nonprofit recycling business owned by the seven people who work there. In spring 1974, several close friends began an income-sharing arrangement to subsidize the recycling service because “they felt that recycling was an important thing to encourage in society," Mike affirms. Both Sunflower and Cloudburst were founded to make recycling easy and convenient for people. Cloudburst, a for-profit collective of four people begun in April 1975, was also founded "to demonstrate that recycling could be done economically," asserts Cloudburst's founder, Dave McMahon. Sunflower and Cloudburst have survived and flourished due to the creative, persistent and hard-working people who were willing to sacrifice salaries for the first few years. Both recycling services pick up garbage as well as recyclables. The benefit of a dual service is that "recycling collection makes people recycle more consistently and more thoroughly. People become much more aware of the composition of their waste and change their purchasing habits to reduce waste," Dave explains. Garbage collection is much more profitable than recycling. In fact, half of Sunflower's income comes from garbage collection; the other half comes from the sale of recyclables. The garbage goes directly to the dump, but recyclables need to be stored and resold in separate categories. Furthermore, people need to be educated to recycle. "Once you mix it together, it's lost," Roger van Gelder, another Sunflower recycler, explains. "It has to be kept separate. It's not worth anybody's time to ever pick garbage apart." Over the years. Sunflower's collection vehicles have ranged from a shopping cart to a wheelbarrow to a golf cart to the current hand-built truck and trailer. "Sunflower keeps growing organically. We get to the point where we finally have the machinery and equipment together just when we couldn't handle it any longer with what we had," Mike says. A recycling business doesn't make any money without the machinery and equipment. "The key to success in recycling is having enough volume of materials, and having the equipment to be able to handle it," Roger explains, "so you only handle it once when you pick it up." Where does the capital to buy machinery come from? "You've got to capitalize somehow," Roger asserts. "Either you capitalize by not paying people or you capitalize by having a bunch of money somewhere," "We basically still subsidize the expansion of Sunflower," Mike adds. "We don't pay ourselves for all the time we put in. We have certain jobs that are paying jobs, and then the rest of the work we just do." In the past few years, other waste haulers have been accepting recyclables to keep customers from switching to Sunflower or Cloudburst. "The effect of Sunflower really can't be underestimated," says Roger. "Since we've been recycling and competing with garbage haulers, they've started doing recycling, too. Much of the recycling being done by the haulers is a direct response to us and to Cloudburst." Dave points out, "the garbage haulers do as much as we do in terms of recyclables, but most of them don't make an effort to inform their customers about it unless the customers ask." Actually, Portland is one of the few cities of any size where garbage hauling is a competitive small business. Anyone can do it "just by getting a license," Dave states. "In most cities the city does the collection or contracts it out, or franchises the service." Like most Portland garbage haulers, the recycling businesses each own only one truck and service their scattered routes inefficiently. At Cloudburst, the goal is "to see a city-wide, publicized, well-done service available that maximizes recycling." Dave believes that "what's going to make recycling happen here is franchising." Under franchising, the city would be divided into territories and one hauler would work each territory. At Sunflower, on the other hand, the goal is to continue to provide a recycling service that is creative and innovative. For them, it's not enough to see the basic idea of recycling institutionalized: they want to keep stretching their ideals into new realities. "The whole possibility of recycling, the whole direction it's going to go in the city, is vastly changed from what it would have been," Roger says. "Any kind of regulation—franchising—that deals with recycling has a completely different direction now than it would have had. Otherwise the city would have taken anything the garbage haulers offered." "It's not only that we exist and we do recycling, but we do it differently and our existence makes other alternatives real," Mike affirms, "and therefore they become specifically considered." Urban Indian Council/Day Labor Program 1634 S.W. Alder Portland, OR 97205 503/248-4562 On the surface. Day Labor, a program of the Urban Indian Council, looks like any other temporary employment agency. A closer look, however, reveals the special need that Day Labor fulfills as an employer of last resort. "We keep people from starving to death, we hope," says Doug LaBelle, supervisor of Day Labor. Day Labor offers unskilled work by the day to anyone willing to come to their door at 6:00 in the morning. There isn't always work for everyone, but an average day sees ten to twelve men and women go home with some much-needed extra cash in their pockets. Day Labor is nonprofit, like its parent organization, but it operates much like a private manpower agency. It contracts with Portland companies to provide temporary labor at about $6.00/hour, subtract the cost of social security, insurance, and other overhead and pay the worker the difference—currently about $3.75/hour. It's an arrangement that benefits all parties. Companies get a dependable source of temporary unskilled labor to fill in when their operations call for it, unemployed people have a vital source of short-term income, and Day Labor fulfills its goal of helping people in a constructive way. Occasionally, companies hire Day-Labor workers for more permanent work. In two years of operation Day Labor has placed nearly thirty people. One man who got his job that way and has since become a foreman said that "the people they send us have been good workers. Frequently we'll ask for them by name when we call back." What makes Day Labor different from other manpower agencies, of course, is that their primary commitment is serving people in need rather than making a profit. So far, they have been helped to do that by grants from CETA and the City of Portland. However, their continued business success makes it likely that they will soon be able to "get off this government funding trip," says LaBelle. 69
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