Homeless in Vancouver: Go Green a-go-go-go

The Go Green bottle depot not only deals with casual traffic that walks, pedals, pushes, and drives in returnable beverage containers. the depot also handles larger volume contracts. It sorts the bottles for a percentage of the returnable value.

Kozou is one of the staff who sort those large contract loads of bottles, and cans. He’s very good at it. Here we can see his specially tricked-out work station, with the big screen, which is always playing South Korean pop music videos. He tells me he buys the compilations in Chinatown. Of course, it’s a bottle depot, and there’s little chance of hearing much of the music over the constant din of glass, plastic, and aluminum containers, so I guess there’s something he likes about the videos besides the music.

Before Kozou began working at Go Green, many years ago, he was living on the street out of a shopping cart, and collecting bottles to support himself. He once tried to describe his old bottle-picking route—Kozou is originally from Japan, and his English is good but not really fluent, so I only got the gist—that he covered a big area, every day. It’s no surprise he worked hard as a binner, he never lets up at Go Green, whether he’s sorting in the back, or cleaning up in the front, he’s just go-go-go. I think he learned his work  ethic in Japan, rather than Canada.

In addition to his big work ethic, Kozou has a big heart, He’s friendly, easygoing, and occasionally he takes some of the regular binners out for a drink after work. And let me tell you, after Kozou’s had a few drinks, he’s even nicer.