创意赋予工业垃圾新生命

    利用业余时间在犹他州雪松堡经营牧场的韦斯顿•奥尔特最近碰到了一个新问题：他的40头奶牛和公牛瘙痒难忍，不断地推翻用来搔背的栅栏柱。所以，当他听说致力于研究重新利用工业旧设备的荷兰公司Repurposed Materials（意为改变用途的材料）有一个新颖的解决方案时，他决定冒险一试，随后花费150美元购买了两个旧的街道清扫车刷。奥尔特打算将它们垂直摆放在牛栏中，用以帮助他的牛解除瘙痒之苦。布朗克斯动物园(The Bronx Zoo)已经买了好几个。“我刚选好，”他咯咯地笑道。“我们说话这工夫，它们已经装上我的卡车了。” 

    Weston Ault is a part-time rancher with a problem. His 40 cows and bulls in Cedar Fort, Utah, are so itchy that they've been pushing over fence posts scratching their backs. So when he heard about a novel solution from Repurposed Materials, a Denver company that specializes in figuring out ways to reuse old industrial equipment, he decided to take a chance, spending $150 for two old industrial street-sweeper brushes. He will mount them vertically in the cattle's pen as backscratchers. The Bronx Zoo has already bought several. "I just picked them up," he says, chuckling. "They're in my truck as we speak." 

    他从另一个牧场主那里听说了这种街道清扫车刷。这位牧场主是那家公司创始人达蒙•卡森的电子通讯订户之一。这份周刊拥有大约2.5万名读者，致力于宣传各种古怪的产品，比如使用过的滑雪缆车电缆。本周的产品名录包括“两座800吨重、用玻璃纤维制造的冷却塔。它们即将在未来30到60天内断线拆除。”在回收利用行业，大多数企业往往选择把旧物分解成零部件的回收方式，但Repurposed Materials公司一直致力于探寻现有产品的创新用途。卡森说：“我们热切地寻找各种工业废弃物，希望为它们带来完全不同的第二次生命。”

    卡森拥有垃圾处理业务的背景。他曾经在韦尔和布雷肯里奇经营过一家成功的垃圾处理企业，但在2002年卖掉了公司，转而寻求其他创业机会。就在这时候，与一位画家的谈话促使他展开了下一个行动。“他说，‘要是你有机会买一个广告牌的话，就买下来吧，因为乙烯塑料罩是非常好的绘画罩布。”卡森买了一堆，随后转售给他们。他说：“于是我开始琢磨，工业界的副产品和废弃物是不是足以支撑起这样一门生意。”

    Repurposed Materials由此诞生。用卡森一位朋友的话说，这并不是一家回收企业，而是“工业界的丘比特。”直到最近，这家公司位于丹佛的1.5英亩厂区甚至没有围栏，因为人们并不认为厂区内有什么值得偷的东西。

    但他们错了。韦尔滑雪场的电缆？它现在归明尼苏达州一家疏浚承包商所有。（其他电缆被用作住宅楼梯的扶手。）破旧的商业渔网？它们现在被用作击球练习的挡网。咖啡业用过的粗麻袋？向市场运送小龙虾的途中，新奥尔良农民使用它们来控制温度。旧广告牌？美国陆军游骑兵使用它的刚性部件来建造迷宫一样的训练设施，从而为纳税人省了不少钱。

    He heard about the street sweepers from another rancher, who had seen them in founder Damon Carson's quirky e-newsletter, sent to some 25,000 readers. The weekly advertises everything from used ski lift cables to -- this week -- "two 800 ton, fiberglass cooling towers being disconnected and removed in the next 30-60 days." Unlike most companies in the reclamation business, which recycle items by breaking them down into their component parts, Repurposed Materials is all about finding innovative new uses for existing products. "We are looking for the castoffs of industry that can get a very different second life," Carson says.

    Carson has a background in waste -- he ran a successful garbage business in Vail and Breckenridge and sold it in 2002 -- but had moved on to other entrepreneurial endeavors when a conversation with a painter led him to his next act. "He said, 'If you ever get a chance to buy an advertising billboard, buy it, because [the vinyl covering] makes a great dropcloth for painting.'" Carson bought a bunch and resold them. "I started to wonder if there's enough byproducts and waste in industry to make a whole business out of this," he says.

    And so was born Repurposed Materials, which is not a recycler at all but rather what a friend of Carson's christened "an industrial Cupid." The company's 1.5-acre space in Denver wasn't even fenced in until recently, because people didn't think anything was worth stealing.

    But they were wrong. Cable from a ski resort in Vail? It's now owned by a dredging contractor in Minnesota. (Other cable is made into handrails for residential stairways.) Commercial fishing nets with holes in them? They're now used for batting cages. Burlap sacks from the coffee industry? Crawfish farmers in New Orleans use them for temperature control on the way to the market. Old billboards? The U.S. Army Rangers are saving taxpayers money by using the rigid parts to build a training maze.