Good Point Recycling in 2020: Smithsonian Immortalizes 3 staff in "Occupational Folklore" Series

For everything else being said about 2020, the vision of my company is finally less blurry.

After 19 years of tirelessly building a viable fair trade recycling and reuse model - with several close calls - we are finally being recognized in the fog, and rewarded.

In our year end letter I'll try to put together a summary, but this week is special.  The Library of Congress has published in-depth interviews and photos of three of our longest-serving staff as part of the "Occupational Folklore Chronicles", a long running effort to pursue for historical purpose what people did for a living.  This series (which features several of our clients as well) is about documentation of what it's like making a living in the waste, recycling, and repair trade.

This subseries is called "Trash Talk: Workers in Vermont's Waste Management Industry: Archie Green Fellows Project, 2018 to 2019 (21)" and it was curated as a grant to Virginia Nickerson, perhaps the most patient person I've ever met.

My favorite of the three audio interviews is Crystal, now in her 12 year at Good Point

Below are photos and links to interviews with Crystal and Sean, and some of the photos the interviewer Virginia Nickerson took as well.  The interviews and photos were taken in October 2018, released this week.  

And as a reminder, all this recognition is coming at once after decades of recycling. I'm really grateful that my kids and family live today to see that we were not just tilting at windmills.

Happy end of 2020. I may squeeze in a couple of policy blogs in the draft folder, but may just go out on this note and come out blasting in January of 2021.