By IAN ROSS
Belinda Beairsto wants to make a household name out of her home-based business.
The lack of curbside recycling pickup in the City of Temiskaming Shores combined with some friendly grief from her eldest daughter convinced the 27-year-old mother of three her to start her own business.
Eco-Logix is her recyclables collection service that she bills as ‘taking the hassle’ out of recycling.
Her environmentally-savvy daughter knew all about recycling from her school’s blue box program. And she gave mom the gears one day
“She saw me throw a pop can in the garbage and hassled me about it.”
“I thought I’m supposed to be teaching her what’s right and she’s teaching me.”
The first-time entrepreneur, who left her job at a local newspaper, now keeps herself busy driving her Chevy Ventura and utility trailer on her rounds attending to 40 mostly residential clients in the Temiskaming Shores and Cobalt area.
Starting last August with a $12,000 loan from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, every week she replaces her customized blue boxes on loan to clients with a clean, sanitized one.
For some elderly residents who can’t drag the bins to the door, “I will actually go into the house and fetch it from under the sink.”
Some of her commercial clients are Wendy’s restaurant, a local animal clinic and some home-based businesses.
Back at her home office she sorts out all the recyclables, even peeling labels off cans and painstakingly removing the plastic windows off envelopes.
Thanks to a radio marketing blitz, Beairsto is hopeful of expanding her clientele by striking a deal with the Town of Latchford in the new year to deliver her service on a municipal level.
“If I get that (contract) that will be huge.”
Residential clients are charged $30 per month for a weekly pick-up. There’s a discount for seniors and the physically-disabled for $20.
Commercial clients usually pay about $90 per month depending on volume.
With only five to seven years capacity left in the community’s landfill, Beairsto wants to do her part to preserve it for as long as possible.
Though it’s difficult to determine how much volume she has diverted from the dump, she estimates it’s around 600, 18-gallon bins since last summer.
To her surprise, Beairsto finds business is going better than she expected. “Amazingly, I’m actually able to pay myself” and any expenses including liability insurance, vehicle maintenance and gas.
Her clients find the service indispensable. “Everyone who has it, loves it.”
She thinks the business has great upside since a few more local entrepreneurs regularly drive south to North Bay hauling their collected material to a recycling company.
In the future, Beairsto wants to hire some extra hands and expand her services to include a mobile commercial shredding service. A Toronto company routinely travels north to shred documents for local banks. She says she can offer that same service for much less.
