The Restorer

Everyone knows that plastic, cans, glass, cardboard and paper can be recycled in curbside bins or at recycling centers around town. But what if you want to recycle your house?

Ask Mande Butler, founder of ReStore in Iowa City, which accepts donations of wood, windows, unused cans of paint, light fixtures, cabinets, even kitchen sinks! In general, just about any household fixtures and building materials in good condition are likely to be welcome at the not-for-profit store.

Butler developed the ReStore idea after working for AmeriCorps and Habitat for Humanity, where she noticed that good materials were going unused: A large proportion of perfectly useable donations from contractors and local residents did not meet Habitat’s requirement of all-new materials for its homes. Inspired partly by a ReStore she’d visited in Asheville, NC, she drew up plans for one in Iowa City in 2004, when she was 25, and opened it a year later.

“Iowa City residents are very thoughtful and considerate when it comes to how their community functions,” Butler said, “and I wanted to help that consideration by providing an easy and fun way of helping the environment and consumers be a little more responsible in their actions.”

Butler said she is often impressed by the items local residents donate: an “adorable retired farmer,” she said, “took down his barn piece by piece so we could get good barn wood, which sells really well.” Even the scrap came in handy for a youth group – they made bird houses.

Her estimation of the locals seems to have proven correct: In 2007 alone, ReStore diverted 80 tons of material from the Johnson County Landfill and served 5,000 customers, with any proceeds going to the Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity.

And Butler earns not only a living as manager of the operation, but also immense gratification from the venture. “I get to watch the whole journey of that stuff coming from a good place and going to a good place,” she said. “Pretty cool.”

— Andrea P