One of the most revolutionary things to happen to our company was the discovery of Demo Bags, a contractor garbage bag alternative. It is revolutionary because it is so simple yet so profound. We are a green construction company in Brooklyn. We salvage, reuse, and recycle like obsessed neurotic 1950’s house wives if they did such a thing.
And yet despite our frenzy to save the world we had no better alternative to the age old black plastic construction bag. The core of our salvaging and reusing was based around a disposable plastic bag….there was something wrong, very, very wrong with this picture.
And there is not a construction company on the North American continent, no matter how crunchy green they are, who does not have the black plastic contractor bag as the core of their disposal process.
It hadn’t even occurred to us that there was an alternative. We understood that there were some things in life, like death, taxes and contractor bags that you just can’t avoid.
And then one day in the Brooklyn Home Depot we saw the Demo Bags. It is the simplest idea in the world. Reusable contractor bags. Duh!
We bought a pack and have never looked back. We fill them with garbage, our carting company hauls them off to the dump where they empty them and return them to us on their next delivery.
We have about a hundred bags in rotation. We load them heavy enough so a strong guy can lift them with one hand. Each bag if treated normally can basically last forever. We have yet to throw one out. The pack says you can reuse them five times but we go way beyond that number.
These reusable construction bags are a great alternative to garbage bags. You can get them in Brooklyn at the Home Depot in Red Hook and I’m told Lowes has them too.
Any self respecting construction company should be using these bags instead of throw away ones. Forget about the environment for a second and just look at the savings. A pack of 20 costs $25 at the Brooklyn Red Hook Home Depot. That’s a buck and a quarter per bag. Black garbage bags cost us $15 for 50. That’s 30 cents a bag.
If you use the Demo Bag four times you have spent the same amount of money. Lets just say we have used ours eight times. That means the Demo Bags are half the cost of normal trash bags.
Clearly Demo Bags are cheaper and better for the environment. It is one of those things in life that are no brainers. If a construction company is NOT using Demo Bags they really don’t have a grip on their finances nor do they understand how easy it is to help the environment.