2018 Gift of Warmth at Vancouver Depot - Supporting Binner Community

2018 Gift of Warmth

by Regional · About Regional Recycling, Donation Bins, Help Support · 07 Jan 2019

Thank to all for your support of the 2018 Gift of Warmth. (Learn about our 2019 Gift of Warmth)

The Gift of Warmth is our way of supporting Vancouver’s binner community by providing them the opportunity to select from clothing and other warm items donated by our customers, gear that helps them through the cold winter months.

The binner population does the city and the environment a great service by collecting refundable beverage containers and returning them to the recycling loop. They gather the beverage containers that others toss into the garbage, and save them from heading into landfills where they will cause damage to our environment. The money they collect for their returns helps them to pay for their basic needs – food and shelter.

Our Vancouver Regional Recycling Depot serves a large portion of this population year-round, providing them with the full refunds for their collected beverage containers. They also provide hot coffee and on occasion, gift cards to help purchase gear.

The Gift of Warmth event is the brain-child of depot manager Jason Smith, who approached Regional Recycling owner Rod Lotzkar with the idea of providing clothing and a BBQ several years ago. While the first event was small, it has grown every year and is an event that we look forward to hosting year round.

This year, in addition to collecting donated gear that we gave out at our free BBQ, we also collected donated beverage containers and used the funds to purchase new socks and underwear for our binners. Regional Recycling matched all funds, doubling the amount collected and this year, for the first time, we had enough to go around!

We want to thank everyone who took the time to make the 2018 Gift of Warmth such a huge success. Armed with a great group of volunteers our binner clients were all well fed and outfitted with some great items to see them through the cold winter months.

A special thank you to The Binners Project and Working Gear for all of their work year round with the binner community and for their support of our Gift of Warmth event.

We’re also very grateful for the support from the following media outlets this year for helping us to raise awareness of the 2018 Gift of Warmth event prior to the day, and for joining us the day of the BBQ.