Gary Michaels, New England Office Warehouse, Waltham, MA

Gary Michaels named his furniture store New England Office Warehouse because he knew it would afford him permission to maintain a healthy level of disorganization. The disorganization—like the newspaper clippings of Boston’s sports triumphs wallpapering the area above his desk—has proven to be good for business.

Gary Michaels' newspaper clippings

date back to the early nineties

New England Office Warehouse turns over its inventory four to five times a year. That’s multiple floors—in a building with molded tin ceilings, formerly a toy store and a bowling alley frequented by Babe Ruth—bursting with used furniture. Some companies simply give Michaels their old, unwanted furniture; others sell it. Either way, if it weren’t for him, it would all be heading to that big office park in the sky.

As he darted through rows of filing cabinets and conference tables, pulling then out with body weight, Michaels explained how he repaints cabinets (with electro-static pain), refinishes tables (with Old English—the stain, not the beer), and reupholsters cubicle panels. He sells the refurbished items at a discount, but has found that in recent years more and more people have been coming to him because they want to reduce their expensed and their environmental impact.

The pieces Michaels can’t salvage become recycled scrap if they are metal or landfill if they aren’t—but that’s a small fraction of what he takes in. He’ll often hold on to pieces for months waiting for the right opportunity to donate them to a non-profit organization in need.

Michaels, who has a familiar smile, thrives on physical work. His commitment to sustainability goes beyond saving furniture from the jaws of trash compactors. After his electric company audited the warehouse, he reduced his electric bill by $200 a month. Soaring gas prices have hit Michaels hard. He had to raise his delivery fees, but hopes to use route planning to make his deliveries more fuel efficient.

Tom Ricciardelli, Freestyle Flooring, Avon, MA

Freestyle Flooring is one of a new breed of floor and carpet companies whose customer relationships extend far beyond installation.

They make floors from recycled material—sourcing from “the carpeting industry, pool industry, and medical industry… from vinyl covered book binders to hose,” founder Tom Ricciardelli says. It’s a process he sees as truly “cradle to cradle,” so Freestyle Flooring offers “credit towards future purchases for companies who want to give their flooring back.”

Commercial partnerships like Starnet and organizations like the Carpet America Recovery Network (CARE), are furthering the reclamation effort. Old carpet can be repurposed into insulation, paneling, or even synthetic hay.

Ricciardelli used to work for a company that processed medical waste. “They could get a plastic stream of rich material back, disinfect it, and purify it to a 98% pure product,” he says. But that “isn't good enough” for most new products. He saw an opportunity to use this “material that no one wanted and no one could get rid of” to make products that didn’t require a high level of plastic purity.

The biggest challenge for Freestyle Flooring is breaking into a market of architects and contractors who already have strong allegiances to certain types of flooring. More people are interested in Freestyle Flooring’s interlocking free lay—no glue required—tiles for their anti-static properties, which offer insulation for electronics, than for their recycled design. However, as sustainable business practices spread, Ricciardelli anticipates this will change.

When asked if he brings his sustainable practices home with him, Ricciardelli joked that that he does more than enough recycling at work. He has installed new windows that improve insulation and reduce energy costs. He thinks the government could do a better job of incentivizing green improvements, but that, “more and more people are [making changes] because they want to.”

The end isn’t really the end

Walking past mountains of desk chairs and stacks of cubicle paneling at New England Office Warehouse, I wondered, “Is this all really…trash?”

Well, that depends. Trash is defined by its uselessness and by its location. If something useful or valuable ends up in the wrong spot, it will be trash forever more. But if something deemed worthless falls into the right hands, it will live again, and again, and again.

Gary Michaels revives trash and Tom Ricciardelli reincarnates it. Both demonstrate that the end of a product’s life doesn’t really have to be the end. They’ve opened the lifecycle back up again, providing a way for Boston-area offices to put a little useful waste into their work days.