By Elecia Chrunik
Photo by Christopher Bevacqua-Fink
The line-up outside the two-storey building grows until the doors open to let in a rush of people pushing shopping carts, garbage bins and make-shift carrying devices. The walls are lined with dampened, sticky tables and a long countertop cuts down the middle. It’s orderly but noisy as people yell over the sound of glass bottles and aluminum cans crashing on to the tables.
The smell is powerful: thousands of empties with the last few drops of stale alcohol and sour juice assaults the nostrils. “It’s the sweet smell of success,” yells a woman, who just cashed in her bottles with a wink and a near-toothless smile.
United We Can is a not-for-profit bottle-recycling depot on East Hastings, between Carrall and Columbia streets. Last year the organization recycled over 20 million bottles, cans and containers and put $2.5 million back into the Downtown Eastside community, mostly into the hands of people that have a hard time making money any other way.
"Binners", or "dumpster divers", are the homeless and low-income men and women that roam the city hunting for empty beverage containers that can be traded in for a cash refund. Full-time binners often collect enough to make rent while part-timers bin when they need extra money for a warm meal or a pack of smokes.
They leave few places unchecked: some take the back alleys; others troll through the city’s sidewalks and trashcans. Some bus to university and college campuses where the guaranteed big returns and few competitors make it worth the trip. Some go directly to the source and strike up deals with bar and restaurant owners, meeting daily or weekly for the exchange. Whatever the route, Vancouver’s binners create a dynamic, money-making network that leaves a much cleaner city in its wake.
It’s easy to see that the United We Can depot, and the community that keeps it running, are making positive waves in the Downtown Eastside. Binner Michael Benz heads out to a university campus to collect his bounty. “I’m just trying to stay out of trouble,” he says with a smile. His colleagues standing with him in the alley chuckle and call him a “binner extraordinaire”. In addition to his disability payments from the government, he earns enough to pay for an apartment and live a clean and comfortable life.
At the depot, a large banner hangs on the wall that explains how much each can, bottle and Tetra Pack (juice box) is worth and what they’ll be used for next. Cans are good for a nickel and will soon be fencing and rebar. Glass bottles are worth up to 20 cents and become fiberglass insulation, while juice cartons, traded for five or 20 cents, turn into card- board boxes.
Binners separate the cans and bottles, trade them in for cash and then clear out through the back door so the next wave of people can come in. “We estimate that we serve about 2,000 people in the binning community,” says Brian Dodd, executive director of United We Can. “Between 750 and 900 clients come through our door every day, sometimes more than once.”
Dodd recently took the reins from founder Ken Lyotier, a binner who was tired of not getting a fair trade for the bottles and cans he collected. Lyotier started a group called Save Our Living Environment in 1990 that began to raise awareness about the environmental damage associated with recyclable products ending up in landfills. With some federal funding for job creation programs, Lyotier was able to open the original depot, just across the alley from where United We Can is today.
Lyotier helped lobby the provincial government to expand the range of beverage containers that can be recycled in the program, which includes everything from wine bags and liquor sample bottles to hospital juice containers and Capri Sun pouches.
The depot is able to make money because bottling companies have to pay a handling fee as a way of taking some responsibility for the waste they create. So when United We Can trades a nickel for a can, it also gets reimbursed for that nickel and collects a handling fee on top of it. The system is administered by Encorp Pacific, a recycling organization the province assigned to oversee the industry.
The organization has grown every year since the mid-'90s and now employs more than 150 people as bottle sorters and counters, or as part of its lane-cleaning team. More employees work in the back in other programs like the computer and bicycle repair shop or with Happy Plants, a program that revives dying plants and re-sells them to the community.
For the people who live in the area, on the streets or in Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels, barriers like addiction, mental illness and disability hinder entrance into the work force. United We Can hopes to address this problem by creating as many jobs as possible for neighbourhood residents. Every penny that it gets goes back into the company to employ more people.
“If someone can only commit to one or two four-hour shifts a week, that’s fine,” Dodd says. “If someone needs to leave on an hour’s notice because they got a bed in detox or rehab, [we say], 'Great, go and do it and your job will be waiting for you when you get back.'”
The city recently recognized the service that the depot and its employees are providing and gave the organization a $50,000 grant to help keep the city clean during the Olympics. With an estimated 2.3 million visitors during the 17 days of the Games, the bottle-collecting team will undoubtedly be busy. The money will pay around 70 binners $10 an hour to work three shifts through- out the days.
But it’s more than just job creation that United We Can is trying achieve; it’s the meaning and rewards that come with being gainfully employed.
“We create opportunity for people to create some income for themselves and what that also does it gives people some self-esteem,” says Dodd. “A big part of working in the depot or in the lane- cleaning program is the opportunity to socialize with others—to come down and have coffee with other folks that are in a similar situation; to work with people who really care about what they’re doing and how they’re doing.”
Randy Gregoras works in the main sorting area at United We Can and shares his story that saw him go from a unionized tour-bus employee to a labourer in Alberta to an injured person on disability that couldn’t afford to live anywhere but the Downtown Eastside. Depression sunk in during the two years he was unable to work.
“If United We Can weren’t here, it would create a serious vacuum,” he says. “It’s like a family to me.”
