Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 6: Binners’ Project: an origin story — with Davin Boutang and Anna Godefroy
Speakers: Melissa Roach, Maria Cecilia Saba, Jamie-Leigh Gonzales, Am Johal, Anna Godefory, Davin Boutang
[music]
Melissa Roach 0:06
You're listening to Below the Radar. A knowledge mobilization project recorded out of 312 Main. This podcast is produced by SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement.
Maria Cecilia Saba 0:16
Below the Radar brings forward ideas to encourage meaningful exchanges across communities.
Jamie-Leigh Gonzales 0:20
Each episode we interview guests on topics ranging from environmental and social justice, arts, culture, community building and urban issues. This podcast is recorded on the unceded territory of the Musqueam. Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
Melissa Roach 0:34
I'm Melissa Roach from SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Sorry, if you missed us last week. We're now moving to a biweekly schedule, with a short holiday break coming up. Make sure to like us on Facebook, at facebook.com/sfuvoce and follow us on Twitter at @sfu_voce for episode updates and more. You can also subscribe on your podcasting platform of choice, to make sure you never miss out. For our last episode of 2018. Our director Am Johal interviews Davin and Anna from the Binners Project. We learned about the beginnings of the project and how it's developed over the years, including some background on the Coffee Cup Revolution and the Universal Carts initiative. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope you enjoy.
Am Johal 1:22
Thank you very much for joining us this week on our podcast. I'm very excited to welcome Davin and Anna from the Binners Project. Welcome.
Anna Godefroy 1:35
Hi.
Am Johal 1:36
You're neighbors of mine here at 312 Main Street. And I'm wondering if you can just sort of start by talking about the kind of work you do for the listeners who might not be aware of the Binners Project.
Davin Boutang 1:49
You could go first if you like.
Anna Godefroy 1:50
Yeah, so my name is Anna. I'm a co-founder and director of the Binners Project. We are a grassroot initiative. We're based in the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver. And we help recyclers — like urban recyclers. So — some people call them waste pickers. So people surviving, and going through the trash for like material, anything that has value. So the Binners Project came around like four years ago, almost five, and we're here to support them, decrease the stigma around the work they do — highlight their green contribution to urban landscapes, and also increase their income opportunities, helping them making more money while binning.
Davin Boutang 2:42
Yeah, or everything we do, too, is like I joined the Binners Project about four years ago. And now I'm like the operations manager. And when they level up with this organization — there’s two things actually, it's how grassroots it is. So we listen to all the binners. And most of our programs and initiatives are based around their ideals. And second is how we build their capacity up, like what happened to me. And build my capacity up, and I wasn't even realized yet. And now here I am today. So now we have about nine other binners or staff. I have two coordinators underneath me too. So we're building up their capacity, and making them leadership's in the vendor community.
Am Johal 3:21
Way back in the day, this would have been around 1997 or 98. I was working on a project through UBC and I met Jim Green — and I worked for him a little bit after that. But he put me in touch with Ken Lyotier, at that time when United We Can was working, and he did something I guess similar to Binners’ Dinners and things around organizing with binners. And it was remarkable — really interesting project in the way that it was funded and starting out. And I'm wondering how binning has evolved over time — I'm sure you both know Ken very well, or was involved or around the project when you were starting out. But it's been many many decades since people have been binning, and I'm just wondering how things have evolved and changed over time.
Davin Boutang 4:13
Yeah, well Ken is probably... how we say, spearheaded this organization or something of that? So I myself know Ken, I worked at United We Can, so it's funny —there's two things. Like Ken started off in Victory Square Park for the deposit depot for the bottles, and we have our Coffee Cup Revolution now at the same spot. We’re trying to make a refund on that, we had ours last week so we got like 87,000 cups in three hours. But what's changed in binning is — our organization does is with Ken, he had United We Can, and I guess through funding and all, they’re more of a bottle depot, which is still good — a full-refund bottle depot for all the binners. But the Binners Project, what we do is we try to change policy and build more like leadership, and community within the binners. So yeah, and all the issues too. So stuff like — they were working on is a universal cart system — cart that we're working on right now. So I’d say, it’s more we're working on issues I guess, and binning is actually becoming more of a, what do you call it? Natural, legit?
Am Johal 5:22
And it seems also like you're working on stigmatization towards binners as well.
Davin Boutang 5:27
Oh, for sure.
Anna Godefroy 5:28
And I think I mean I'm not from Canada originally. So I wasn't here 10 years ago, so I can't tell you how it evolved here in Vancouver. But I finished just rethinking waste and seeing it as a resource instead of just waste. And I don't think there's anything new to that, since I think the history of time people reuse things. We're just at a time in this century where its all about consuming and plastic. And so just trying to challenge people in riffing that way and think, like material and waste could actually be valuable for someone else. So it's a way to include people economically and socially.
