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Is it grey and orange … Or green?

By James Durand
26701001_web1_190412-CRM-Swicked-James-Durand

By James Durand

As many of you know, Swicked has moved and opened up our third and FINAL location in our short history.

It’s a long story how it all took place and why we ended up moving twice in two years. No, we don’t like moving, and we’re very happy to say, we’ll never do it again.

We found a great building, designed the layout, and purpose built it to be, well, Swicked. Nothing structural or really very complicated, but getting the right flow and efficiency takes some planning and experience. After 11 years, we knew where our weaknesses were and planned the new place to resolve all of them.

As we finished up last week, I realized, short of the electrical and interior and exterior painting, we managed to use recycled materials for over 70 per cent of everything we built.

Our work benches, counters, change room, parts hangers, doors, desk, shelving, and even a bunch of lumber got repurposed in so many ways I lost track.

We made very few trips to the dump, and when we did have things to move on, we split it between Habitat for Humanity and the recycling depot.

I’ve always been aware that we all need to do more for our environment, but I’ve honestly never been that conscious of day to day contributions personally.

And in this situation I didn’t set out to change the world with a greener building, but due to the circumstances, budgets, and on-hand materials, it just came to be, and luckily my job was made easier because of it. Win-win right?

So, I’m not patting myself on the back since it was the easy way, as opposed to a planned-out green building, but it feels pretty good to know we didn’t add to the landfill on this one.

Yep, the building is grey and orange and screams Swicked, but underneath, it’s pretty green.

I’m James Durand and I’m Goin’ Ridin’…