THE REUSE KING

If you happen to be sitting on 8,000 lengths of blue rope or a few dozen 26-foot-long guardrails, this guy wants to talk

- Tom Vanderbilt

DAMON CARSON HAS One of the more interesting inboxes in America. On any given day, from his office in Denver, Colorado, he will field myriad inquiries from people looking to unload stuff. We're not talking about the odd homeowner trying to dispense with an old refrigerator or a bagful of out-of-fashion clothing. Picture instead large companies looking to unload massive amounts of stuff that otherwise would be on a fast track to the landfill.

For example, Carson, 50, got a request to pick up surplus rolls of the fabric used to cover domed sports stadiums. A battery manufacturer had 22 tons of barium sulfate used in lead-acid batteries. The iron content was too high for the manufacturer's specs, but maybe he could find a new home for it? Twenty-eight pallet loads of plastic bins from a discount retailer were just waiting for him to repurpose them. And a recreation company wanted to know if Carson was interested in 800 pounds of blue ropes-each 33½ inches long-which the manufacturer no longer needed to make the handles on coolers.

"They're kind of a tree-hugging company," he explained. "They don't want to just throw it away. Nor should they. Because it has value."

The question of what value, and to whom, is the algebra that animates Carson's days. Call him, as he calls himself, a waste speculator or a materials gambler. A yenta of the complex, never-ending waste stream of contemporary capitalism, trying not to pair people with people, but things with people.

"I'm just betting that somewhere in America, I can find a home for 8,000 331/2-inch pieces of rope," Carson says.

For nearly a decade, his company, Repurposed Materials, has been casting these wagers. He's not looking to recycle the stuff he gets-breaking it down to make something new-but rather finding new homes for cast-off goods in their original forms.