Davin Boutang 6:14
Yeah with all our binners, we usually always live — we make our income off waste, and most of us, all our stuff that we own, is we just reuse everything that we find. So it's spreading out that kind of thing to reuse, recycle economy.
Am Johal 6:28
Yeah. I'm always interested in how people start off social change projects. So I was wondering if you could— both sort of share a little bit about yourself, you come from France, now you're living in Vancouver working on this project? That's super interesting. But you can share a little bit about how you got involved in that in the Binners Project?
Anna Godefroy 6:47
And yeah, I mean, it's kind of — I think those things — I mean, my experience of those things always been, it's always a bit random, like you were just they are the right time, you met the right people. So I studied law in France, like human rights, I was really into social justice. I mean, in theory, I wasn't really doing anything about it. I was just studying it. And then I became a teacher. So I was just very curious and kind of, well not curious but interested in putting these two things together, education and social justice. And so when I came here from France, I mean, I came from the UK. I was there before, and then I moved in Vancouver, I was just really surprised by just seeing people pushing carts, shopping carts. There is poverty in Europe, a lot, a lot of exclusion, but it just has a different face. Like people don't really carry around shopping carts. It's very much something you see in American movies, like the homeless guy pushing, pushing his cart. So it was just really curious about that. And I lived in this neighbourhood in Chinatown, so I saw a lot of people doing that, and, and then I realized they were actually collecting waste or reusing stuff and either going to the depot and making cash from aluminum and glass and plastic, or they were just selling whatever they found on the street or reusing it for themselves. And I thought that was pretty interesting. And I really just saw value in that. I think it's, you know, people have barriers and they can't really take a full-time job. So they do that, they do that on their own time. And so I was really interested in that. And so I met with Ken Lyotier I contacted him, I was writing articles for a local newspaper, called La Source. And so in this context, I met with Ken Lyotier for coffee. And then we just met, and met again, and talk and talked and, and then we, he told me, he told me, he wanted to get a group of binners together. And so I was like, Yeah, let's do that. So. So we did that together. And then now we're five years later, and we're starting to become a bigger movement.
Am Johal 9:04
Yeah. How did you get started?
Davin Boutang 9:06
Yeah. Well, I've always been about social change — I love rights. So before I was more on the outside and more confrontational, and of course that got me nowhere. So what happened was, when I first went there — the first binners meeting, and then hearing Anna and Gabby talking — and see how they're listening. And what they want you to do, it fit in perfectly with, not only with my lifestyle, but with my actual personal beliefs. And now it's great because now we're working inside, you're making a difference. And instead of being so confrontational, I find out that actually working with people and making smaller changes is how you make change.
Am Johal 9:42
I've seen that you guys organize Binners Dinners, and are organizing with people who are working in this area, listening to concerns and issues that are coming up, and trying to act and advocate on their behalf. I know you've organized discussions and those types of things. I'm wondering if you can let our listeners know a little bit about Coffee Cup Revolution because it's such a unique project — and what it is that you're trying to do in terms of policy change and things like that.
Anna Godefroy 10:10
Yeah. So when we started, so Gabby Korcheva and I, we consulted with binners for a long time, for like a year, maybe. I mean, there was a lot of meetings. And one thing that came up was the binners wanted to recycle more. And so they said, the coffee cups are like the biggest way — like the material we see the most in the bin, and it has no value. At the time, it wasn't even recyclable. So it was everything was just going to landfill. Since then, depending on where you throw away, your cup it can be recycled. But so they asked for us to push, they asked for the Binners Project to push for, at least, like raise awareness around the waste, and around cups. They were like 'why there is no refund on that? That's something that if refunded could be recycled.' So yeah, so Coffee Cup Revolution is one day, every year, we've been doing it for five years, and we offer five cents for each used coffee cup. So the binners know that and that was the world goes around the neighbourhood, and people collect cups and get five cents. And so the idea is to demonstrate the importance of the refund system, or similar systems — like, we're not pushing just or only for a refund system. It's more like there is waste, and there are people that can help us reduce the waste, or at least landfill waste. And...
Am Johal 11:42
How many cups did you collect again in one day here?
Anna Godefroy 11:44
So how much was it?
Davin Boutang 11:46
Three hours - it was three hours. It was I forget the exact number by 80s? Just over 87,000? Or 86,000, yeah.
Anna Godefroy 11:52
86,000.
Am Johal 11:53
Wow.
