From the desk of Larry LaMotte, CEO of ReCapturit, Inc.

Hello!

If you work for a city, is it your job to stop waste where you live and work?

I suspect you would not be reading here if you did not have a stake in how your city was dealing with its waste. We are here to be your guide.

I got a degree my Architecture in 1987 and soon after went into construction so I could know how buildings really got built, not just to theorize and assume to know what was best for those who built and occupied them.

I wanted to know intimately what held them up and what made human activities flow with ease through beautiful spaces.

Empathy made a big difference in how a design would “fit” people. It was not about me.

Over nearly 3 decades I built, designed, and took care of buildings, and I started up 7 different businesses. In those years, I scavenged and saved building materials from everywhere I worked.

In 2016, I decided I needed to do something from the heart, not just random solutions to common obstacles. Of five ideas I developed, one rose up as the ideal combination. It was a scattered mess of current “solutions,” the best use of my skills, and vast potential of world-changing good. That became ReCapturit.

Our first solution launched during the time of the Covid pandemic, in October of 2021 - www.recapturit.com - the online marketplace for recaptured building materials and architectural salvage.

But the marketplace was not enough. The Covid experience delayed and altered the game. The largest source of waste does not become that overnight. We needed to be more than just a place to buy and sell. We needed to help change behaviors that existed for a century or more.

At a Conference of the Building Materials Reuse Association in 2017, I met two officials from the EPA. They schooled me up on the whole picture of the magnitude of waste that Construction & Demolition produce.

Municipal Waste is a category that includes ALL the garbage and trash that we 330,000,000 Americans throw away at home and at work all year long.

Construction & Demolition Waste is... TWO TIMES BIGGER.

My jaw dropped when they told me what I told you here.

TWO TIMES BIGGER?!? Why don’t we all know this???

Good question. Now you do and I do. Most people do not.

On average in America, half of the materials that fill up landfills is from Construction & Demolition.

Landfills cost money. They fill up. They leak contaminants and emits gasses. Burning waste is not much better. What do we do?

There is a solution.

As your GUIDE, we ACCELERATE your ability and confidence to take this on and build a solution in your community.

Keep reading…

CONTAMINANTS

1. Harmful outputs into the air, ground, and water.

Materials rot, burn, and leak. Lead and asbestos spread in dust, carbon dioxide and methane escape from decaying and burning, and heavy metals and other toxics leech into water sources.

AVAILABILITY

2. Long-term availability of new materials.

We have limits. Some limits involve actual quantities of things like metals. We can run out. Others take time, like lumber that takes decades to mature.

COSTS

3. Cost of acquiring new materials.

If you trace back where metals and plastics and lumber and glass come from, these materials get moved all over the planet. From mines to foundries, forests to mills, oil wells to refineries, and off to manufacturers and markets, by trucks and trains, ships and planes. This costs fuel, money, human power, and ecological costs.

So, remember…

Yes! The crude and simple stuff – concrete and steel – are routinely hauled off and recycled.

That’s good, and it’s a start. But it’s not ideal.

Ideal is to reuse the whole building. Renovate, remodel, and retrofit first.
If that doesn’t happen, then, rather than demolition, the single best solution for all of this is: DECONSTRUCTION.
DECONSTRUCTION is the best alternative to demolition. DECONSTRUCTION is the careful disassembly of a building by its pieces and components for the purpose of reusing, repurposing, and even recycling.

That is why we created The Deconstruction Policy Accelerator™ - The DPA™, to help cities add deconstruction to the mix.

Build your To-do List...

1) Choose a Project Manager

2) Research Deconstruction, Demolition, Municipal Waste, Construction & Demolition Waste, and who decides what to demolish and what to deconstruct, and who stores it, and where does it go if not to the dump, and who sells it, and are there tax deductions for donating, and who gets those, and why do more people not choose to deconstruct, and what about hazardous materials like asbestos and lead and dust, and waste management, and grading of lumber, and how to specify used in architecture, and who transports it and sells it, and what happens if…?

...YIKES!

Or… ask this question:

What is this Deconstruction Policy Accelerator?

We ACCELERATE your work by serving as your GUIDE.

As your GUIDE, we help you to understand the "What is." This is the complex structure of existing practices, processes, and policies, as well as the dynamics of people, companies, organizations, and agreements that have been entrenched and operating for years.

We then help you engage with these people and entrenched systems and work to merge into these established practices a long-term solution: the "What can be."

Without us, it could take you MONTHS or YEARS to start this.

We can help accelerate this to mere WEEKS.

As Your GUIDE

We Can Provide You:

The Road Map - The written guidebook of the entire ecosystem from the point of decision to change a building, to when a building material finds a new life.

The Skeleton - The visual view of the processes and options – an easy-to-follow flow chart that gives you a view of how things flow and what changes are designed to do.

The Timeline - You will need to know relative time-frames for Project Management. We have those.

The Affiliate Network - Real professionals, organizations, consultants, and trainers, all ready to help.

Tools and Resources - Webinars and Workshops, Booklets, Manuals - some available for no cost, some for purchase.

