Binner's Best Friend

James Starblanket was nearing the end of a 40-kilometer trip from Surrey to the Downtown Eastside. The trip took 4 hours, and he was planning on heading back to Surrey as soon as he sold a stereo he’d found. The approaching darkness did not concern him. He had his sleeping bag, a tarp, and an air mattress. He could set up camp when he needed to. This remarkable degree of mobility and freedom doesn’t rely on motorization. It is made possible by the Urban Binning Unit, or UBU, a collapsible, metal-framed trailer with two wheels that hitches to the back of Starblanket’s mountain bike. Lightweight and sturdy, it has enough capacity for $36 dollars worth of bottles (bottle dollars apparently being a standard unit of size amongst urban recyclers). Michael Strutt, an Emily Carr industrial design student, developed the UBU as part of his research project in 2005. Working with United We Can founder Ken Lyotier, the duo constructed a small batch of UBUs and tested them. With an improved design, the team fabricated 40 carts this spring and put them into service all across the Lower Mainland. Andy Wilkinson, a community development worker with United We Can, explained how the project works. “Binners interested in purchasing the cart pay $172. I go with them and collect those recyclables [used to pay off the $172]. At the end of the process they get to own the cart. We run a little workshop above the bottle depot where the units are fabricated—it gives them a working knowledge of how they work so they can maintain them.” To those who have acquired one of the trailers, the program has already been a great success. “It makes life a hell of a lot easier,” Starblanket told me as he looked fondly at his UBU. “It carries everything, a 40 inch TV if you want.” He uncovered the cart to show me the stereo, pointing out, should I have cared, that it had a ‘free’ sign on it. He told me he found it in an alley out in the suburbs somewhere along his extensive trapline. “I used to use a Safeway cart, but the cops could steal the cart. Happened lots. I lost six shopping carts and everything in them,” he tells me, pointing out that it will get worse as 2010 approaches. “The police can charge you with possession of stolen property [with a shopping cart]. Not with this.” The UBU may also become more desirable if the Downtown Business Improvement Association’s dumpster-free alleyway program goes through. If successful, downtown dumpsters will be a thing of the past and in their place smaller bags of trash that will be picked up more often. This could push binning out of the Downtown and into the suburbs. The UBU would become a necessity for covering these greater distances. For now they remain a relative rarity. Starblanket’s was the first I’d seen when I flagged him down on Main Street outside the Ivanhoe. “I’m the only one from Surrey with one of these,” he told me. “I’ve been advertising them all over the place.” Part of the reason is their cost. At $400 apiece, and with binners paying only $172 for them, they require a subsidy to produce. One way of covering the UBU’s full cost is to sell advertising space on the side of the carts for $650 per year. So far a construction company, ICC, and an organic food delivery company, SPUD, have signed up. Other potential advertisers include H-Mart, an Asian supermarket. United We Can also seeks sponsors to help out with costs. “Part of the UBU program is about the stigma of binning being shed and [fostering] more understanding between binners and the community and businesses,” says the UBU designer Michael Strutt. “The cart is a way of improving the look of binning, of making binner services more legitimate looking.”