A new company has touched down in Durango that aims to build an eco-friendly online buying, selling and donation thoroughfare for Four Corners businesses.
The company’s owner, Shannon Ireland, launched Four Corners Revival – which the company’s website describes as a “circular marketplace for businesses and community partners” – in December.
Ireland, who has a background in business and entrepreneurship and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in sustainability and leadership, said Durango feels like an environmentally friendly location and will make a good homebase for the company – but Four Corners Revival serves businesses and community partners in all Four Corners states.
The company acts as its own entity, but the buying and selling platform is operated through Rheaply, a national platform used for recirculating companies’ surplus items. Users must have a paid subscription through a company like Four Corners Revival to access the Rheaply site and list and buy items.
Four Corners Revival is built around circular economy principles – an approach that focuses on reusing, repairing and recycling items – and is tied to Colorado’s Circular Community Enterprise – or C3 – grants, Ireland said.
“It’s basically the concept of Facebook Marketplace – but it’s a Facebook Marketplace for businesses,” she said.
The intention, Ireland said, is to save companies money, increase buying and selling efficiency in the Four Corners business world and keep materials out of landfills.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 12 million tons of furniture are discarded annually in the U.S., and between 80% to 90% of that ends up in landfills.
Ireland said there are a few reasons businesses might choose to patronize Four Corners Revival over already established, free sites like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.
Businesses can track the environmental impact they’re having with each buy, sell or donation through the website, she said, which are numbers that can be used on a business’ website to illustrate eco-friendly and sustainable ethics.
Sellers input the size specifications of their items when they list them, Ireland said, and the system calculates approximate weight diverted from landfills, providing measurable environmental impact data, third-party reporting for sustainability metrics and data to support grant applications, like those gained through C3.
“(Users of the platform) can see how much weight is being diverted from the landfill, and that would be one incentive for businesses that want to go green,” she said.
The site is also meant to be specific to businesses and community partners in the region, she said, meaning items will be more specialized and easy to find, and the platform can act as its own kind of online business hub.
Several businesses, organizations and entities in the Four Corners have already signed on, Ireland said, including Iron Roots Fabrication in Aztec, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Durango-based companies Illico and Annie’s K9 Orphans.
Access to the platform comes at a price, however.
The most basic tier access to the platform, which includes the ability to list and buy items and places a business’ logo on the Four Corners Revival Community Network, is $300 per year, or around $25 per month – but Ireland also accepts sliding-scale payments when a business first signs on, she said.
Optional add-on packages that include a variety of perks, such as a certain number of business and platform consultation hours per month with Ireland, range from $500 to $1,500 per month.
Businesses can also sign up temporarily to offload items during one-time cleanout or organization projects, according to the website.
“What I’m selling is a technology platform,” Ireland said. “This saves people that extra trip that they would make to go shopping. ... It makes it easy for people to see what’s available, maybe just down the block. They don’t have to go far.”
Honoring the sovereign Indigenous nations of the Four Corners is an important part of the business structure, she said, and lifetime access to the platform is granted to any tribe that reaches out.
Going forward, Ireland hopes to qualify Four Corners Revival for grants that could fund trucking and pick-up or drop-off services powered by green energy, she said, so items sold and donated on the platform could be delivered to buyers.
Ireland said she wants Four Corners Revival to act as a smaller springboard for wider change.
“I’m trying to create this movement in the West, not just in the Four Corners, but it’s something that could actually just expand,” she said. “It’ll just move further as time goes on.”
epond@durangoherald.com
