Midwest Environmental Advocates’ Green Office Design Features

Salvaged, Recycled, and Sustainable Materials

Goal: Transform Trash into Functional, Cost Effective Office Components

Encourage Salvage of a Historic Building and its Components
Refurbishing and restoring an old building rather then building a new one preserves the history and charm of the neighborhood as well as reuses exiting materials and reduces construction waste. MEA was pleased to work with Delta Properties to redesign and rebuild 551 West Main, a building over a century old. In its time the building has housed Trainors Store, one of Basset Neighborhood's earliest grocers, the Madison Children's Museum and apartments.

Delta and MEA completely reshaped the second floor to provide an attractive 'green' office space while preserving many of the building's original elements, such as beautiful exposed brickwork. Portions of the original maple floor were preserved and patched with wood salvaged from an old school gymnasium floor.

Agricultural production waste turned into counter and desk tops
When looking for sustainable materials for the counter, desk, and table tops in our office, we were struck by the ingenuity of Phenix Biocomposites, based in Mankato, Minnesota. This small company takes materials that most consider waste and transforms them into functional and beautiful building materials. Phenix combines newspapers and agricultural products to form building materials that are stronger than oak, lightweight, and free of solvents, toxic glues, and Formaldehyde.

Half of our desktops are made from Environ Biocomposite. This is a combination of recycled newsprint and soy beans. Desktops in our law-student space are made from remaindered doors.

Sustainable building requires a truly creative carpenter. When our carpenter received the shipment of Dakota Burl and Environ Biocomposite, he noticed that it was packed in a shipping crate made from another biocomposite, this one made from wheat. Instead of discarding the crate, Paul carefully disassembled it and reused it as the backing of our office cabinets.

For more information about Environ Biocomposites, call 800-324-8187 or go to http://www.environbiocomposites.com/.

Office chairs made from recycled plastic bottles
Unlike carpentry, office work requires only a few essential tools: a comfortable office chair is one of them. Many offices provide the worst chairs to their most important people – volunteers and support staff. We broke from that misguided management decision. All employees and volunteers at MEA use ergonomic office chairs that are made from recycled plastic bottles and car bumpers. HAG Inc. is a chair manufacturer that is committed to protecting the environment. HAG not only uses recycled materials in its products, but its objective is to ensure that their chairs do not ultimately end up in landfills at the end of their useful life. HAG is leading the way in producer responsibility. They have established return systems in Scandinavia and Germany in order to take responsibility for the products they produce.

For more information about HAG chairs and to find a dealer near you, visit www.haginc.com.

Salvaged and restored file cabinets
The Surplus with a Purpose (SWAP) Shop collects reusable items that are no longer needed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison departments and government agencies. These items are then redistributed to other UW departments and the general public. SWAP is environmentally friendly because it redistributes items that can be reused and prevents them from ending up in landfills. SWAP is supported entirely by generated revenue.
Some common items that can be found at SWAP include filing cabinets, desks, tables, chairs, book shelves, room dividers, computers, printers, office supplies and lab supplies.

Current SWAP inventory is available at www.bussvc.wisc.edu/swap. SWAP is open to UW departments, state agencies, municipal agencies, and non-profit organizations every Thursday from 8:00am-2:00pm. SWAP is open to the general public every Friday from 8:00am-2:00pm.

Remnants of wood
We kept wood out of landfills by using random pieces that were left over from other people’s construction projects.

The sun and tree designs on the front of our reception desk (left) is composed of scrap wood that Paul Yeager, our carpenter, carefully saved for creative future projects like ours.

Sustainable Purchasing Practices
Any office uses large amounts of supplies, particularly paper goods. To reduce our environmental impact and support the local community we buy recycled and biodegradable products from local vendors and co-ops whenever possible. 'Green' products from biodegradable soaps and garbage bags to recycled and unbleached paper products are now just as cost effective and high quality as "standard" goods.

Information on Madison's Willy Street co-op can be found here.