first level of product reusing – binner and streetmarket
Our observations show that poor and dirty people with many physical and psychological disabilities are hanging around East Hastings, smoking marijuana and taking harder drugs like Crack cocaine and Heroin. It’s totally alarming to observe this horrible situation. But it’s important to note that not all of these people are loitering or taking drugs. There are also many motivated people who sell salvaged goods in a kind of sidewalk market. These goods are in most cases collected from residential trash bins: binners and the homeless have different value systems for evaluating what others might discard. Residents discard products no longer useful to them, but the homeless generate a sense
of pride making work out of recycling, reusing, or ‘upcycling’ those same items. It’s a pretty amazing and fascinating social mechanism that expands the lifecycle of a product. We asked ourselves, “which people would be pleased about this kind of a system?”
on waste infrastructure, and can benefit the taxpayers who fund waste and recycling in their town.
1. Homeless people: they have a possibility to work independently and generate a sense of purpose and income. In this sense, it might be a form of self-employment, ideal for those with difficulty conforming to other jobs.
4. And the last ‘person’ would be Mother Nature. The personified ecological environment is pleased, because – on one hand – we don‘t have to put as much garbage in the landfill. On the other hand, we don‘t have to produce as many new products requiring limited resources – such as crude oil – for fabrication.
2. The next happy person would be the garbage collector of the city, who doesn’t has to carry as much garbage as usual. This ultimately represents the Municipality itself, putting less strain
3. Behind the homeless man is a customer, who has now access to low cost products which are still in good shape.
These four kinds of personas each benefit from bringing used ‘stuff’ back into the consumer market.