by kevin, on November 11th, 2009
FIreclay Tile recycled source material
It has finally arrived – the 2009 Greenbuild Expo in Phoenix AZ. It’s the world’s largest annual green building conference and expo. Day one for Aleida and I was consumed by the drive from LA to Phoenix. We were able to secure a killer deal on a hotel and rental car, so we chose to drive rather than fly. We’re going to be keeping track of our carbon output (a total of 1100 miles driven) but we think driving will lead to a lower impact and be significantly less expensive. We lost an hour crossing into AZ, something I totally forgot about. And the crossing is pretty uneventful. The Colorado River is so reduced where US 10 crosses it, blink when crossing and you miss it. With the forgotten time change we arrived an hour later than anticipated and we barely had any time to prep before running to the convention center.
We started our series of interviews with a good one – Paul Burns of Fireclay Tile. We’ll do a full posting on all our interviews, but let me give you some highlights. Fireclay is a ceramic tile manufacturer in San Jose, CA who have been producing beautiful product made from recycled content for several decades. Paul’s background is science and he started simply by tackling problems he thought he could solve. A nearby rock quarry had an inordinate amount of dust produced as a natural by-product of the extraction processes. The company had been looking for something productive to do with the dust for years with no success. Paul thought he could address the challenge and Fireclay was born. In the photo above you can see some of the other materials the company uses to create their products. Recycled content varies depending on the tile line and the material base, but all have a significantly high percentage.
Our second interview was with owners Jeffery and Denise Horn of Aged Woods – a reclaimed wood flooring company we just recently became aware of. It was good to hear their back story and get more information on the products they offer. One interesting story Jeff shared was how early purchases saw wood species change overnight and loose significant value. Without enough experience, rough and aged wood can look alike. What you may think is American chestnut can quickly become red oak the minute you start dressing the wood. Apparently the grain and coloration can look similar. Jeff said there were many early lessons that have made his company one of the premier reclaimed wood flooring suppliers in the northeast.
Mountain Lumber
Mountain Lumber
Green Choice
Green Choice
Following the interviews, we had an hour to make a dash through one half of the exhibit floor to see if anything caught our attention. Here’s what we liked – Mountain Lumber (another supplier of reclaimed wood flooring), Teragren (a maker of bamboo flooring, veneers, and thin sheet panels), and Green Choice (a maker of flooring from unusual raw materials such as mulberry and twisted bamboo strands). We did stop at some non flooring exhibitors, but these three were the most interesting.
We closed the evening at a private reception hosted by IceStone at an amazing villa in Scottsdale. It was a five bedroom home built as a sales model at the height of the housing boom in Phoenix. But then the market collapsed, so the owners have been renting it. IceStone housed their entire crew in Phoenix for the convention. It was a stunning venue for a small mixer. We met some really interesting people. We only spoke for a few minutes at the end of the evening with GreenKonnect, but we’ll stop by their booth this week and report more info on what seems like a very interesting service.
Please return for day two coverage.