Midwest Environmental Advocates’ Green Office Design Features

Salvaged, Recycled, and Sustainable Materials

Goal: Transform Trash into Functional, Cost Effective Office Components

Dairy stanchions become solid frames for shelves and counters

All of the framing used for shelves in our offices was made out of discarded metal dairy stanchions. This provides a strong steel support for our solar water tubes, among other things. We were lucky to find a Madison-based metal worker and furniture maker, to complete this transformation and keep this metal out of a landfill.

For metal work and creative reuse of materials for furniture, you can contact Aaron McGillivray at www.armdesigns.com.

Schoolhouse floor circa 1915 revived
Our office space originally had a rough cement floor so we had a blank slate with which to work. We chose to put in a reclaimed hardwood maple floor that had been stored in a barn in Shawano County, Wisconsin for many years because it was reusing materials, cheaper than new materials, and we were confident that our money was going directly to a small business instead of a multinational lumber company. The floor also has a history. It was originally used in Franklin Middle School in Shawano, Wisconsin, and is believed to be from around 1915.

Restoring an old floor is always a risk. We had no idea what was under all the layers of old varnish, stain, and glues when the floor was installed.


After many hours of sanding, the maple started to shine through the layers.


The finished product was beyond what we had hoped.
For more information about installing restored wood floors, contact: Frank Heller, Jr. of Heller Hardwood Flooring.

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.

All of our desktops are made from Environ Biocomposite. This is a combination of recycled newsprint and soy beans.

Our front counter and conference room table are made from Dakota Burl Composite. This product is made from agricultural byproducts remaining after sunflowers have been harvested. The fibers make a distinct pattern that resembles burled wood.

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 Phoenix Biocomposites, call 800-324-8187.

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.

Doors with interesting histories
All of the doors in the office were salvaged. Salvaged doors are typically of a higher quality than new doors for a fraction of the cost. You do, however, need to update the hardware on the doors so they meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Our bathroom door was originally in the first Catholic school built in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. The school was built in 1877 by St. Luke’s Parish.

Doors can be found at Salvage Heaven.
Contact: Tim Hansen
6633 West National Avenue
West Allis, WI 53214
Phone: (414) 329-7170
Summer Hours: Wednesday thru Saturday, 10 am-5 pm.

Discarded bottles turned into drinking glasses
We use drinking glasses that are made from recycled bottles by a Wisconsin company. Green Glass transforms used bottles into drinking glasses. The bottle components are rearranged and the base is separated and reattached to the bottleneck/mouth. Green Glass North America donates part of their proceeds to the National Wildlife Federation. The company was started by Sean Penright and Philip Tetley in South Africa in 1992. Green Glass has recently expanded their operation into the United States by setting up an office near Wausau, Wisconsin.

You can find out more about Green Glass USA at www.greenglassusa.com.

Sustainable-harvest wood products
Trees can be managed for sustainable harvests. We are using our office to highlight several operations in Wisconsin that have made remarkable efforts to manage forests to promote overall forest ecology while removing trees for wood products.

Menominee Tribal Enterprises runs an internationally-recognized sustainable forestry operation on their reservation lands in Central Wisconsin. Their forest management reflects a long tradition of recognizing the need for balance between the environment, community, and economy. They follow a sustained yield philosophy that requires that forest growth to be balanced by removals caused by harvesting and nature.
We are grateful to the Menominee for their generous donation of the maple used for trim and door jams in our office.

Sustainable Woods Cooperative is a forest management and processing group of private woodlot owners in Wisconsin. The cooperative’s forest managers are SmartWood certified and ensure that woodlot owners are managing their land in a way that restores natural communities and habitats. Our attorneys, Andrew Hanson and Melissa Scanlan, teamed up to build and finish our bookcases using wood from the Sustainable Woods Cooperative.

For more information or to purchase wood from the Sustainable Woods Cooperative, go to www.sustainablewoods.com or call 608-583-7100.

Cedar Partitions separate individual office spaces. We used partitions instead of solid walls to create an open office environment that uses less building materials and can be easily transformed when the use of the space changes. The cedar partitions were made from a selective cut of cedar from a private woodlot in Oconto County, Wisconsin. It was milled on site by a portable sawmill. Our purchase of this wood ensured that all money went directly to the people who labored to bring us the product. The partitions were constructed in such a way that they can be easily disassembled and reused in another setting.

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.

MEA purchased 16 metal file cabinets from SWAP for $400. New file cabinets would have cost 4.5 times more. We also enjoyed the history of these cabinets, as they had been previously used by Wisconsin’s Department of Justice.

You can find SWAP just two blocks north of the MATC Truax campus in Madison.
2102 Wright Street
Madison, WI 53704
Phone: (608) 245-2908
Fax: (608) 245-2917
Email: swap@bussvc.wisc.edu

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

Duane Lewis (right) donated his time and talents to tile the entrance of our office with remnant pieces of tile from another project. To install flooring, contact Duane Lewis at 920-733-4594.

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

Demolition waste
Our office renovation involved moving a wall, removing a dropped ceiling in one room, and removing other items that were not useful to MEA. The typical demolition involves simply sending these items to a landfill. That is not the only option.

We searched and were unable to find a place to recycle used drywall, so that is the one item that we sent to a landfill. (New drywall can be recycled in Madison – Call Pete Runhaar at 608-849-8915 x231.) The wood from the wall that was moved was reused in the new wall. We donated the doors, ceiling tiles, carpet, and other items that could be reused by others to the Habitat for Humanity of Dane County, Inc. Restore.

The Habitat Restore is one of the few building materials reuse centers in Wisconsin. Here’s how it works: Habitat for Humanity accepts donations of new and saleable, used building materials such as cabinets, lighting and plumbing fixtures, doors, lumber, flooring, and windows. Some materials will be used to build Habitat houses. The rest will be sold to the public at 50-75% off the retail price. The Restore prevents useable building materials from going into a landfill, helps build more Habitat homes, and makes makes home improvements affordable. All donations made to the Habitat Restore are tax deductible.

The Habitat ReStore
Contact: Jen Voichick, Director
208 Cottage Grove Road
Madison, WI 53716
Phone: (608) 661-2813
www.restoredane.com