For Damon Carson, the inspiration to start his six industrial thrift stores came from a conversation in 2010.
An airbrush artist suggested that old vinyl from billboard advertising “like you see on the sides of the interstates, Budweiser, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola,” would make good drop cloths for painting “in a second life.”
“And it was that phrase, that comment, that launched the company,” Carson said.
The next day, he made a few phone calls to outdoor advertising companies in Denver until he found someone who sold 20 retired billboard vinyls to him.
“I threw them up on Craigslist, and they started to sell. That was the start,” he said.
In the late ’90s, Carson owned a traditional garbage company in the ski resorts of Vail and Breckenridge, where he witnessed countless perfectly usable items being sent to the landfill. So he knew that there would be plenty more inventory to find.
Carson describes it as his “Reese’s moment when that chocolate met the peanut butter.”
And so began his business, repurposedMATERIALS, that takes discarded objects from all types of industries and gives them a new life, usually serving a different function than what they were originally manufactured for.
Repurposing vs. Recycling
Since opening his business, Carson’s presence has grown to several states, with six industrial thrift stores in Colorado, South Carolina, Arizona, Iowa, Texas and Ohio. In 2013, he was even coined the reigning king of repurposing by The Post.
RepurposedMATERIALS purchases, sells, trades and accepts various byproducts, waste streams, surplus inventory and idle machinery and equipment, allowing customers to give them a second life.
All six locations typically feature 20,000 to 25,000 square feet of warehouse dry space, along with yards that are approximately 2 acres, according to Carson.
“It’s like a lumber yard, except just more diverse,” he said. “So, we have materials of all shapes and sizes and styles neatly stacked up.”
Aside from old billboard vinyl, the business offers a range of materials for repurposing, such as whiskey barrels, conveyor belt rubber, fire hoses, military parachutes, synthetic grass turf, PVC pipes, wood planks and a massive stainless steel tank from Pepsi Cola, which is housed in the Lafayette warehouse.
But what makes an item a good candidate for repurposing? Carson said they look for materials that are generic, versatile and adaptable.
“We’re on the reuse side of reduce, reuse, recycle, the famous triangle,” he said.
Repurposing is not the same as recycling. Repurposing is the process of transforming an item like a decommissioned fire hose, for example, into a functional boat dock fender, giving it a second life.
Or during the holiday season, people can donate their dried-up Christmas trees to be repurposed as a fish habitat or livestock feed.
Recycling takes discarded materials and converts them into raw materials that can be used to create new products, which is a very energy-intensive process, according to Carson.
“The worst thing to do with waste is bury it in a landfill,” Carson said. “A little better is burn it for energy. That’s waste to energy. Better yet is recycling. Ship it, shred it, grind it, melt it. But the highest and best use of any waste is reuse. Keep it as is.”
RepurposedMATERIALS director of marketing Kiara Proano has been working for the company since the summer of 2021 and values the sustainability aspect of the business.
“I personally find lots of value in buying used and refurbished things, as opposed to just spending the money buying new things.”
Her co-worker Sean Murphy, who is a marketing administrator with the company, also shared similar sentiments.
“I would say the biggest thing for me is just kind of hearing the impact that this company has about how much waste is kind of being reused and avoiding the landfill,” Murphy said.
Colorado has slightly reduced its total waste generation from 7,077,958 tons in 2018 to 6,870,398 tons in 2023, according to a November 2024 report from Eco-Cycle and the CoPIRG Foundation on The State of Recycling and Composting in Colorado. Eco-Cycle is a Boulder-based nonprofit that innovates, implements and advocates for local and global Zero Waste solutions.
However, the landfill diversion rate in Colorado, also known as the recycling rate, has gone down. In 2018, Colorado diverted 17.2% of waste from landfills into recycling and compost bins. In 2023, the recycling rate was 15.5%, according to the report.
“We definitely are seeing some exciting progress in the reduction of waste and the implementation of reuse systems, but we also have a lot more work to do,” said Eco-Cycle senior policy and research associate Rachel Setzke.
Setzke said the state has the opportunity to make significant progress in minimizing waste by focusing on areas like diverting organic matter such as food scraps from landfills, reducing electronic waste and focusing on reusing materials in 2025.
She said reusing materials offers significant environmental benefits by reducing the need for new products and it saves consumers and businesses money.
“Reuse is not a new concept,” Setzke said. “Many of us grew up mending clothes and shopping thrift stores, taking shoes to be repaired and cars to be fixed, but there are new companies creating innovative ways to spur reuse.“
According to repurposedMATERIALS’s website, the company has diverted more than 15 million pounds, about 250 truckloads, of waste from landfills this year, bringing the total to over 260 million pounds.
Inventive customers
As Carson walks through the Lafayette warehouse’s 2-acre yard, crowded with large industrial pallets and steel materials, he recalls numerous stories about the creative ways customers repurpose the items they select.
“Our customers are as diverse as our customer base geographically. You know, Atlantic Ocean to Pacific Ocean, coast to coast,” he said.
Entrepreneur and founder of CNN Ted Turner. is a customer who purchased retired street sweeper brushes for his bison to use as back scratchers at Ted Ranches.
The Oskar Blues Brewery in Longmont has donated more than a hundred wooden whiskey barrels to the thrift store.
Besides Turner and Oskar Blues, other customers include NASA, Google, Michael Jordan and YouTubers Dude Perfect.
David Ross, a California-based financial adviser and owner of the Jazz Salon, a jazz club in the historic Los Angeles Athletic Club, discovered Carson’s business while searching online for an affordable and durable way to build an outdoor stage for a jazz performance on Alamitos Bay Beach.
“When I found their website, it was like a candy store. It’s like, ‘Whoa, look at all these cool things,’ ” Ross said.
Embracing his creative and DIY style, Ross purchased rubber mat flooring and a cargo parachute to bring his idea to life. Ross said he was pleased with the quality of the materials and received many compliments from the audience, who found the parachute eye-catching and referred to it as “pretty cool.”
“I felt like I was really smart,” Ross said. “And really, you know, kind of creative, that I’d found this solution at an affordable price, much less expensive than if I’d purchased something new.”
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