About TRP

MISSION STATEMENT

TRP of California reduces the solid waste stream and changes the way the built environment is renewed by salvaging building materials and distributing them for reuse.

• All of us through a better environment
• Low income families who cannot afford to buy new
• Low skilled workers who are taught marketable skills
• Building owners by virtue of tax donations
• Builders and contractors through better service to their clients
• Other beneficiaries and direct recipients of our materials include:
  Projecto Salesiano Tijuana, Jardine de los Ninos, Chula Vista Pony League, Habitat for Humanity (San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles County, Oakland), Volunteers of America and Goodwill Industries.

While we obtain reusable building materials from a variety of sources, our own deconstruction efforts contribute over 90 percent of them.

Whether you are a contractor or building owner, we stand ready to provide you with a package of benefits including:

• Environmentally sound demolition (we like the word deconstruction)
• Materials salvage
• Skilled crews
• Tax donations for all the materials donated to TRP
• Lower overall project costs.
• The assurance that someone, somewhere reuses the materials generated from your project

In 1993 we started with borrowed trucks, borrowed employees and a weed covered lot in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego. Today, we have offices and facilities in San Diego, Orange/Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

In the Bay Area we have our own resale facility, conduct on-site deconstruction sales and manage our own deconstruction crews. In Los Angeles we conduct on-site deconstruction sales, have a wholesale and shipping yard and we work with private deconstruction contractors; in San Diego, we work with private deconstruction contractors, ship lumber directly to Mexico and consign some materials to other resellers. We also conduct deconstruction-site sales.

In our efforts to expand our business, we are constantly looking for alliances with other contractors, particularly medium to large, mechanical demolition contractors and resellers of used building materials.

HOW WE STARTED
We started in April, 1993 with a drive for building materials to help the flood victims in Tijuana, Mexico. The drive, Project Valle Verde, was planned and coordinated with the mayors of Tijuana and San Diego, the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, the County Board of Supervisors, San Diego Gas and Electric Company, Waste Management, and the Building Industry Association.

On April 23 and 24, contractors, other private companies, public agencies and the citizens of San Diego donated over 400 tons of building materials valued at $1.2 million. Twenty-seven tractor trailers crossed the border carrying this material in an unprecedented demonstration of bi-national cooperation and assistance.

The success of Project Valle Verde demonstrated the need for used building materials and the impact of this need on our already overused and over committed landfills.

The ReUse People started as Building Materials Distributors in San Diego in 1993 and, due to a name conflict with an existing corporation, the name was soon changed to The ReUse People.