GRAFTON -- Growing up on a northern Maine potato farm, Deb Dumond learned the value of recycling long before recycling was cool.She remembers dutifully saving pieces of string and bread bags, which made great liners for boots in mud season.

“We recycled everything. Nothing went to the trash or to the dump unless it was totally worn out,” Dumond said.

So it seems natural to Dumond that she would one day start a home-based business with recycling at its core. But operating a business wasn't in her plans at all just a couple of years ago when it all started.

A psychology professor at the New Hampshire Technical Institute at Concord who also works as a hospice spiritual counselor for Lakes Region Visiting Nurses Association in New London, Dumond was just looking for a hand-made gift idea for family when some leftover scraps of Corian countertop material got her thinking.

Her idea to turn the scraps into super-tough cutting boards was a hit with her gift recipients. “They said, ‘These are so nice, you should sell them,'” she recalled.

Now she's a member of New Hampshire Made and travels around the state to home shows, selling not only cutting boards but also spoon holders, cheese servers, trivets, pastry boards and other items in 21 styles that range in price from $8.75 to $72.75. Her wares are also sold at the Wine Crate in Hanover and Kaza Designs in Concord and even a shop in Atlanta.

Customers love the “green” nature of the boards, Dumond said, plus the fact that the nonporous surface won't harbor bacteria or stain and can be cleaned with soap and water.

Corian is a creation of Dupont that's commonly used for countertops in kitchens and bathrooms. Made of an acrylic polymer that's mixed with alumina trihydrate, the material is hard, strong and nonporous. It comes in hundreds of colors and can be made to look like granite, marble or other popular natural materials.

Thinking about how long it might take for construction leftovers to break down in a landfill not only inspired Dumond to find uses for the scraps, but also spawned her business's name.

“Instead of it sitting in a landfill forever, now you can have this cutting board forever. That's where we got the name Forever Boards,” Dumond said.

Dumond, her significant other, Niel, and two nephews now work together at their Grafton home to reclaim Corian scraps into practical kitchen staples.

They started with basic rectangles but now make paddles, circles, semi-circles, and wine-bottle shapes. They also create custom projects like table or desk tops.

The colors vary according to what leftovers they've been able to buy from their fabricator sources.

Creating a cutting board starts with sawing the Corian with carbide blades around a template in Dumond's basement workshop. Next comes a lot of power sanding to smooth the edges.

Dumond said growing her business is a slow process of learning as she goes. Other businesses sell Corian cutting boards as well, so she plans to stick to the home-show niche as her main marketing and sales outlet, as well as her Facebook page.

Plans for the future include a website for online ordering.

One thing that won't change is her commitment to using only reclaimed Corian that might otherwise end up in the waste stream.

“It's about giving back and doing the best job we can,” she said.

“Hopefully the little reclaiming we're doing is going to make a difference in the landfills.”