Adam ended up moving to Vancouver in 2013, where he launched a green construction company called ‘Naturally Crafted.’ As a builder, he quickly became disillusioned with the traditional demolition industry and all the waste it generated. That’s when he started deconstructing his own projects. He also started a small woodshop, where the company would take the wood they recovered and make furniture and other products out of it for clients. “That was really the start of my foray into deconstruction,” Adam says. “After that, there were policy changes in the region that started mandating deconstruction – or at least what they called ‘green demolition.’” In 2018, spurred by those policy changes – and by his ongoing disgust for the traditional industry and the volume of lumber going into landfills – Adam decided to spin off Unbuilders into its own company. A couple years after that, in 2020, he also launched a reclaimed wood brokerage called Heritage Lumber. Both companies have grown steadily in the years since. Today, Unbuilders is active in three main regions – Greater Vancouver, Greater Victoria, and the Okanagan. In Vancouver, they are proud to hold the city’s record with a 99 per cent salvage and recycle rate on a single-family home. On average, their process yields less than 10 per cent waste on a building, and on each project they average 70 tonnes of waste diverted and 10 tonnes of lumber salvaged. The material that Unbuilders salvages can include irreplaceable old growth lumber, windows, doors, MARCH 2023
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTYzNTg=