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Music credits
“Kid Kodi” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Ottol” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Our Only Lark” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Idle Ways” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Discovery Harbour” by Blue Dot Sessions
Transcript
Bertha: We’re not bums. We’re helping and we’re also helping ourselves functioning through our lives and getting whatever we need for extra expenses that we have, to live with.
Sound (Sorting Waste at Aritzia): … (Bertha) that’s all plastic. So eventually, Brenda’s gonna take this and she’s gonna weigh it, and then we’re gonna sort through. Then we’re gonna weigh it again.
Bertha: My name is Bertha, last name is Cardinal. I’ve been, with the Binners’ Project for close to 12 years now.
Music: Kid Kodi by Blue Dot Sessions
Rona: Bertha works as a binner in the downtown east side of Vancouver, British Columbia. A binner is someone who collects refundable containers from bins to sustain their livelihood and divert waste from landfill.
Sean: My name is Sean Miles. I am the director of Binners Project and we are a charitable social enterprise based in the downtown east side.
Rona: Some Binners’ work is completely informal, meaning that they’re solely reliant on making money from refundable items. Others, like Bertha are involved with the Binners Project.
Bertha: You see, we have front of house sorting and we have back house sorting. The front is where we stand in front of the bins and tell people how to throw out their bins.
The back house is where we take – the garbage, comes to us. We open up the bags and we go through the garbage and we sort it out and we put it in the proper bin area.
Rona: Binning and being involved with the Binner’s Project is low barrier work. People don’t have to meet criteria, sign contracts, or jump through any other hoops to do it. It’s work that meets people where they’re at.
Sean: I would say binners primarily are, you know, a relatively marginalized group of people. It’s people that are often not able to access other forms of income generation. And so binning has been a way for them to make income, when other things didn’t work and didn’t fit for them. So we typically see that being people who have some barriers to employment and just in general that would make it difficult for them to work in more traditional employment settings.
Sound (Sorting waste at Aritizia): (Bertha) She was telling me at their meeting, she brought in the total of how many empties and how much money we brought in… 5,000 empties, recyclables. So that’s $5,000 that I made within a year. That’s not bad. Just outta here alone.
Music: Our Only Lark by Blue Dot Sessions
Bertha: 11 years ago I was watching Mike Leland, he’s number one binner, he was the first one who became a member of the Binners’ Project. And he was working for FIFA for the soccer tournament, the women’s soccer tournament. And I was watching him coming home, him and Peter, they were both my neighbors, I was watching them both coming home with piles and piles of empty cans and that.
So that got me interested in asking him, I said, what are you doing? I said, where’s all these cans coming from? So he explained to me that he was working for FIFA and that he was with the Binners’ Project and he was the one who got me introduced to the binners. And I got very interested with watching it, especially watching all those cans, like the money. I said, money, money, money!
Rona: Last year at one waste sorting site alone, Bertha and the binners diverted three metric tons of waste, or the equivalent of a 30 yard dumpster, from landfill.
Bertha: I wasn’t that aware about exactly how much garbage and how much plastic is really coming around and how much it’s really ruining the environment.
And I’m very happy to know that I’m part of that keeping Vancouver Green. Not even Vancouver, Canada too, you know?
Music: Ottol by Blue Dot Sessions
Bertha: We have these one hour jobs that we have for people, for them to go pick up their the recycle bottles. And hey, that’s only like an hour’s job. And as I was saying, sometimes they can have lots of them, lots of empties and sometimes you don’t. But you know, you have to go with the flow, sort of. You can’t really expect that much because you never know exactly how much you’re gonna have.
Rona: That’s not the only challenge binners have to contend with. Jutta Gutberlet, geography professor and waste governance expert at the University of Victoria, explains
Jutta: Society still does not see them as workers, improving our community, improving the environment, but often they are even seen as thieves. So there’s a lot of prejudice against these people and their work, which is something very common all over the world. People who work with what we consider waste, what we throw away is waste, then often the people who work with waste are considered waste as well.
Bertha: And you’re getting on the bus and a lot of people are looking at you, and a lot of them are like good girl, you know, but some of them are looking at – frowning at you, you know? But it’s like, I don’t care. It’s just like, I’m doing this and I’m helping myself. I’m helping myself.
