Burnaby Family Life is heading back to basics with its new employment program, but it needs some help from local businesses.
The Back to Basics program centres around the Dirt Bag, a food scrap bin liner made from recycled newspaper that was created by a staff member.
Burnaby Family Life is looking at ways to manufacture the liners and sell them to multi-family complexes in the city, creating jobs for their clients, who face a number of challenges, according to the organization’s executive director, Michel Pouliot.
“A few months ago, we started to look at some of the vulnerable population that we work with and how difficult it is the attach them to the labour market because they’ve got multiple barriers,” he told the NOW, adding language, young families and needing support are some of the challenges the vulnerable immigrant population faces. “At the same time, the city had launched its organic collection program. A number of multi-family dwellings were having a bit of a challenge, with, how do you manage this whole organic waste without things getting smelly? Without attracting rodents?”
In response, a staff member designed the organic recycling bag, which eventually breaks down and becomes part of the soil – hence the name Dirt Bag, he said.
“We thought this would be a great model, a great social enterprise to develop because it’s relatively low-skilled in terms of the manufacturing process,” Pouliot added. “The hope is we can eventually grow it to a place where we’re going to be able to mass produce those bags, (employing) some of our clients.”
Burnaby Family Life is looking for help from other businesses to get the program up and running, he said.
“We’ve been sort of playing with the mass producing process – how do you produce those bags in a way that makes it possible to pay for your costs and return a bit of a profit?” Pouliot said. “There’s a whole lot of work still that needs to be done for this to really become a reality. At this point we’ve had volunteers put the bag together, so we get a bit of an idea of how long it takes to make the bags and sort of the first steps to develop a business plan.”
Thus far, the process has been too time intensive, according to Pouliot, and Burnaby Family Life is looking for a way to make manufacturing the bags financially viable.
The organization has spoken with the Burnaby Board of Trade to connect with some local businesses, as well as staff at the SFU Sustainability Office and SFU’s social innovation lab, Radius.
“We’re hoping to generate a bit of interest,” Pouliot said.
The amount of people the program employs will depend on demand for the liners, he added.
“We’d be happy if we’d be able to employ between two and five of our clients within the vulnerable immigrant population, whether it’s full time or part time employment is really a question of what’s going to meet their needs best,” he said, adding those with young families may need part-time positions. “I think that there’s lots of potential, and there are condo buildings all over Burnaby that are struggling with this.”
Any profits from the program would go toward the organization’s services, he added.
For more information on Burnaby Family Life, go to www.burnabyfamilylife.org.
