ReStore’s Decon Team stars on This Old House

Some of you know that I volunteer at the Center for Ecological Technology.

Part of their work is a ReStore located in Springfield which does deconstruction. Decon is when a building is taken apart and the pieces are reused or recycled - as opposed to demolition where a building is demolished and what's left ends up in a dumpster where perhaps, if we're lucky, only part of it might be recycled. The land owner is charged a fee which is usually less than traditional demolition, plus they get a deduction for donating materials. The materials are sold as used or excess in the ReStore. Voila!

After that intro, you'll be happy to know that our old favorite This Old House, which is based here in Massachusetts, is featuring our very own ReStore to start off their new season.

ReStore’s Decon Team stars on This Old House
Thursday, October 2 at 8 p.m.
Thursday, October 9 at 8 p.m.
Check local listings

Settle in with your popcorn and watch us completely dismantle a 1,900 square foot home in Weston, MA on the national season premier of This Old House! The ReStore decon team salvaged more than 85% of the home’s materials—many of which are being used in the construction of two Habitat for Humanity homes in Springfield. The popular PBS television series will also feature a visit to our store in Springfield in its second episode, broadcast on October 9.

Watch It Shred

Somehow there is a bit of primitive satisfaction to see something torn asunder or see something burn up. And it has to be rendered to bits, to dust or to ashes. Nobody lights a fire and walks away. They want to see the log burn up completely. We watch the whole movie, play the whole game, finish the plate. There is anticipation of the result, the finality.

Watch It Shred is a collection of the worst of our society. You can watch utter waste and futility while bowling balls, computers, pumpkins, skis, tires - you name it - get ground up in an industrial shredder. The skis appear to be shiny new and have boots in their bindings, and hey I could use a pair. I'm not picky. But when you think about it, many of these things could find a home somewhere and, given their fate, question whether they should have been created in the first place. They clog our landfills and get shipped overseas for someone else to sift through to separate the toxics from the precious. The computers may be old. The tires will be recycled into asphalt. Can you imagine shredding your old love-letters or those crates of LPs which give you grief because you can no longer play them?

Go ahead and watch these industrial snuff films and welcome that funny little feeling as you see familiar objects ground to nothing. But please do me a favor and shop less, fix things before discarding, use Freecycle (to find a new home for or to acquire things), and keep giving hand-me-down clothes to your younger cousin.