Trash to Treasure:

Earth Team Volunteer in Iraq Proves Conservation of Resources Can Happen Anywhere

Bill Murphy, a SC Earth Team Volunteer and Marine serving in Iraq, has put his conservation ethic to practice by constructing a recreation building with all recycled materials. The Marines use the structure in the middle of the Iraq desert to read, work, store equipment, and seek respite from the dry heat.

Bill Murphy, a longtime Beaufort, SC, Earth Team Volunteer, knows that being stationed away from home can be tough, especially if you are thousands of miles from home in Iraq! Couple that with being in the middle of the desert, and you can imagine that homesickness is a real possibility! But Murphy, a Radar System Field representative for Lockheed Martin Corporation, is doing everything he can to make the situation bearable, and when faced with the need for temporary shelter from the hot (130 degrees is not out of the question!) and dry desert conditions, he got creative.

Murphy and his fellow Marines searched for used lumber and roofing materials over a period of four months in a quest to construct their own homemade shelter. Utilizing discarded plywood scheduled for incineration, they fashioned a 192 square foot recreation building with a roof made of old aluminum collected from a debris pile of demolished buildings. Disposable wood was also used to construct the deck, along with reused seats from a seven-ton truck to make benches inside the building. Murphy reports, "The building has served it’s purpose well, providing a great shelter for the marines to work, read and store equipment."

Along with his eleven fellow Marines, Murphy is leading the effort to conserve and protect the environment by using recycled materials, thereby reducing waste and cutting down on the amount of waste, and potentially reusable products, which end up in landfills. The SC Earth Team salutes these innovate conservationists and exemplary servicemen.

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