Reduce, reuse, recycle, renewable, sustainable, green. It’s hard to be eco-friendly when you’re building or renovating on a budget, right? Well, maybe you haven’t caught the buzz of Community Forklift, a treasure of reusable materials waiting for you to take them home and build something!

What is This Place?
Community Forklift is a nonprofit owned by Sustainable Community Initiatives, a big warehouse just a 5-minute mile from the Hill, filled with rows of doors, windows, cabinetry, plumbing parts and doorknobs. They have a fluid inventory of virtually everything you need for your home, from the roof shingles to the basement flooring.

Jim Schulman, resident of Sixth and E streets NE and president of Community Forklift, is an architect by trade. In August 1992, he got involved with the Ellen Wilson situation, wherein some homeless veterans settled in the abandoned public housing located off Interstate 395 at Sixth Street SE and renovated an apartment for their own use with the intention to stay until the Department of Housing was ready to do something with the property. Schulman was so impressed with the veterans and how even without water and electricity, they were actually renovating the property. “That led to a major standoff … Jesse Jackson came to mediate,” he recalled. This event spurred Jim to get involved in job training, specifically in deconstruction of homes, “learning how to make money in taking buildings apart,” he said.

“At that time, there were no [local] outlets for building materials. We were able to subsidize our whole training program by selling the wood flooring – again, from abandoned public housing.” That’s when Jim realized there was real money to be made in recovered materials. It took several years to get Community Forklift off the ground. By then Habitat for Humanity had opened stores to sell recovered products. However, Community Forklift’s 40,000-square-foot space is the largest in the region. With their “symbiotic relationship” with Deconstruction Services, which recovers 80 percent to 95 percent of reusable products from homes, Community Forklift’s square footage is well-filled. “We believe that selling reused building materials is one of the most sensitive things you can do,” said Jim, “because not only are you keeping materials out of the waste stream, you’re inhibiting a new one from being manufactured, and all the energy cost, all the shipping costs, all the packaging costs – the huge amounts of waste that come from that can be avoided.”

Junk in the Trunk Removal Services (see March Hill Rag for the story behind this green business) stops by Community Forklift before they hit the landfill. It saves them money on dumping – just as it saves homeowners dumping fees and gives them a tax deduction.

“Bringing it back to the training angle,” Jim began, “we are very proud of the fact that the Deconstruction Services crew, which varies between 15 and 25 guys, would not be employed if we weren’t around, because we are the primary recipient of the donated material,” he said. “Those are jobs we helped create by being here.”

What Do They Have?
You can find just about anything for renovation of any room of the house. “We focus on one room,” said Tanya DeKona, a regular Community Forklift shopper from Takoma Park. “Right now we’re doing a bathroom – tile, plumbing, electrical. [Community Forklift] should always be your first line of defense.”

Community Forklift has an inventory that is always changing, dependent upon what comes in from deconstructed properties, like plaster moldings, antique doors and windows, and old glass doorknobs. There are new products from donations from companies and homeowners with leftover materials. “We’re not necessarily an architectural artifacts kind of store,” Jim cautions. “We do get in some antique donations, we do get bric-a-brac, the occasional stained glass windows, but that’s not our main issue. Our main issue is to provide affordable building materials.” You can find “true dimension lumber, back when a 2-by-4 was actually 2 by 4,” added Ruthie, Community Forklift’s outreach director and volunteer coordinator, who likens Community Forklift to a blend of Home Depot and the Salvation Army. One elderly Hill couple donated an antique organ, which in its new life became three mantles. They have appliances – the publishers of the Hill Rag traded an advertisement for a refrigerator. “You don’t have to shop here just because you live in an old home. Any home that needs repair can benefit from what we carry,” said Jim. “We’re not in competition with Home Depot; we’re in competition with Waste Management.”

They sell American Pride paint (a latex paint that does not contain carcinogens), cotton insulation that’s “very popular right now, made of recycled blue jeans,” bamboo flooring, and they are a Nature Neutral dealer of green cleaning products and landscaping solutions.

Who Shops There?
Ruthie, who is often on cash register duty, knows first-hand who comes in. Miguel and Danny Sanchez, contractor brothers who specialize in historic renovation, have bought hundreds of Community Forklift doors for Capitol Hill row houses. “Landlords shop here,” she said. “People who rent out their English basement. Small contractors come here,” said Ruthie, “especially when they’re doing charity cases, like when they’re doing something for an elderly person or a handicapped who doesn’t have much money.” Homeowners shop here. Some of the more flexible architects design with Community Forklift in mind, like Bill Hutchins of Helicon Works. Yours truly scored brand new, high-end, in-the-box faucets for my bathroom renovation at a fraction of the retail value. Someone has purchased the two-person Jacuzzi bathtub that Community Forklift took off my hands. Ruthie pointed out that Community Forklift is great for renters who are looking for inexpensive storage solutions and perhaps a room screen to obstruct the view of the roommate.

How You Can Help
Frager’s once called Jim to pick up a couple of wheelbarrows for donation. When he got there, they asked, “Will you take this? How about this?” By the time he got out of there, “they ended up donating $7,000 or $8,000 worth of stuff,” Jim recalled. “Even though we cater to the small contractors, we’ve also been blessed by donations from large contractors, like Clark Construction, Turner Construction,” he said.

Ruthie hopes people will spread the word about them. Tell your friends and builders to shop here. Ask your hardware store to donate materials. Volunteers who work at the store and at community events get first dibs on new stuff and $5 in store credit per hour. Invite Ruthie to speak at your neighborhood function or work event. They’re also looking for experts on green building and design. Don’t keep Community Forklift to yourself – the more people know about them, the better and more bountiful the donations.

Community Forklift, 4671 Tanglewood Drive, Edmonston, Md. 20781. Open Thursday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Wednesday from noon to 7 p.m. 301-985-5180 or www.communityforklift.com.

For more information about Junk in the Trunk Removal Services, call 877-JITT-NOW or visit www.jitt.com.