PC Profile: Jon Wybar OPC ’96

Construction is always dirty. No matter how green or sustainable a builder tries to be, there is inevitably a lot of waste. Builders who aspire to get LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, or just want to be eco-friendly, must dispose of their waste responsibly. That is when they call Jon Wybar OPC ’96 and his firm, Revolutionary Recovery. 

Revolutionary Recovery, which Wybar cofounded in 2004 with fellow alumnus Avi Golen OPC ’98, works with builders to find new uses for all that dirty leftover material. Drywall, for example, can be ground down and the gypsum used as fertilizer. Wood can be chipped up for mulch. Concrete can be broken up and made into new batches of concrete. Other materials, such as aluminum and copper wire, can also find a home. 

From very small beginnings, Revolutionary Recovery now operates three recycling plants around the region, owns 28 haulage trucks, and has 135 employees. 

“We started with nothing,” Wybar said, looking back. “We didn’t have any capital or any real knowledge, but we timed it well. The green building movement was just coming along, and there were new specifications from architects.” 

One builder who is familiar with Wybar’s work is Craig Sabatino OPC ’74, the principal and cofounder of INTECH Construction. “Jon was doing this kind of work before it was in vogue,” Sabatino said. In fact, much of the waste generated in the construction projects INTECH has done recently on the PC campus—which include the Graham Athletics & Wellness Center and the Balderston Lower School—have gone to Revolutionary Recovery’s recycling sites. 

Wybar was introduced to the construction cleanup business in perhaps the worst way possible. Early in 2002, Wybar, who had just graduated from college, answered an ad in the Chestnut Hill Local for a firm that was cleaning buildings near the World Trade Center site following the 9/11 attacks. Commuting daily to lower Manhattan, Wybar inspected the buildings and wrote environmental reports certifying that they were safe to be reoccupied. 

A little over a year later, Wybar reconnected with Golen, who had seen how much waste was being thrown away at construction sites and thought there might be a way to recycle it. Starting with drywall, they soon began to offer recycling of other materials and founded Revolutionary Recovery in 2004. Their timing was good. With growing public awareness of recycling and greater demand for green buildings, there was now a market for handling construction waste responsibly. (Golen left the company in 2017.) 

If Wybar has been running hard building a business, running seems to come naturally to him. He was born in Seattle and lived in England for several years before entering PC in fourth grade. He was Inter-Ac track champion in both the mile and two-mile events his junior year and won the Inter-Ac cross country championship as a senior, finishing second in the state. 

Eager to continue running, Wybar walked on to the track team at the University of Oregon, a famed program in the sport; Wybar’s coach, Bill Dellinger, had previously coached legendary distance runner Steve Prefontaine. Wybar, who majored in geology, completed his collegiate career at the University of Texas. 

At first, Revolutionary Recovery connected dumpster companies with existing recycling firms but soon moved to separating construction materials independently. It opened its first recycling plant, in Northeast Philadelphia, in 2008; added a second, in Delaware, in 2012; and a third, in Allentown, in 2018. Each site receives about 500 tons of construction waste a day. 

Wybar acknowledges that too much industrial waste is still, well, wasted. He estimates that, although his company keeps 100,000 tons of materials out of landfills every year, just as much still ends up there. Some things, such as office equipment and roofing materials, just aren’t economical to recycle yet. Wybar is optimistic that there is still a lot more room to for his company to grow. 

“Our mission has been to keep building materials out of landfills, to be green, and to support sustainable construction and sustainable building use,” he explained. “I feel the need is greater than ever. The landfill’s days are numbered.” 

– Mark Bernstein OPC '79