Brooklyn nonprofit recycling center sees rise in bottle deposit collectors
NEW YORK -- Mountains of empty beverage containers tower stories overhead in Bushwick. Bottles for beer, soda, and water can be seen everywhere you look.
Sure We Can is a nonprofit recycling center and community space. The organization's goal is to support canners, people who collect deposit bottles and cans to make a living.
The center offers "atmosphere of dignity, respect, compassion and community"
Executive director Ryan Castelia said it was founded in 2007 by people experiencing homelessness who turned to this type of work.
"People who end up as canners often experience some degree of intense marginality, like because of where they come from, the language they speak, their physical or mental abilities, their age," Castelia explained.
He said it's the only space of its kind in the state -- a redemption and community center, a place to sort, and a place to store collected material.
"Canners could redeem their material easily, transparently, consistently in an atmosphere of dignity, respect, compassion and community," Castelia said.
The organization said it redeems around 1 million bottles per month, keeping them off streets, and out of landfills and waterways.
More and more people are becoming canners
Castelia said he noticed the number of people who do this work has sharply grown over the last few years. The center attributes that rise partly to an increase in migrants trying to make money while they await work permits.
"In 2022, we had 900 people visit our center. Last year, we had 1,200," he said. "We're talking about the American Dream kind of here, like people coming here and finding ways to participate, ways to work that benefit us all and to lift us all up as a shared, diverse community."
Josefa Marin is a full time canner and president of the Canner's Association.
In an interview translated from Spanish, she explained she's been doing it for more than 20 years.
"It's very hard. We have to work really hard to find the material, collect it, transport it, get it to where needs to go. But yeah, it's possible. I mean, for example, in 2003, 2004, 2005, I used this work to send my daughter to college," she said.
The organization is calling for a raise from the 5 cent deposit to better reflect the cost of living and support the community that does this work.
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