Anna Godefroy 11:54
It was our highest number, usually, we're — every year we've been more than 50,000 cups, which is crazy. This year is 86. It's crazy. It's just showing you that people are — like people in Vancouver, or in BC claim they're very green. But when you see the ads, you're like, 'Okay, you're very green. But —'
Am Johal 12:16
It's interesting seeing — one of the years, this is probably about two or three years ago, there was a researcher from UBC. And the discussion portion of the Coffee Cup Revolution, and he was talking about where in the world coffee cups are found in the dumpsters. And what he said was that it was in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Mostly like English speaking, kind of Western countries. And that in continental Europe, it wasn't really that much of an issue. Because when people have a coffee, they just sit down and have a coffee, they don't take it to go. So there's interesting kind of cultural aspects to what you've discovered as well.
Anna Godefroy 12:16
Yeah, for sure. My friends, you wouldn't be taking up you sit and have a coffee, right?
Am Johal 12:16
In France you wouldn't be taking a to-go cup, you sit and have a coffee, right?
Anna Godefroy 13:06
In France they don't even ask you, there is no option of taking it to-go. I mean sadly, your big coffee chains are starting to pop up in France too. So I think it's starting to change in the bad way. People are starting to take away their cups.
Am Johal 13:25
In your research, if something like this were to happen, would be a deposit on coffee cups? Has there been some ideas about what that material could be used for? I know, that's been one of the issues. But in terms of discussions with policymakers, how has that gone?
Anna Godefroy 13:47
So the recycling coffee cups is more complex than we think. And it's a technology that is changing really fast. So what I'm saying now might be different in six months. And so from my limited understanding of recycling waste, coffee cups are just a low-quality paper. So it can be recycled with paper. But because the technology is not that great yet — it in the past, it couldn't be that much of it. So you had to kind of mix it with other higher-quality paper. So that's why a lot of cups wasn't the best, because it would just decrease overall recycling quality. But yeah, and then there's ink. Actually, the ink on the cup is the most difficult thing to take apart, having to break down.
Davin Boutang 14:39
And the plastic lining inside it too.
Anna Godefroy 14:40
Exactly, and the plastic lining, and so it just makes the recycling of cup very difficult. But that's also why we're pushing for reform because if there's a refund system, then there's much more money going to the industry of recycling, so that could potentially mean that we invest in a better system to recycle them.
Am Johal 15:01
Now I know, with the Binners Project you're working with a lot of people who are working individually - you know, when people put out their garbage, have their bottles out, and people in many, many neighbourhoods where people really want their stuff taken. They're very positive, I know you've developed some hooks that people can put up just to make it a friendlier atmosphere for people who are binning, knowing that the places are welcoming people. And I know also, that you've been working on trying to get sorting contracts and things like that with like hotels and other places. I know you're doing some sorting here at 312. But I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how that's been going. And some of the barriers in terms of working with bigger institutions.
Davin Boutang 15:46
Yeah, actually, I was just talking about that. Before that today, we are just noticing because as I just said, we just started about three or four years ago, and our sorting initiative is one of our newer programs — main reason as to because we were doing like pickups first, but that wasn't really bringing that much money into the Binners Project, or the Binners pockets. And then we have our events, which is great, but that's only during the summer. So again, binners will make money during the summer, and then the winter — so our sorting contract goes all year round. And today we have — this is Monday morning, right? We have seven sites that we're at with like 15 binners making money. So it's great. And when they did a little bit of sorting, its funny, when they first started talking about it, I was like, 'Ah, it's gonna be kind of hard, like I don't fully understand how we will be able to fit in.' But now it just makes total sense. Because most of the people that we do the sorting with, we do provide another filter, increase our diversion rates, and most of the people that we're working with, just love working with the binners too. They just want to support us and build our capacity as an organization.
Anna Godefroy 16:46
So yeah, so what the binners do — so we get a contract, let's say it was SFU. Because we have a contract with SFU, and so we send a binner or two binners, or depending on the site, the size of the site — we'll send a few people. And they go and they go through each waste, each bins, and make sure everything is properly sorted. So plastic goes with plastic, cardboard goes with cardboard. So it's a very big — like it seems like it's a simple task, but it's not. So it's really building on the expertise that binners have, they used to go through the trash, they know how to sort. And again, the industry around recycling changes very fast. And it changes based on where you are, or who's which company is holding your waste. It's actually very complex. And so we see value in having an extra layer. And so now the binners are able to do that. And, and of course, they're being paid for their work or their contribution.
