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There are bottles all over Vancouver but not bottles depots.[/caption]
There are persistent rumours that the fellow who ran the now shuttered Westside Return-It bottle depot is looking at a location for a new Kitsilano bottle depot somewhere near 4th Avenue and Alma Street. This would be about eight blocks, or a kilometre -- depending how you walk it -- from the old location. Sounds too good to be true, but it is true that in the three months since his bottle depot on West Broadway and Blenheim closed it's doors at the end of July, Sam, the licence holder, has been looking for a new location.
Someone who spoke to him at a recent conference of bottle depot owners, said that he had chosen a location, but nothing was settled. Among other things, he would need the approval of the city, and I have no idea how long that process might take. I've been told he has one year to find a new location before Encorp, the industry stewardship group which oversees the Return-It bottle depot system, rescinds his licence to run a depot.
With no bottle depot in Kitsilano, most of the west side's collected beverage containers are being cashed in at two east Vancouver Return-It bottle depots: Go Green, at 7th and Ontario, and Regional Recycling, at 960 Evans Avenue, on the north side of the east end of Terminal Avenue. Go Green's business hasn't doubled but it's customer volume is up considerably. I don't go to Regional very often, but I'm told their volume has increased also.
In the case of Go Green, it's easy to single out the former Westside regulars; they're the ones who ask for a receipt or are surprised they don't get one. Westside used a computer system with touch screen input to record container types and total the returnable value. Go Green, has, for some 16 years done the counting and totaling manually. But they're in the process of installing two touch screen-driven computer systems. They tell me Encorp has been encouraging them to do this for years. Many of the folks coming from Kitsilano are ordinary binner types. There are also car binners, and residents. A few in this last group have caused memorable scenes, complaining about the smell, all but recoiling from the proximity of actual "street people" and, in one instance, asserting their right to special treatment by declaring: "I'm not a binner!"
The Westside depot was small -- somewhere between a third, to half the size of Go Green. Westside got their fair share of binners but, lots of Kitsilano residents also. The depot seemed full with five customers, so the residential-types could never be overwhelmed by street people-types. That's not the case with the much larger Go Green where you can have about 12 customers sorting bottles at one time.
Staff at Go Green told me of a recent telephone inquiry. A woman called the bottle depot to to say she wanted to bring in her bottles, and asked when was a good time to to come in when there weren't many homeless people. Unfortunately the staff lost the connection with the caller before a suitable answer could be formulated. Darn!
There are bottles all over Vancouver but not bottles depots.[/caption]There are persistent rumours that the fellow who ran the now shuttered Westside Return-It bottle depot is looking at a location for a new Kitsilano bottle depot somewhere near 4th Avenue and Alma Street. This would be about eight blocks, or a kilometre -- depending how you walk it -- from the old location. Sounds too good to be true, but it is true that in the three months since his bottle depot on West Broadway and Blenheim closed it's doors at the end of July, Sam, the licence holder, has been looking for a new location.
Someone who spoke to him at a recent conference of bottle depot owners, said that he had chosen a location, but nothing was settled. Among other things, he would need the approval of the city, and I have no idea how long that process might take. I've been told he has one year to find a new location before Encorp, the industry stewardship group which oversees the Return-It bottle depot system, rescinds his licence to run a depot.
The daily migration of bottles to East Vancouver
With no bottle depot in Kitsilano, most of the west side's collected beverage containers are being cashed in at two east Vancouver Return-It bottle depots: Go Green, at 7th and Ontario, and Regional Recycling, at 960 Evans Avenue, on the north side of the east end of Terminal Avenue. Go Green's business hasn't doubled but it's customer volume is up considerably. I don't go to Regional very often, but I'm told their volume has increased also.
When worlds collide
In the case of Go Green, it's easy to single out the former Westside regulars; they're the ones who ask for a receipt or are surprised they don't get one. Westside used a computer system with touch screen input to record container types and total the returnable value. Go Green, has, for some 16 years done the counting and totaling manually. But they're in the process of installing two touch screen-driven computer systems. They tell me Encorp has been encouraging them to do this for years. Many of the folks coming from Kitsilano are ordinary binner types. There are also car binners, and residents. A few in this last group have caused memorable scenes, complaining about the smell, all but recoiling from the proximity of actual "street people" and, in one instance, asserting their right to special treatment by declaring: "I'm not a binner!"
The Westside depot was small -- somewhere between a third, to half the size of Go Green. Westside got their fair share of binners but, lots of Kitsilano residents also. The depot seemed full with five customers, so the residential-types could never be overwhelmed by street people-types. That's not the case with the much larger Go Green where you can have about 12 customers sorting bottles at one time.
Hello. Hello?
Staff at Go Green told me of a recent telephone inquiry. A woman called the bottle depot to to say she wanted to bring in her bottles, and asked when was a good time to to come in when there weren't many homeless people. Unfortunately the staff lost the connection with the caller before a suitable answer could be formulated. Darn!
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