Centre does more than just recycle

In a warehouse just north of the Main Street underpass, a company is working hard at not only recycling items that would otherwise rot in the dump, but also at providing training for Indigenous community members that allows them to take their first steps into the workforce.

"It comes down to what we as a business care about, and what we care about is making sure our community is safe, sustainable and self-sufficient," Mother Earth Recycling general manager Jessica Floresco says. "With what we do and how we do it, it just makes sense that we can focus on environmental, social and economic issues."

Mother Earth Recycling, located at 771 Main St., is an "Aboriginally owned and operated for-profit social enterprise," Floresco says.

Although the business technically runs as a for-profit, the goals are not all about dollars and cents.

"There are a lot of social-enterprise models out there, but the way ours works is that we don’t like to use the term profit. We use the term excess revenue and whenever we do get excess revenue, it’s put back into the business to further grow the business," Floresco says.

And what Mother Earth Recycling offers is on-the-job skills and training for Indigenous Manitobans between the ages of 18-39, many of whom start their six-month training programs having never held down a job, and desperately in need of an opportunity to take their first step into the workforce.

Because of that goal, Floresco says they look for those with the least experience.

"With many of our trainees, it’s situations where maybe they only have a Grade 8 education or just moved to the city from up north where there were no opportunities to work and don’t know those basic job skills," she says.

Mother Earth Recycling also helps those who have been released from custody, because they know how hard it can be for those who have just stepped out of jail to find work.

"We had one come and work for us, and they went from just getting out of a correctional facility and having no job experience to, by the end of training, they’d been accepted to Red River (College) and going back to school and starting a career." Floresco says.

Although there are varying levels of success for their trainees, getting them to a place where they are stable is always the goal, she says.

"It’s about getting that sustainable income, keeping their families stable and safe in a stable environment and having a future to look forward to and to work towards, rather than an unknown future where they are living day-to-day," Floresco says.

By helping those who need a helping hand through jobs and training, Mother Earth Recycling helps the environment by recycling electronics and keeping e-waste from piling up in landfills.

"Anyone can come by and drop off electronics; we tell people we will take anything that plugs in or runs on batteries — whether it be broken, not working or still kind of working," Floresco says.

Mother Earth Recycling also helps those who face economic barriers by refurbishing as much of the electronics as they can, and then selling them at their Main Street store at greatly reduced prices.

Those prices allow electronics such as computers, smartphones, tablets, appliances and other tools get into the hands and the homes of those who would not normally be able to afford them.

She says people who allow computers and other electronics to be refurbished and resold never have to worry their data will get back out there.

"We do data destruction and data security," she says. "All hard drives are destroyed and we put new hard drives into them, and those computers get sold for super cheap back out into the community."

Although Mother Earth Recycling wants to help get electronics to those who may not be able to normally afford them, anyone can come to their Main Street store and check out their deals.

"We’re open to the public," Floresco says. "We have some customers that come in and buy TVs and computers and stuff for their cabin or for their kids."

Floresco says as Canadians keep looking to buy the newest and most advanced technology and replace what they already have, e-waste continues to pile up in landfills.

According to statistics from the United Nations, 41.8 million tonnes of e-waste were generated around the globe in 2014, with an estimated 725 tonnes generated by Canadians.

Along with keeping e-waste out of landfills, Mother Earth Recycling is also hard at work recycling mattresses and box springs.

"We strip them completely apart, separate the fabric, the foam, the metal and the wood, and about 90 per cent of that ends up being recycled," Floresco says.

"Foam gets turned into carpet underlay, wood is turned into garden mulch and metal gets sent to scrap metal recycling. This diverts a huge amount from landfills."

According to Floresco, as many as 40,000 mattresses go into Winnipeg’s landfill every year.

"That is a huge amount and we could be recycling almost all of that," she says.

Floresco says Mother Earth Recycling has no plans to stop the recycling of electronics and mattresses.

"Once this mattress operation is fully sustainable, we are going to open up more lines of recycling. We are always going to be looking for that next thing that no one else is recycling yet," she says. "We want to keep growing."

For Floresco, managing Mother Earth Recycling means finding the balance between recycling, which bring in the profits they need to survive, while also working to better their community and help people.

"At the end of the day, we need to be able to survive as a business to be able to provide all those things," she says.

"And as long as we are successful as a business, then all those other things make sense and they all fit together into what we do."

Anyone looking for more information on Mother Earth Recycling, what recyclables they accept and what they offer in their store, can visit their website at motherearthrecycling.ca.