Damon Carson is the founder of repurposedMATERIALS, a company turning industrial waste into innovative second-life solutions. From old billboards to decommissioned conveyor belts, his work brings circular thinking to life. His mission is clear: see value where others see waste.
A dynamic entrepreneur and sought-after keynote speaker, Damon engages audiences with real-world repurposing stories. His presentations are hands-on, eye-opening, and often surprising. It’s no wonder he’s one of the most in-demand Environment & Sustainability speakers today.
In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, Damon shares how repurposing supports sustainability, business, and creativity. His approach challenges organisations to rethink their waste streams. Sustainability, as Damon proves, starts with a shift in mindset.
Q: What do you hope to teach people about waste disposal and repurposing?
Damon Carson: “I think the one thing that’s pretty fascinating to most people is just things that one industry deems as obsolete, useless – we call them the castoffs, the discards – can find a very different second life. That’s what we call repurposing.
“Instead of sending them to the landfill or sending them directly to recycling to be chipped, shredded, ground, melted, there’s reuse possibilities if you change the life of that product to do something else in life.”
Q: What are some of the biggest hurdles you’ve faced in repurposing materials?
Damon Carson: “I think there are multiple challenges. One, it’s logistics – it’s just a very logistics-intensive business. A lot of the industrial materials that we rehome are very heavy. A lot of times they have to go across the state, across the country, so there’s lots of logistics involved.
“I think it’s hard to make lots of other industries – diverse industries – learn about these materials that could potentially repurpose them. So it’s both a marketing challenge and a logistics challenge.
“Thirdly would be, you don’t make the matches instantly. So the materials have to sit somewhere, they have to be stored. So warehousing, which is kind of a subheading of logistics, is a big challenge to this whole repurposing.”
Q: How can businesses incorporate repurposing into their sustainability strategies?
Damon Carson: “I think several things about incorporating repurposing for companies. One is just take fresh eyes on waste streams that you create. Most people, they work in a company for months or years – they’re used to walking by the dumpster, or just, it’s just trash, it’s no good.
“But if they step back and put fresh eyes on it – just because it’s obsolete to them – all their network of maybe companies, friends, family, whatever it may be, there could be something across, again, across the street, across the province, across the nation, another industry that they don’t even know about, that they don’t even interact with, that could give new life to these, again, these discards, castoffs.
“So I think it’s just a matter of broadcasting and getting people to step back and say, “Hey, it’s no longer good to us, but we should spread word, get word out, that hey, maybe there is a different industry that could give this an alternate or second life.”
Q: What aspects of business sustainability can you help people understand better?
Damon Carson: “I think a big misnomer is that the only option for things that are obsolete to primary industry is landfill, waste-to-energy, or recycling. Again, we talked about it – chip it, shred it, grind it, melt it. Reuse is the highest and best use of waste. So, most people think, well, if it’s no good to us, it’s just no good anymore in terms of a reuse or repurposing.
“So, I think it’s just education to get people to realise, well, just because it doesn’t fit your company and your application any longer doesn’t mean it is totally valueless. It may have utility again with repurposing if you change it – how you think about it, how you use it – it could have a very long extended life in an alternate life and an alternate application.”
Q: What is the most creative application of material repurposing you have seen?
Damon Carson: “The list is quite long. Succinctly, one of them – we had a bunch of concrete pads come from a telecommunications company. They were 4 inches thick, 4 foot by 4 foot, just concrete pads. They would set their telecommunications equipment on it, drill holes in the concrete and run out cable television to the homes in a subdivision.
“So they were done with them, didn’t want them anymore. They reached out to us – hey, can you find a second life, a different life, a repurpose for these? We brought them in. It didn’t take but two or three weeks and a motor freight, a trucking company bought them.
“Because they have a big problem in the trucking industry – when they have light loads, where their trucks are not full, and they’re travelling in areas that are very windy – their trucks literally can blow over. So, on days they have light loads on windy days, they’re going to use those concrete blocks as ballast or weight to add weight, so these trucks – it lessens the risk of them blowing over.
“So, obsolete – these concrete pads to the telecommunications industry – becomes a solution for the trucking industry.”
This exclusive interview with Damon Carson was conducted by Jack Hayes of The Motivational Speakers Agency.
