Two years ago, a friend and I started a non-profit initiative called ‘The Foundation Foundation’. We basically collect lightly used/new makeup products and toiletries and donate them to Vancouver’s downtown eastside women centres/shelters. We saw an opportunity in the market where people were in need of everyday items that we (the privileged ones) take for granted. We also realized that people tend to accumulate tons of products that end up sitting in the shelves for months and months, untouched. Yes, I’m talking about that big bottle of body lotion that you promised to use, but is now collecting dust under the sink.
What we do is meet up with donors one on one, and accumulate all the products at the end of every few months. Then, we also collect donations of small paper shopping bags (Victoria’s Secret, Sephora, etc) and we make gift packages for the women in the shelters. Each gift package would contain shampoo, conditioner, body wash, a variation of different makeup products, etc. We ended up donating over 180 gift packages to Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre on East Hastings, and walked away feeling extremely proud of ourselves.
Until we started talking about the process of waste in class, and what happens when you hand off the ‘responsibility’ to another person. I’m curious on whether the paper bags get recycled, do they simply throw out the paper bags, do they use the bags to hold their necessities, etc. When we tend to donate something, we often don’t think about the consequences. Out of sight, out of mind, am I right? The whole purpose of each gift package was so that every receiving member of the shelter could have their ‘own’ gift, but is it wasteful that we just push the paper bags onto them and expect them to handle the rest? This logistical issue opened my eyes to the meticulousness and attention to detail that one must take when handling each process of the distribution channel, as well as the challenges to streamline and follow industry standards.
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