Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn”™t have to turn on his heat this past winter.
After all, the temperature in his green Mount Kisco home never sinks “below 59 degrees.”
Made entirely of recyclable materials, the estate he shares with wife and green architect Mary Richardson Kennedy did not have the most promising past.
“We had a flood about five years ago that occurred during our summer vacation and the basement filled with about four feet of water and the house just erupted,” Kennedy said during a tour of the home earlier this month. “There were black mold blooms we couldn”™t get rid of. We had 20 contractors in here. Our kids were getting sick from the mold. And finally, they just said it was hopeless.”
Mary Kennedy sought out the help of a company called Green Demolitions that “took every nail, every piece of material from that house and recycled it.”
“In fact, all the Sheetrock which was contaminated with black mold, they have a method where they can repulverize and sell it to the gypsum companies,” Kennedy said. “So there wasn”™t one ounce of material that went to landfills.”
Green Demolitions sells extracted items “as is” from home and commercial demolitions.
Donated items ranging from luxury appliances to bathroom fixtures are sold and benefit Recovery Unlimited, a nonprofit organization supporting a successful addiction recovery program, All Addicts Anonymous.
Steve Feldman, founder and president of Greenwich, Conn.-based Green Demolitions, is a recovered addict who has devoted his life to giving back.
About 35 percent of Feldman”™s work force is recovered addicts or family members of recovered addicts.
Within four years, the company has grown to 36,000 square feet of warehouse and retail space in Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania.
Feldman called the Kennedy house “a great project for us.”
“Normally we do kitchens, baths and home décor, but theirs was a special project that included a lot of memorabilia, brick-a-brack items that could have been at an estate sale,” he said. “Typically, for privacy, we don”™t list the donor”™s name on the item if it”™s from a celebrity, but Mary (Kennedy) really wanted to support us, let us say it was their stuff and it created a higher value. I think we received 800 items.”
Kennedy said the cost to demolish and truck away was estimated at more than $100,000 “and we ended up making more than that amount in tax deductions.”
The website is greendemolitions.com.
