创意赋予工业垃圾新生命

    虽然Repurposed Materials这类企业很难扩大规模，但环保专家声称，市场亟需更多类似的中间商。（这家公司目前的年收入约为100万美元，眼下正准备向芝加哥扩展。）“所谓3R理念是减少总量(reduce)，再利用( reuse)和回收( recycle)，”新墨西哥州回收委员会(New Mexico Recycling Commission)执行董事英格力士•伯德说。“但我们常常忘了减少和再利用这两个方面。这里面蕴含着莫大的善意。”

    这个过程不仅对买家和环境有好处，通常还能给制造商帮上忙，特别是，如果它们原本要花钱移除废弃物的话。位于伊利诺伊州南埃尔金市的塑料泳池盖生产商雷纳覆盖系统(Rayner Covering Systems)让客户寄回撕开的或无法使用的盖子，大楼后面的一块地已经变成了公司营运经理朱迪•万瓦科特所称的“盖子墓地”。几乎每隔一段时间，她就得雇一位搬运工把一卡车盖子运往垃圾填埋场。

    While it's hard to scale a business like Repurposed Materials, environmental experts see a crying need for more such middlemen. (The company, with about $1 million in revenues, is expanding to Chicago.) "The three Rs are reduce, reuse, and recycle," says English Bird, executive director of the New Mexico Recycling Commission. "But we often forget the reduce, reuse part. It's goodwill on a big scale."

    Not only is the process good for the buyer and the environment; it's often helpful to manufacturers, too, especially if they would otherwise have to pay to remove their junk. Over at Rayner Covering Systems, a South Elgin, Ill.-based manufacturer of plastic pool covers that lets customers send back ripped or unusable covers, a lot behind the building had become what operations manager Judy VanVactor called "the cover graveyard." Every so often, she'd pay a hauler to put a truckload of them into a landfill.

    随后，她联系了Repurposed Materials公司。后者挑选的盖子装满了两个半挂车——她估计至少有1,000个盖子。今天，这些盖子正在被用来为吃草的山羊以及苗圃遮挡炎炎夏日，而阿尔伯克基动物园(Albuquerque Zoo)则使用它们来收集秃鹫展的粪便。“我省下了两笔费用，”万瓦科特说。“一是全部扔掉这些盖子需要支付的劳务费，二是把这些盖子拖走的成本。另外，我们也不用占垃圾填埋场的地方了。”有人需要600平方英尺（约合56平方米）的二手合成草皮吗？你知道该上哪儿去找。（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒

    Then she connected with Repurposed Materials, which picked up two semi loads of covers -- probably at least 1,000 of them, she estimates. Today, those covers are being used to provide shade for goats grazing in the hot summer sun, plant nurseries, and, at the Albuquerque Zoo, catch poop under the vulture exhibit. "I just saved two things," VanVactor says, "paying for the labor to get it all thrown away and the cost of hauling it off. Plus we're not filling up a landfill." Anyone need 600 square feet of used synthetic turf? You know where to go.