the warehouse is where all the material goes, yeah it's the hub, the resource for everybody. We have about 28,000, probably around 30,000 folks now that signed up in our system as customers and it's a 40,000 square foot facility, the inside we have doors and cabinets and plumbing and electrical fixtures and windows and trim, then we have a big lumber yard outside, all kinds of different lumber, lumber is our biggest seller. We also have like masonry and roofing and things like that. Oh lord, you didn't build this warehouse by any chance? Well this is a warehouse from the 50s, yeah, it's right at the medical school in Kaka'aka. Used to be a freight kind of container, they bring containers in and parcel them out, this is way back in the 50s. So yeah, we've been really lucky to be there for eight years now, and it's our tenth year as an organization. So it's a big milestone, making it one decade. Yeah, absolutely, because I can see where this could be a tricky business. Yeah, some folks are like wow, why haven't they started something like Reuse Hawaii before and the reason why is it's pretty difficult, especially on like the economic level, just making it all work with the cost of doing business and all the insurance and everything. And you do need to insure those guys too, so. Yeah, yeah, liability, workers comp, yeah, everything, and pretty high limits too, especially when we do military or government work, which we've done. So is the military a customer of yours too? Yeah, let's see, a year and a half ago we did an airplane hangar roof. So we salvaged about 80,000 lineal feet of this, they call it car decking, it's a two by six old growth material. So yeah, it was huge amounts of material, some of it's actually reused down at the new international marketplace, put it in as a ceiling and a facade of some of the stores, so pretty neat. Did they publicize that when they reused material like that? You know, we were talking about putting a little info board up, so yeah, the contractor was thinking about doing that, because yeah, if you walked by, you may not realize that it was, you know, Fort Island and old lumber, so. I'm thinking they would doubtlessly have a website, at least they could use that as a marketing. Right, yeah. Because my basic professionalism is in energy efficiency, and the builders who build in a very efficient way use that as a marketing tool, absolutely. Because green is in these things. Yeah, these green buildings. So I would think that customers like that, especially with a lot of walk by. Yeah, we've been seeing a lot of like restaurant buildouts, there's Mud Hen Water, which is a restaurant on Waili that's all flooring that was salvaged from the old advertiser building. So 1920s, it's a blocks on end material, very unique, like I think everybody that walks in there that knows a little bit about building notices the floor, you know, and asks questions, so it's neat. Yeah, yeah, they should have at least a little plaque or something there, parts of the old advertiser building, some of us remember that building very, very well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all newly remodeled now. So in terms of finance, can you charge a really good premium for the fact that you have a very, very high grade lumber, which maybe is very difficult to get hold of these days? Yeah, on some of the, like if we see really nice redwood, or if there's, you know, we had mahogany and things like that, or of course, COA, we usually charge, like we compare what the market rate is and usually charge actually below that. But our mission is to redistribute as much material into reuse as possible, so whatever that takes, like right now we're actually giving material away, it's mostly like four foot, three to four foot pieces, we call them shorties, and you know, they're all free, we're just trying to get people to come down and reuse them. But you certainly don't give away COA, because I needed to purchase just a, I don't know, four or five foot slab of COA once and I tried, I think it was Martin and MacArthur, and they wanted it. Oh yeah. So a hundred dollars for one piece, maybe it wasn't a hundred, but it was an astronomical sum. Sure, yeah. Yeah, COA is like super rare, so yeah, I can't remember, I think it's like forty dollars a board foot or something, so yeah, serious stuff. And then also you sell sinks and windows and light fixtures. Yeah, everything that you can salvage from an old house that's in good reusable condition. So doors are really popular, we sell like two hundred and something doors a month, which is always surprising because it's so much work to reinstall a door and everything, but there's some doors that have so much character or so, and again, wouldn't be able to find it unless you, you know, had salvaged it from an existing building. I can see that, that could be a centerpiece of a new home, you know, it looks like a conventional new home, but boom, there's