Unbuilding: Salvaging the Architectural Treasures of Unwanted Houses by Bob Falk & Brad Guy (Taunton Press, 2007)

2-page vignette on the history of Kevin Brooks Salvage

"Kevin quit his day job and turned his collection into Kevin Brooks Salvage, a construction company based on the premise that if he could efficiently salvage the city's unwanted building materials, people would pay him for them.... Collaborating with interior designers, artists, and other customers, Kevin now integrates the salvaged materials into commercial use in local restaurants, retail shops and professional offices." (103).

Organic Gardening, April, 2008

"Green Building" article features photo of Kevin Brooks Salvage at work

"When professionals take apart a house - sort of like building backwards - they can salvage up to 85% of the materials. About 1,000 homes a year are now being deconstructed, according to the Building Materials Reuse Association, a nonprofit group in Pennsylvania. The savings - both to the consumer and to the environment - comes through the reuse."

Popular Mechanics, Dec 2007

"Even the greenest homeowner occasionally has to dispose of durable goods. The practice of taking old clothes to Goodwill instead of dumping them is well-established, but making the same effort with old kitchen cabinets and other renovation debris is an idea that's just beginning to catch on. ‘People nowadays are much more handy,’ says Kevin Brooks, whose Philadelphia salvage firm disassembles buildings from the top down so that materials can be reused. ‘You can just put up a message on Craigslist and someone who wants cabinets will come and take them out themselves.’"

Philadelphia Magazine, October 2006

Kevin Brooks featured in "11 to Watch"

"Kevin is the genius behind [his salvage business housed in a] 10,000-square-foot Kensington warehouse filled with salvaged furniture and raw materials that artists, architects, and in-the-know homeowners swear by. ‘It used to just be a hobby,’ Brooks says. ‘I'd go to sites and find discarded materials that I just couldn't let be thrown away.’ Eventually, he knew he had to give it a full-time go—and we're so grateful he did."

April 16, 2006

With a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency and the cooperation of the city's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, the Institue for Local Self-Reliance spent more than a week early this month deconstructing the right half of a twin house in the 3200 block of Susquehanna Avenue in Philadelphia's Strawberry Mansion neighborhood.

Deconstruction is the complete reverse of construction, and is an alternative to demolition. It's the disassembling of a structure's components in such a way that the material can be harvested and processed for reuse.

Harvesting is the operative word here, said Kevin Brooks, owner of Kevin Brooks Salvage of Germantown, which successfully bid for the job. Before the work evan began, he said, 40 percent of the material had been spoken for.

Last in, first out is the rule: The last thing the builder installed on the top floor of the structure becomes the first thing removed in the deconstruction process.

click here for full article >

by Jesse Smith

Going green can feel so fruitless at times. You bike home from work, flip on the TV and see rivers flowing with dead fish, ice caps melting into the sea and thousands of acres of rainforest burning.

But those forests? A lot of them were cleared to grow soybeans used around the world to fatten chickens.

What can you do to slow the pace of such environmental destruction?

For starters, you can buy chicken not raised on Amazonian soybeans. And surprisingly, that's pretty easy to do in Philadelphia.

The city actually offers a wide variety of shops and products that benefit the environment in a number of ways. We put together this sustainable business guide to help you make full use of your greenbacks' green power.

Jesse Smith (jsmith@philadelphiaweekly.com) is PW's listings editor.

. . .

Building Materials

Look at the construction boom underway in Philadelphia, and shudder at the thought of landfills rising with what's tossed aside to make way for the new. We're also talking about all that excessive packing material that once surrounded countertops, toilets and light fixtures. And don't forget the fossil fuels burned to get them to their destination. But several Philly businesses offer up salvaged elements that reduce construction's environmental impact. They're also just plain more interesting. Clawfoot tubs, Victorian tiles and old Belgian pavers make far more interesting additions to a home than anything you'll find at Home Depot.

Kevin Brooks Salvage, 528 West Oxford Street, 215.848.5029.
www.kevinbrookssalvage.com