Music: Idle Ways by Blue Dot Sessions
Rona: Despite these difficulties, the low barrier model of binning works for binners, as Michelle Lackie from Exchange Inner City emphasizes
Michelle: There’s so many different ways that people can earn an income. And that’s okay, and that’s actually valid. So the person who can only for lots of different reasons, only work on their own schedule and maybe that’s three hours a week or three hours a day, or they can only do it with supports. That’s valid. Right. Like, great, awesome.
Sound: Sorting Waste at Aritzia:
(Bertha) We set up for table first and then we go through the pile. (Rona) Do you think that’s quite, is that quite a lot of stuff? (Bertha) Uh, well, if it’s full inside, inside the containers, it looks like the contagion open those containers.
So yeah, it’s quite a bit to go through. Yeah. (Rona) How long will it take? (Bertha) This will only take us maybe about an hour, an hour and a half. (Rona) Whoa. (Bertha) Yeah we’re pros man we know what to do…[laughter]
Rona: Binning doesn’t fit into most people’s understanding of what work is. Nor should it. We need to change what work we recognize and value. In other words, we need to rethink our economy.
Jutta: It is an economy which is not just focused on profits. But rather, which is concerned about the livelihoods of the people involved in the work.
So workers health, and also workers income, social justice amongst the workers and also concerned with environmental implications of the work.
Music: Discovery Harbour by Blue Dot Sessions
Rona: Social enterprises generate income for economic, social, and environmental reasons, and they have an important role to play in supporting binners.
Michelle: They’re brought on to do a job, let’s say, few hours a week or part-time, and then like three months in they kind of disappear. They either have mental health issues or they have physical issues..in a regular business, that person would never be brought back. It’d be like you burned your bridges, you had to leave, sorry, you’re done.
In an employment-based social enterprise, their mission goes beyond just the work itself. It’s about the people. And so they’ll say like, no, no, no, come back, right? Like, I know you’ve been gone for three months, but come on back, right? Start this role again and let us support you in doing that.
Rona: Here in Vancouver, social enterprises like the Binners’ Project are already embodying the goals of a social and solidarity economy.
Sean: One of the early things the project did was, uh, develop a uniform. So now, you know, all the binners when they work, and even when they go and do their binning, like more informally, they’re welcome to wear their uniform as a way to kind show that they’re on the job. And that acknowledgement…a lot of binners find a lot of empowerment in being able to do that.
Bertha: The Binners’ Project, what they do is they give them more stability and they come out of their little shell, you know, and they talk, which is nice. I like to see that too, you know? It’s like helping other members come out, you know, and be a little bit more open about themselves, And it’s really nice to see that
Rona: Michelle is advocating for the expansion of systems and networks that support low barrier employment
Michelle: Right now, our priority in this, like next couple years I’d say is specifically around the social enterprise ecosystem. So how do we kind of create a stronger ecosystem so that they can remain sustainable, so that new ones can grow or be created or ones that already in existence can grow, et cetera.
So, what else needs to be in place like the scaffolding, the support, to enable that to happen? Because the stronger the system we have then the more low barrier employment opportunities that there will be.
Sound: Individual empty cans being added to pile of cans
Music: Kid Kodi by Blue Dot Sessions
Rona: Recognizing, valuing and celebrating low barrier work will ensure that all existing and potential binners, in the downtown east side and beyond, can work with more stability and free from stigma in a way that works for them.
Bertha: I like seeing the progress of how we’re helping the environment. And when we’re doing the data collection for these different locations that we’re working at, to actually see at the end of the year to see how much waste we helped from the landfill…that’s a lot, you know, that’s really good.
I mean, I’m very proud of us for doing that.
And then plus finding out about the binners, that last year we brought in a million dollars. That’s us binners that are working and we brought in that money and I think that’s great. You know, to actually have that million, I mean, a million nowadays is not that much, but to me it’s great. It’s a lot.
There’s a lot of things for us binners to actually say, hey, look, we’ve brought in a million dollars last year, you know, on our own. That’s good. I think that’s really great.