What You Get -

Here are some specifics:

Knowledge, Examples, and Key Insights - We live this stuff. We study it. We have helped build buildings and rebuilt them. We have taken scraps and parts from what would be waste and built them into new things. That is the simple essence of what we help you and your community do: take the building materials that are destined for the dump and get them into a flow of supply and demand to find new uses in new construction.

Direct Coaching - Sometimes we just need to practice talking through situations. You may need to communicate with a local politician or a neighborhood group. You may need to know what to say in response to concerns. We can help you with this.

Processes and Tools - We have compiled all the best and the worst of what has been tried to develop a library of tools and resources and examples to guide us in doing what's right for your city.

People who know what they’re doing -

We have experience in building and taking apart buildings. Having the online marketplace for recaptured building materials at www.recapturit.com has given us years of getting to know the entire community of dedicated people making a big difference in what we do with our buildings. From the moment someone decides to modify or remove a building, to the entire path the materials that come from that building take, we understand and know the options.

A Custom Plan - We help you create a custom plan that involves understanding what exists already, consideration of affected stakeholders in your communities, and a sequence of optimal introductions of change over time.

And ultimately: Excellent outcomes!

Less waste = Slower filling landfills = cost savings!
Fewer emissions into air, water, and soil - like carbon dioxide and methane.
New jobs and businesses.

PLUS...
Affordable building materials for less advantaged communities.
We are not held captive to supply chain issues of new materials.
You will be building your city a better future!

Talk with Us...

You could be the next CHAMPION of the Cause...

Like a guide on a fishing trip into the wilds of Alaska, we are your guide to accelerate your efforts and give you confidence to make this journey happen successfully.

■ This is LARGE-SCALE POSITIVE IMPACT we are talking about here.

■ You know it's the RIGHT THING to do.

■ You need a GUIDE to help you because you don't want to go it alone.

This will make the world better for generations to come. Here's how:

■ You will MINIMIZE climate-changing gases going into the air, and pollutants going into our soil and water.

■ You will reduce the waste filling up your city's landfill.

■ You will extend and MAXIMIZE the useful life of MASSIVE amounts of resources.

We give you CONFIDENCE to do all this with our help. Step by step, we guide you toward the right things to do and we steer you away from the wrong things.

■ You will help stop the practice of throwing away whole buildings, which happens all day every day.

■ You can help disadvantaged communities.

■ You can help build work forces with good jobs.

You can do this. We are here to help you.

Ready to take a step forward? Tell us about YOU...

We can provide you with a pamphlet that explains the ecosystem of building demolition and deconstruction as it exists today, a manual for doing it all yourself, or we offer packaged consulting services from assessments of the status of your region up to our signature service, the DPA - The Deconstruction Policy Accelerator.

Does your city or county have any required or voluntary recycling of building materials? Do you have any deconstruction companies working in your city? Are there any local codes or programs or incentives to stimulate deconstruction over demolition? Are there retail stores selling architectural salvage and used building materials?

Which office or individual in your city oversees demolition and waste management of buildings and building materials? Who would champion the cause?

Dear Cities in America,

These Are Not Paper Plates We Are Tossing. They Are Entire Buildings Turned Willingly Into Waste...

How Much Waste Are We talking about?

From the desk of Larry LaMotte, CEO of ReCapturit, Inc.

Hello!

The REAL problem is really 3 things:

CONTAMINANTS

AVAILABILITY

COSTS

Waste Is Not Waste

Until It Is Wasted.

What can you do? How can you help? What's the answer?

Are there alternatives to destroying and throwing away whole buildings?

Yes! The crude and simple stuff – concrete and steel – are routinely hauled off and recycled.

That’s good, and it’s a start. But it’s not ideal.

That is why we created The Deconstruction Policy Accelerator™ - The DPA™, to help cities add deconstruction to the mix.

What Can We Do About This?

It's More Expensive!

Fair questions, all.

1) Choose a Project Manager

...YIKES!Or… ask this question:

We ACCELERATE your work by serving as your GUIDE.

As your GUIDE, we help you to understand the "What is." This is the complex structure of existing practices, processes, and policies, as well as the dynamics of people, companies, organizations, and agreements that have been entrenched and operating for years.

We then help you engage with these people and entrenched systems and work to merge into these established practices a long-term solution: the "What can be."

We Can Provide You:

Here are some specifics:

Testimonials

Events and Video Recordings

What is Deconstruction?

Why Deconstruction?

What is the value in Deconstruction?

Innovations In Deconstruction

Thinking Smartly Toward Deconstruction

More Testimonials

Products and Services - From a Little to a Lot

Our Amazing Humans

Talk with Us...

You could be the next CHAMPION of the Cause...

Let us get to know you so we can best help:

Industry Knowledge.

Strong Experience.

Smart Approach.

Answers to questions we might ask you.

What help do you need?

What do you have already?

Who oversees this?

Happy Clients

Collaborators, Vendors, Advocates, and Associations

...YIKES!

Or… ask this question: