At Eco Brooklyn we are always looking for ways to reduce, reuse or recycle. Here is a cool thing we just discovered today.
Because we refinish a lot of old wood floors, either subfloors or salvaged floors that others deemed too beaten up to keep, we do a lot of sanding.
We go through A LOT of sand paper. So today I was musing while looking at the pile of used sand paper pads thinking over how quickly they get used up, their cost (not cheap), and what a waste it seemed.
After inspecting the pads closer I realized that the sand paper was actually in good shape. But you couldn’t use it because it was all gunked up with old wood.
It looked like this:
So I figured if I could find an efficient way to remove the wood debris without damaging the sandpaper I could probably reuse it.
And that is what I did.
I soaked the sandpaper in water for a couple hours.
Then I gently brushed the wood gunk off with a steel brush.
And Voila! An almost brand new sand paper pad ready to be reused! (We let it dry in the sun first).
Total work to do this: 20 seconds.
What does this little effort really mean? Less waste to the dump, less materials consumed, less cost for us, more savings for our customer. Now THAT is the Eco Brooklyn style! Build It Forward!
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Excellent Post. I have been at that juncture 100′s of times, with a sanding disc that i know is intact if not for the gunk, but have never made the leap and developed a solution. Will use your advice next time the situation arises.
awesome