Panorama

I think this title has a nice ring to it. Sadly though such a place doesn’t really exist, which I think is the fault of the City, the Provincial Government and Encorp Pacific. People’s attitudes are also to blame.

With about 300,000 people (Vancouver City Police estimate) moving throughout the downtown core daily, summer events that attract hundreds of thousands more to the West End and the constant stream of Binners making their way from English Bay to the United We Can bottle depot located at 39 East Hastings Street, its clear the West End needs its own Bottle and Recycling Depot instead of the hodge podge of retailers we have now that only accept up to 24 empties a day per person because of provincial regulation.

Councillor Peter Ladner tried to address this problem somewhat last July and what came out of a 45 minute city council presentation and debate about the city’s bottle recycling policy was a request for a report from city staff and the Park Board.

Watch Vancouver City Council’s July 2005 Bottle Depot Presentation and Discussion

On August 03 2005 the Vancouver Park Board sent their report to council. The report talked about all the ways that the Park Board recycles, not just bottles, and it is actually quite interesting to read how all the different waste materials are recycled. However when the report talked about bottle recycling it was sad to read the attitude of the author towards the men and women who try and make a living by recycling bottles, the Binners. The Vancouver Park Board report refers to them as scavengers.

The memo from the city was sent to council months later, October 31 2005. This report concluded that there were many bottle depots of one sort or another throughout Vancouver already. The report summarized that although a bottle depot in the West End was an option the contents of the report made it clear that licensing of a West End Bottle Depot was difficult because of community concerns about the people most likely to make use of the depot, the binners.

From the Report: “Specific concerns include noise from shopping carts, loitering, sleeping around the depot premises, public urination, and dealing and use of drugs. While the increase in binning has generated concerns, binners provide a valuable service by reducing the amount of material going to landfills. They recently formed the Binners Association and developed a code of conduct to address public perceptions.”

The report says that the city is going to work with various groups with the goal of establishing a West End Bottle Depot but I have never seen any evidence of that. I hear about community opposition (from the city and Encorp) but I have never seen any evidence of it except for the odd letter in the Vancouver Sun complaining about noisy shopping carts. I have never seen any development permit or business license notice or an open house information night for a bottle depot in the West End so I doubt the city has done anything.

The Provincial Government established that the producers of bottles and cans are responsible for recovering the empties for recycling purposes. Well not quite, actually the province has said that the producers (manufacturers) are responsible for coming up with a plan or stewardship program for recovering and recycling their empties.

The producers established a non-profit company now called Encorp Pacific to meet their responsibilities. This appears to be all fine and good except Encorp doesn’t actually own any of the depots that exist. Encorp is just a franchisor, they simply collect money from independent business to operate under the Encorp brand which is promoted solely to the exclusion of all others by the city and province. I think Encorp has become caught up in their own success and is hoarding more and more money for the benefit of the bottle producers instead of investing that money in more depots. All Encorp facilities are privately owned and although they say they have tried to establish a West End Bottle Depot but couldn’t because of community concerns I doubt that, because I haven’t seen any evidence of public consultations from them or their operator either.

The Province has set out regulations about how and where a bottle depot is supposed to operate and who must accept empties for return and how many. The regulations say that an Encorp facility (or an agency operated by producers which is Encorp) must be located within 4 kilometres of a retail outlet located within a community of 25,000 people or more. This is another reason the West End does not have a bottle depot, because we are less than 4 kilometers away from the Encorp facility, United We Can (like Encorp also a “non-profit” operation). Instead of looking seriously at establishing a bottle depot in the West End to service the Binners here, United We Can is simply going to expand their facilities in the DTES. The provincial regulations should deal specifically with the population versus density situation in the West End and make a requirement for a depot here where many people don’t have cars to drive to United We Can and the trip by shopping cart (especially down the steep slope of Jervis Street) can only be done by the most fit of Binners.

Binning has become a legitimate occupation. The people in our community who think otherwise need to understand that, and City Hall needs to take a proactive approach in educating people about the valuable service that Binners provide. We visit English Bay and watch the fireworks and the next day the beach is a disaster zone from all the garbage left behind. If someone wants to earn a buck by picking up items of value to be resold we should be thankful because we are too lazy to do it ourselves.

Read more about Binning as a legitimate enterprise and how regulations and a Binner’s Association are being formed to recognize Binners in the same way we recognize any other type of business operation:

The binner boom by Sean Condon Posted at Discover Vancouver February 07 2006.

I think the province needs to be more aggressive with Encorp in encouraging them to get involved in operating a bottle depot in the West End. I think the city needs to get actively involved by promoting Binning as a legitimate business activity and by putting some effort into educating the community about the benefits of having a bottle depot in the West End. I think the people who do not see the value in a 5 cent pop can should learn more about environmental sustainability.

Finally I think Safeway Canada should lease its building on Robson Street, where the BC Liquor store once was, to Encorp Pacific to operate a full service West End Bottle Depot.