My Warm Table ... with Sonia
My Warm Table ... with Sonia
7Nov2024 Kane Blackman ABC Perth Radio City Canning Collection
Discover how your old clothes can spark a green revolution with Kane Blackman, the inspiring CEO of Good Sammy. Kane shares an exciting initiative launching in Western Australia that could redefine our approach to clothing donations. This first-of-its-kind pick-up service for second-hand items, is designed to keep clothing, textiles, and more out of landfill and within a thriving circular economy. With fast fashion contributing to environmental challenges, this program not only promises significant ecological benefits but also supports Good Sammy's mission to create empowering job opportunities for people with disabilities.
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My Warm Table, translated into Italian is Tavola Calda. These were the words my Papa used to describe a table of good friends, good food and good conversation. I always aim to create a tavola calda in my life and I hope this podcast encourages you to do so too!
The second-hand clothes, still very wearable and still in good condition. I don't need them anymore. I put them in a bag in my boot, go driving around and hopefully at some point I'll come across a donation bin. In a first for Western Australia, the Good Samaritans, Good Sammies, have teamed up with the City of Canning to offer a pick-up service for clothing donations. Now we know they do this with furniture, have done in the past, but this is a new thing. We're going to have a chat to the good Sammy CEO. His name's Cain Blackman, Cain g'day. Welcome to Afternoons.
Speaker 2:G'day Tets. How are you?
Speaker 1:Very well, Now tell me about the needs and how serious the need is for a home collection service.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's a high need for it. As you know, fast fashion is rife and we live in a very consumerist society and we have a lot of excess goods, and so we get a great number of donations from really kind Western Australians every year. And in discussions with the City of Canning we thought that we could divert more items from landfill and keep those items in the Circa economy by actually offering every City of Canning resident two free passes a year that they can simply call up, and Good Sammy will come with its truck, collect those items be it textiles, shoes, toys, bags, linen, towels and divert those items from landfill and keep them in the Circa economy for sale in our shops. So it's been received very positively.
Speaker 1:Is this going to be looked at and, you know, if it's successful, expanded to other councils around Perth and Western Australia?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we think we're on a winner. We have lots of relationships with local governments now where we may be offering collection services or donation points in those local areas, or we have a yellow bag curbside collection model. However, this is a first and we'll test how successful it is over the 12-month trial and then see if we can offer it more widely. But textiles is a global problem. It's a big problem in Western Australia. We know a lot of these items sometimes go into the red bin at home. So much better to use the service, use Good Sammy to ensure they end up in a good place.
Speaker 1:Is there an element here of job creation? Because presumably people going and collecting these items, the two items or the two vouchers a year will be employed.
Speaker 2:Spot on. Our core mission at Good Sammy is to create employment opportunities for people with disability. We're really proud that our 830 workforce has 52% representation of people with disability, and so every collection means a job created for a driver of a truck with disability, for our staff that will be sorting those goods, for our staff selling them in a store.
Speaker 1:so you're doing good by the environment by diverting them from landfill, but you're also doing good socially to create that economic opportunity, and so, yeah, we think it's an absolute winner how many of the clothes or what proportion of the clothes that are donated to Good Samaritans are actually usable and do people need to think about you know the kinds of things they do donate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. About 80% of the items that are donated to Good Sammy are able to be resold, which is a really high number to be resold, which is a really high number. The remaining percentage might be soiled or broken and therefore gets recycled or ends up in landfill. And when we talk to the kind Western Australians that donate to us, we say you know, if you can give it to a friend, you can give it to Good Sammy. Or if you would like to buy this in a shop, it's okay to give to Good Sammy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fair enough, Cain. Thank you so much for having a chat to us. Good luck with the program. Thanks so much. Appreciate it, Cain Blackman. Ceo at Good Sammy's.
