On a sunny day in early April, Jeremy Marshik parked his truck outside the recently closed Billy’s On Grand restaurant and Juut Salonspa in St. Paul and began to deconstruct the building.

The building will be demolished later this year, but before that happens, Marshik is working to salvage materials, such as lumber and copper, that would otherwise go to a landfill. It is a practice he knows well after quitting his sales job around four years ago to start his salvaging company, LumberStash. 

“I tell my kids, my nieces and nephews to find a problem that they want to fix and get a job or make a job fixing that problem,” Marshik said. 

More than 75% of construction waste could be repurposed or recycled, according to the National Library of Medicine. Annual construction waste is expected to reach 2.2 billion tons globally by 2025, according to Transparency Market Research. The United States alone generated more than 600 million tons of construction-related waste in 2018, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  

As Marshik works to salvage lumber and other materials, he is not alone. Lumber Stash now comprises seven people who help with various projects. Materials are listed on Facebook Marketplace or promoted through email blasts and often sold for less than half their market value.

The company’s current project in St. Paul is expected to take about nine weeks. So far, materials have been salvaged for a range of uses: One buyer picked up wood to build a shed, another took light fixtures, someone else repurposed salon furniture, and Marshik plans to begin salvaging 1920s fir pine. Even a large ficus plant found a new home. 

Zach Moore, who has worked part-time with LumberStash for around two years, helped salvage steel from the St. Paul site. He said the work is satisfying. The St. Paul project is the largest commercial building LumberStash has taken on, often, the company works to save material from old houses set to be demolished. 

“One of the biggest things that we can save is wood flooring, and there’s a huge market for that,” Moore said. 

LumberStash also collaborates with other companies. At the St. Paul site, Historic Stone Company salvaged brick, and Victory Mobile Welding recovered structural steel for reuse. Design and construction company OxBow Projects has collaborated with LumberStash on various past projects, said owner Ben Fishman. 

One standout project involved custom-built laundry room shelving from lumber dating to about 1900 that was originally used to frame a house. Being part of a regenerative stream of material is important, Fishman said.

“There are materials that can go on and live other lives,” Fishman said. “Removing that material from a structure that was going to be torn down and bringing out the character and beauty of that material and showcase it in someone’s home, it’s always inspirational and really, really fun to kind of have that story behind the product.”

OxBow prioritizes salvaging and reusing material during construction, but it’s a tough walk for a lot of construction companies, Fishman said, as salvaging takes time and can cut into profit margin. 

“The materials that are routed to a landfill site are astronomical,” Fishman said. “We like to do our small part in the process and we hope that other key players in the construction game will continue to take notice of the opportunities and the good that it [salvaging] does.”

Lumber Stash shows no signs of slowing down, it is fulfilling and flexible work, and there is plenty of need, Marshik said.

“People that want to do this, Minneapolis and St. Paul are relatively small cities and there is tons of work here in salvage,” Marshik said. “I’m trying to show people that they can do it too.”