High Tech cooperative - second meeting

I met with High-Tech today, first at their main offices and then at the area off of the main road to Smokey where they have their operations. It was the most depressed area I have visited so far and although I know this is a means of livelihood for more than one hundred families, it still squeezed my heart to see the conditions in which they are working. That's why the new land we are getting for them is so important; it gives them the opportunity to build a more decent area for sorting and selling trash. Their concern however is that buyers and sellers are used to coming to this location -- will others take their place and steal their supply and demand chain? It's an issue because the new area is not off of the main road and much harder to access.

The coop is taking many new measures to improve their revenue stream -- you see here two of the ladies from the main office (they wear uniforms to be more professional), two of the board members and also junk shop owners in the front, and Mico in the back, their new general manager, who strikes me as an extremely competent person with good intentions to match. He wants to help improve their bottom line, go into new waste businesses (they recycle paper and glass for now) and improve the conditions of the coop members. Basically, the 79 members are junk shop owners ranging from small to large (own their truck, have more employees, etc.). These junk shops buy and sell all kinds of waste but the paper and glass goes exclusively to High Tech, that way they can sell in volume and get a better deal. Dividends are paid out at the end of the year and the coop has a tight bookkeeping process as well as overall mission, vision, operational guidelines, etc.

High-Tech itself is a very small MRF operation: they have a tiny area for collecting paper and conducting quality controls on their three main products. They are surrounded however by their junk shop members. What you see in one of these pictures is their paper weighing and quality control area -- water covers the ground, there's no ventilation (just the front door) and no electricity for fans or lighting. I also took a picture of their mission, vision statements, framed and neatly hanging on the wall. The way trash is sorted and organized is quite impressive, if you can get over your immediate surroundings: kids running around barefoot, people living above trash piles, women picking head lice, "sorters" going through trash with no protective gear.

This is me with Mico, I think we are going to work well together.