Davin Boutang 17:43
Yeah, and each site is quite different. Each is all totally different. So like, we'll be, let's say this location, 312 Main, and we'll have a binner come here. And what they do is they're more like doing the actual, full building recycling. So they'll go to each bin and each floor, bend down, sort it. Then we have other sites where they just go into their recycling room. Sort it but also, what they'll do is they'll take all the cardboard, break it down, take the milk cartons, crush it, and make the room — and clean the recycler rooms up and make it tidy. So it's not an eyesore. Or we have other contracts where we call it back-of-house, where we have larger organizations where they just bring their garbage or their — even recycle streams to the back, and binners will go through it again and make sure that it's properly sorted and recycled properly. So that their diversion rates are increased.
Anna Godefroy 18:28
And to come back to your question about getting contract. And like with bigger institutions, we surprisingly, it seems like bigger institutions or organizations or companies are actually more keen and able to, to integrate sorting into their site because they produce so much waste. That I think the impact that even two people sorting, even two hours a day, have on their own — the amount of waste is incredible. We have sites where they would send everything to landfill before. And they hire two binners a day for a few hours, like three hours. And now I think the rate, it's like 95% waste diversion. It's incredible. So they really see value in that, and so we were happily surprised. I don't know how you say that. But it's pretty good to see that. Big organizations are keen to get us started, and we're very busy. We're only four full-time staff, and we don't actually even like go and prospect, and we don't even have time to sit for new clients. And so far we've been pretty lucky it's been expanding fast. But of course, we like recommendations.
Davin Boutang 19:46
Yeah, and I like it too cause we're actually — all the binners also learned how to properly recycle too. Because before they were just out binning for bottles and whatnot. And now every binner in our organization, when they hit something, they all know the four streams. Where they just know as like compost, mixed containers, paper and landfill. And it’s just automatic —they just autonomically sort it like that.
Am Johal 20:09
If some of our listeners wanted to get more information about the Binners Project, how can they find out about you — if you could share your website address and other ways?
Anna Godefroy 20:17
Yeah, our website is binnersproject.org. And we're on Facebook. We're on everywhere — on Instagram, and we're on Twitter. So yeah, just google Binners Project, and that's pretty easy to find us. And we have a contact form. And so yeah, if people have ideas or connections — like maybe they can introduce us to someone. Or most of the contracts we get are just word of mouth, or somebody's mentioning us to someone else. And so it's pretty casual. But we like it. We're very — we like to work flex— we're flexible. So we like that.
Am Johal 21:01
I'm wondering, what are you guys excited about over the next two or three years, in terms of what you have planned with the Binners Project?
Davin Boutang 21:09
Well, I'm excited about our cart-sharing program. So it’s our — is one of our newer initiatives, so it's a Universal Cart Sharing program. So what we have is, we have our prototype cart that we have in this building that we've been testing. And we want to make it into, like the bike share program we have a Vancouver, but same thing with carts. We made the first recycling cart service system in North America. So all the binners are, of course, super excited about it. But I myself, I'm particularly excited about this, because I think — I'm very surprised how much support we're getting for it. And this ideal, is just amazing.
Anna Godefroy 21:41
Yeah, and so we're just we're in discussion with the City of Vancouver. They're very supportive in seeing that happening. And so we're going to have two stations, one, probably outside of the bottle depot on Industry Avenue in Vancouver, and the other somewhere in the Downtown Eastside. On pubic space, like outside, and it will be available 24/7. So any binner that is a member of the project, will be able to borrow the cart for free — use it for 10 or 12 hours, day or night, and bring it back at the end of their binning there. So that should make a hopefully, I think it will make a big difference for people.
Davin Boutang 22:22
I'm quite surprised because first of all like, just getting access to our carts and destigmatizing is — will be a big difference. But so far, we have six members that are already using our prototype, and all of them come back with a big smile on their face. Because they say they can't believe the reactions they get from the public. Everybody's like, wow, they're so interested in it. And they just treat them totally different than when they're just shopping, pushing a shopping cart. So I know for a fact that it will make a difference.
Anna Godefroy 22:47
And this cart is painted green. So you can see it. It's very bright.
Am Johal 22:51
It's like the sharks.
Anna Godefroy 22:52
Exactly, so it's like a giant green person.
Am Johal 23:00
Davin, Anna, I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining us.
Anna Godefroy 23:04
Yeah, thank you. For having us.
Davin Boutang 23:04
Thank you.
[music]
Melissa Roach 23:10
A huge thank you to Davin and Anna for talking to us and sharing what's new and exciting for the Binners Project. To learn even more about them. You can find a link to their website in the episode description. Thanks as always to our other producers Jamie-Leigh Gonzales and Maria Cecilia Saba. And thanks to Davis Steele for providing us with our theme music. This is us signing off for the year. But we'll be back in January with a new episode featuring our community partner Hives for Humanity. Cheers and we'll catch you next year.