this antique looking door there. Yeah, right, yeah, accent piece. Yeah, and what else do you, so you've got sinks, toilets? Yeah, plumbing fixtures, definitely, yeah. We actually have a new program tool called the Honolulu Tool Library, which is, people are really excited about it's Honolulu or Hawaii's first lending library for tools. So there's different memberships, but the base membership is fifty-five dollars a year, and then you get access as a member of the tool library to basically borrow any of the tools that they have, so like tile saws are really popular, chop saws, sanders, you know, things that you need to do your projects, and it's great for folks that live in condos or can't afford to buy new material or new tools. Or they're not professional, they're just going to use the tools once and then. Right, yeah, yeah. So we've got a few more slides and not a whole heck of a lot of time, let's see what else we've got here. Yeah, so we've kept about eight million pounds of material out of the landfill since we started in 2007. Eight million pounds. Yeah. Right, yeah, and again, lots of lumber, material that has a lot of embodied energy and also huge community value. And then I think the next slide is about, yeah, the number of projects that we've done. What, oh, DEACON is indeed deconstructed. Deconstruction, yeah, yeah, 450 projects. Most of them residences, but you mentioned that military jobs. Yeah, some commercial, yeah, our first project was actually a big warehouse, but we found that the residential houses we do really well with, they're predictable and there's, you know, a diverse amount of material and pretty safe to do in general. So then the next slide talks about, oh, I guess that's it. Oh. Yeah, so thanks for all the interest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So who are your typical customers? We have a lot of do-it-yourself homeowners, people that, you know, work hard on the weekends, getting their house projects done. We also have, like, contractors that build green, contractors that do the restaurant and retail build-outs with salvage and material. More and more we have the set designers coming in for the TV shows and movies that are filmed here. Really? Yeah. So it's great for them because they don't want to spend a lot of money on new material so they, you know, come in and get that. And they actually build the sets. Can you give some names? Is that proprietary or...? You know, I'm a little out of the loop on the particulars on which ones, but yeah, you know, most of the bigger, you know, Huawei 5.0 and all those, you know, come to us, so they also look for material that has character, so it's perfect. Absolutely. And could they build their set and then when they're through with the set, could they resell to you or hold you up and say, you know, we just help them, we take it back and so we can reuse it again. Yeah. So they're kind of renting the material, right? Yeah, right, in a sense. Interesting. So is that it? That must be a good source of revenue then, too, because you use it and then you get it back again. Yeah. Yeah. We're still trying to break even on the warehouse program. We do really well with sales, but just with the rent and the staffing and everything, we're still not quite breaking even. So a little bit better on the deconstruction program, but, yeah, still trying to fine tune the economics, and we're also inviting corporate sponsors to come on board and help us and support Reeves, Hawaii, and our waste reduction mission. And you know, then they would get exposure as a corporate sponsor for that. And you're a non-profit, so it's tax deductible. Tax deductible, yeah, 501c3, so. Well, we've just got a few seconds left. Where are you, and how can, if people are interested, how can they find you? Well, yeah, the biggest thing is come on down to the warehouse. There's still some folks that haven't been down, so it's a must-see. As mentioned, it's just Eva of the medical school in Kakaako. So if you take Keawe Street from Alamoana, that's at the Gold Bond building. Just go towards the ocean, and it dead ends right at our gate. And if folks have a house that they're wanting to demolish, they could call us about that. We also do remodel-related projects if you're just taking out your kitchen cabinets or doors and windows, and we can help with that as well. We just started a pickup program as well, so we have trucks cruising around, picking up material for folks that can't otherwise bring it down. Yeah, just otherwise spreading the word about the importance of waste reduction and knowing that there's community resource in these older buildings that are getting taken down. Yeah, that is really inspirational, and on that very, very cheery note, we must say fond adieu to Quinn Vittem, CEO of Reuse Hawaii. I am Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you, and see you next time, and thank you so much, Quinn. Thank you a lot, thank you.