Journey Into the Junkyard

It's been one of my goals for a long time now to make Hazard Line a recycler. We buy and upcycle new traffic cones for their asthetic. They are clean and scuff free, which makes the jewelry very pretty. But maybe "pretty" isn't the only thing we should shoot for as a new business. Tons of companies and shops offer jewelry and products of all sorts that are pristine and new. Perhaps we should be different - offer something that has meaning.

This lead to the idea of Hazard Line not only using brand new traffic cones to make our jewelry, but old discarded cones as well. When traffic cones become unusable, more often than not, they are thrown out. Old traffic cones don't melt down very well, so its cheaper for companies to toss them in a junk yard. Not very eco-friendly. Taking these cones (which are ready to face eternity in a junk heap) and turing them into jewelry would be a great avenue for Hazard Line to explore. Not only would we be doing a service to the environment, but we'd be offering a product that carries character. Even after they are cleaned, each piece would have it's own unique pattern of abbrations, stratches and stains. This truely upcycled subsection of traffic cone jewelry,naturally, would contribute 30% of the purchase price towards our ecological charity, Project Green - showing the wearer to be a proponent of the environement, as well as second chances.

But for the longest time I felt this was easier said than done. Who was going to have old traffic cones lying around, first off, and who would then be willing to give them to Hazard Line for free? When I finally bit the bullet and started my search last week, I found that more people are willing to help than I thought.

After contacting the Long Island Dept. of Transportation and pretty much getting shot down, I turned to private construction comapanies. After only about an hour and a half of Googling and making calls, I found a company willing to contirbute to the cause. A manager named Bob from a company called Intercounty Paving Associates was more than happy to give me his branch's old cones. We arranged to meet up so I could collect the first batch. This turned out to be a little adventure in itself.

Here is an excerpt from my Hazard Line journal entry that day:

"Hazardous Journal: Feb 18th 2010
9:20am
I was a little nervous beforehand, but getting the old traffic cones was a success! I got up bright and early at 6:30 this morning. With a solid 5 hours of sleep, I got my ass out of bed and went through my morning routine. I opened the blinds of my 11th story dorm room. It was still kinda dark out but mostly because the sun was being blocked by a big chunk of clouds on the horizon. My tomato seedlings are sprouting and the mystery weed that took root in the corner of my palm plant’s pot actually opened up a small purple flower. I think it’s a violet.

So after washing my face, getting dressed, making two packets of microwave oatmeal and downing it with a small cup of protein shake, I headed out to the car with my gloves and box of 39 gal garage bags. There was snow everywhere so I had to brush my car off a little bit. I deliberated over which way to take to the place, and decided to take the possibly longer, but less convoluted way there. Getting lost wasn't really on my to-do list. I called Bob and he told me he was waiting in his car in the front lot of the building across from the Dunkin’ Donuts. I pulled into the lot a little after 8am and just so happened to park next to Bob. We both got out of the car to greet eachother. He was a nice guy. Taller than I pictured, wearing somewhat drabby work clothes, similar to what a auto mechanic would wear, only cleaner. He reminds me of the actor that plays the film critic in "Lady in the Water".

So he points over to a few very large mounds of some mystery material covered in snow and said to follow him over there. He had mentioned the junk yard over the phone on Tuesday but I couldn’t help thinking “that’s the kind of place a murderer would lure someone”. But of course I showed nothing but cool, calm, and collectedness. What else could I do? So I get in my car and follow him to the lot. We turn off the pavement and hit a dirt road that meanders thought the giant piles of mystery stuff covered in white. Thank god the dirt and mud was frozen cuz my little 95 Camry would’ve gotten lost in that stuff. It’s safe to say I was feeling just a little creeped out following this dude I'd just found over the internet into a deserted junk yard. This is something all those entrepreneur books never mention.

We stop over at the back of a warehouse and get out of our cars. Once again his disarming Elmer Fudd-without-the-speech-impediment voice calms me down a little. He shows me a small pile of really torn up dirty traffic cones (it looked like a train ran over them), and then a pile of just really dirty cones. I glanced over at the dirty cones. As I expected, most of the cones didn’t have the double layer of material (orange with white rubber underneath) but that’s not really a problem. The whole point of this is to add another facet to Hazard Line – to expand it into a recycler as well. As I packed up a bunch of the dirty cones into the garbage bags, we chatted a bit about this and that. Bob asked me about Hazard Line, he told me about Intercounty Paving and how they are a recycler too (they reuse the asphalt when building roads), and about his daughter who graduated from RISD and is a designer. Apparently she had her own jewelry line made from recycled electrical components. Before we parted ways, Bob gave me his card and his daughter’s card, telling me to call him when I need more traffic cones. And with that, I backed the car down the winding dirt road(it was very narrow), through the giant piles of I-don’t-know-what, and drove back to campus in time for class."

Now I'm very excited becuase Hazard Line will soon be launching the new purely recycled jewelry line. It just goes to show you that sometimes poeple are willing to help if you just have the courage to ask.