WARSAW -- Much of Kosciusko County is still picking up from last week's storms, but one man is helping to clean up by recycling what he can through his new business called Indiana Urban Lumber.
It's lumber that would have otherwise been mulched, burned or sent to the landfill, but it's now getting a second life.
He's your run-of-the-mill woodworker, except Bill Burr mills his own wood. But his lumber didn't come from trees in a forest, it all came from cities, towns parks and people's yards. Some of it had to be cut down for various reasons, but much of it is the result of severe weather.
"I'd like to put it to a better use, simply said," said Bill Burr, owner of Indiana Urban Lumber.
Burr picks the trees up, cuts them at a mill, dries them in a kiln, and sells them to area woodworkers or builds something out of it himself.
"For whatever reason, whenever a tree has to be removed, I want to try to put the log to a better use,” he said. “I don't want the whole tree, I don't want all of the firewood, I don't want the brush, I just want the big part.”
Not every tree can be used, but if it can, Burr will pick it up for free. It's a system Burr has figured out with the Winona Lake and Warsaw governments.
"It's good for us too because we expend a lot of man hours," Winona Lake Town Coordinator Craig Allebach said, "but if he can pick that up it doesn't cost anything for us, it doesn't cost anything for the resident."
"There's a lot of that that is suitable for firewood and nothing else, but there is some that could be used better and that's my intention, try to make the best use out of it," Burr said.
Burr has been woodworking for 30 years, a few years back he started to get urban wood milled for himself. He started Indiana Urban Lumber in February.
