Rose Tourje – ANEW
Rose Tourje began ANEW after a successful career in commercial interior design. Combining extensive experience as a leading manager and strategist with a passion for design excellence, she flourished at EPR, Sussman Prejza, ISD, IA, AECOM, and Warner Bros. As her leadership role advanced, Rose found her specific niche in procurement, taking practical cost-effective & sustainable measures by sourcing locally and regionally whenever possible. This caused her to look more closely at industry practices as a whole, noting that the surplus furniture and equipment liquidation process was antiquated and overlooked.
She assumed in the early days of the green movement that others were liquidating responsibly, but discovered that although companies were doing their best by reselling and recycling to a small degree, there were no wide scale systems in the works. With more study, Rose found that most unneeded materials in the construction field were being sent directly to landfill. After 30 years of a design career, she decided to leave and start ANEW. This approach furthers public services, strengthens communities and helps the environment. In addition to helming ANEW, Rose educates and advises students, companies, and the industries of the built environment about the positive outcomes and lasting benefits when social, economic and environmental responsibility are engaged. She leads by doing, starting with the end in mind.
History & Vision
ANEW (Asset Network for Education Worldwide, Inc.) began in 2005 with a vision and mission to improve industry practice by extending the life cycle of surplus items through reuse, repurposing and recycling. Typically, when a company moves out of its tenant space, the surplus furniture left behind is picked up by a construction demolition crew and hauled to landfill. ANEW saw the wastefulness of this, recognized the value of the surplus and reinvented the liquidation process with Surplus Stewardship™.Through this process ANEW works with companies to steward their surplus furniture and other items away from landfill and back into their communities by matching their surplus to charities, non-profits, public agencies and underserved communities. ANEW educates through action by raising awareness of the social, environmental and economic benefits of Surplus Stewardship™. Every year companies working with ANEW divert, on average, more than 3 million pounds of surplus from landfill. Since its inception ANEW has stewarded surplus to more than 2,000 recipient organizations in 20 countries.