Local business cleans up on junk

The way Steve Warren figures it, he and his family are living the Earth Day mantra of "Reduce. Reuse. Recycle."

The U.S. Army veteran is the proprietor of JDog Junk Removal Anchor Bay in New Baltimore. He said the business, which he operates with his wife, Nancy, and their adult children, Steven and Katrina, will celebrate its one-year anniversary in May.

He said his business is different from other junk removal services because it emphasizes recycling and reusing instead of hauling to the landfill.

"We are at about 90 percent where we recycle everything," he said. "It gets recycled or donated or reused."

The service often is used by empty-nesters or others trying to clean out a lifetime's worth of accumulated stuff, Warren said.

"We have customers that are downsizing, moving from a bigger home to an apartment or condo," he said.

"We will take the items out of their houses and we'll donate it for them so they get the tax break."

He said he will go through all the stuff and if it can be donated, it will be. If customers aren't interested in the tax credits, "sometimes I will go and sell those items so I can offset my costs.

"If we can’t donate the items or they are not usable, such as patio bricks or treated two-by-fours, I’ll put those up for free on the Internet.

"The last resort, it goes to the dump," Warren said.

He said about the only things the company won't touch are hazardous materials.

JDog Junk Removal is based in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. Warren said he is the only company franchisee in Michigan.

"Right now we’re doing Macomb, Oakland and St. Clair counties," he said.

Although there is a tie-in with Earth Day approaching on April 22, Warren said the business is not confined to any one season. 

"We do this all year round," he said. "One of our biggest jobs we recently did, is we had a commercial company call us up and they had 56 stacks of plywood and they needed all those sheets gone.

"... We were able to locate a wood recycling company, and they were able to take all that wood from us. None of it went to a scrapyard at all. We were pretty happy about that, and so was our customer."

People can get in touch with Warren by calling (844) 438-5364. He also is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JDogAnchorBay/.

Contact Bob Gross at (810) 989-6263 or rgross@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @RobertGross477.