Skip to content

Gibsons Recycling Depot owners ready to pass the baton

Waste Management
barb and buddy
Barb Hetherington and Buddy Boyd when they launched their electric mini-van optional curbside pickup program in 2012.

Buddy Boyd and Barb Hetherington – co-owners of the Gibsons Recycling Depot – have sold the land and are now looking for interested parties to purchase their business.

The land sale to a local buyer – who wished to remain anonymous – was finalized Nov. 24, but the operation will continue for at least the next year.

“Basically I hope that within the next six months we have some sort of firm financial commitment that someone is going to buy [the business],” Hetherington said. “Otherwise we will be liquidating the assets and the equipment here to end recycling. It’s a very big undertaking.”

The recycling depot will continue to operate for the next year – through an agreement with the new landowner – but Hetherington said that his interest in the property is monetary.

“He knows the depot, he supports what we do,” Hetherington said. “But he’s looking at the land as an investment opportunity. He’s got plans for the future, but for now the recycling depot is a tenant – his tenant.”

Hetherington said the new owner is open to extending the lease, but someone needs to take up the mantle within the next year in order for the depot to continue operating.

“We were very sad to give it up, but Buddy and I had no retirement plan,” Hetherington said. “Our house was mortgaged to finance this and we really needed to make sure that there was a safety net for ourselves.”

Meanwhile, sustainability consultant Erich Schwartz is trying to raise money to purchase the recycling business and make it more financially viable by refurbishing the items that come in, then reselling them.

“Clearly there is value to the community,” Schwartz said. “What I want to do is bring the right assets and resources together so we don’t lose those [recycling] services, but so we also make them pay for themselves.”

Schwartz is talking with people from the Maker community and the Hackery, a group that recycles used computers, as well as wood and glass workers about creating a kind of artisan community at the depot.

“The price of recycling is going down, which means there’s very little value from a profitability perspective,” Schwartz said. “When I say profitability I don’t mean I want to make a lot of money, I mean I want to be able to pay for the guys who are sorting and all that stuff.

“But the real money is in the refurbishment,” Schwartz said. “Somebody comes in with a computer, we take out the good components rather than just shipping them off, and repurpose them. Not just electronics, but all sorts of things – like furniture and bicycles.”

This is all in line with Boyd and Hetherington’s vision for the future of the depot. “It’s always been our dream to have an artisan zone, a community garden,” Hetherington said. “If you go to our website, you’ll see that the plans have always been there.

“We don’t have any more pennies to collect or borrow. We cannot take it any further on our own,” Hetherington said. “It’s time for us to pass the baton and I think that we built a community asset – certainly it’s world renowned – and we have visitors all throughout the year coming from all over the world to see this facility. We certainly would like the vision to continue and flourish and for our dreams of what’s possible to actually come true.”

Schwartz had scheduled an information session about the project for Nov. 23 at Persephone Brewing Company to discuss how the Gibsons Recycling Depot could evolve into an “enterprising not for profit focused on community service.”

Schwartz said he would also provide a model with samples of things people are already doing on the Coast, and introduce the people who are doing them.