Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.01.2019, Qupperneq 10

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10 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • January 15 2019
News from
Salt Spring Island
For Lisa Sigurgeirson
Maxx, taking her
grandchildren to Iceland
one day – the land with which
she is deeply in love, the land
of her paternal forbearers – is
as inevitable as the returning
of spring after winter. Just how
to accomplish this, though,
living as Lisa has for the past
couple of decades on a (very
low) disability income, was a
perplexing conundrum. Until
late last spring.
In the summer of 2017, Lisa
and her eldest grandson, Jordan,
who is currently 12 years old,
and with whom she plans to
make her first grandchild trip
“home” to Iceland, had begun
collecting returnable bottles
and cans from the extended
family. He had started a savings
treasure chest with their travel
vision in mind. He decorated
the chest himself with a painted
Icelandic flag on its lid. For any
of you that have a refundable
centre in your area where you
take your returnables, you will
know that the few pennies
offered for each aluminum can
or beverage bottle makes for a
very labour-intensive and slow
way of gaining savings of any
significance. And to travel
to Iceland and have a decent
holiday adventure there, you
would need some significant
savings indeed.
So, last spring, when Lisa’s
daughter asked if the two of them
would be interested in picking
up all of their family’s recycling
– not just the returnables –
and take it to the depot once a
week, in return for payment to
go toward their Iceland holiday
savings, Lisa jumped at the idea.
Lisa had a home-care assistant
working with her when she
received the text message about
this and she excitedly read the
message out loud. The woman
helping Lisa responded with an
immediate, “Well, if you decide
to do it, I’d totally be interested
in paying you to pick up mine,
too.” And the seed of a great
enterprise was planted.
Living as they do in a small
community where curbside
recycling is not yet a service
that taxpayers pay for, there was
an obvious a niche to be filled.
Amma (Lisa) talked with Jordan
about it and the possibility of
making some real money and
actually being able to make
their travel-to-Iceland-together
dream come true – before Jordan
was old enough to have young
ones of his own. It excited them
both. They decided they needed
a name.
Jordan immediately
suggested “J&A Recycling,”
standing for “Jordan and
Amma,” of course. True to the
brainstorming process, Amma
chimed in with “Yes! Já. Or
we could put our two letters
together with a little accent
over the A and be JÁ Recycling.
Who doesn’t want the say “yes”
to recycling – in English or
Icelandic. And there they had it:
JÁ! Recycling Initiative. Their
byline is, “Just say YES! to
recycling!”
Together, Jordan and
Amma designed a poster with
a photograph of an Icelandic
flag that Amma took on her first
trip to Iceland in 2013. Amma
Lisa posted it on her social
media as well as on their local
online community advertising
pages. Immediately, these two
happenstance entrepreneurs
had people responding to their
posts saying yes to their JÁ!
Recycling and Returnables
Curbside Pick-up Services. The
pair then put a few posters on
some of the mailboxes along
their initial customer route and
a few more customers called in.
Recyling is not always
an easy job, expecially on
extrememly hot days of summer
or excessively wet days of
the West Coast Canadian
winter, and it is certainly not a
glamourous one. Sometimes
Amma’s 12-year-old needs a
little encouragement – a little
cajoling, even – to get into the
spirit of the enterprise and to
remember why they are doing
it. Most times, it is really
quite enjoyable – hanging out
together, listening to tunes,
singing, laughing, sharing
stories. Always, it is a unique
opportunity for an amma and
her boy to spend some time
together, working in tandem
on a cooperative mission that
will benefit them both with it’s
eventual outcome.
Amma likes to think there
is a benefit along the way,
too, that includes things like
discovering what commitment
and cooperation and being of
service feel like, as well as
life’s idiom that even though
one might not feel like doing
something in a given moment,
sometimes looking at the bigger
picture can lead one back to
the core of why you are there
and lend one the incentive to
keep going. “Fara áfram, as
my dear old daddy used to say
to me when I was barely able
to get out of my sick bed many
years ago,” Lisa says, “but I did
anyway, becuase I kept my eye
on the prize ahead (in that case,
regaining an improved state of
health – and here I am). Fara
áfram. Keep moving forward.”
Jordan and his amma’s JÁ!
Recycling Fundraising Initiative
currently has a roster of twelve
very happy customers who
eagerly await the now biweekly
pick-up of all their recycling
and returnable items. The team
of two go out one day a week,
when Jordan is not in school,
and work three-to-four hour
shifts on each of their two runs
– one north of the village and
another to the south. That is
about all the 12-year-old is up
for. And Amma thnks that’s just
fine. If theor little fundraising
initiative gets any more
customer requests, Lisa may
have to take them on alone – and
she figures she could use that
income to pay off the minivan
she purchased three months
into this enterprise, which made
the job so much easier than
when they’d been stuffing their
unweildly collections into the
tarp-covered backseat and trunk
of a borrowed sedan. And she’d
be fine with that.
As they do their pick-ups
each week, while Amma drives
from one residence to the next
along their route, Jordan tallies
up the income in their accounts
book. In the six months since
they began their initiative in
early June, Jordan and his amma
have raised approximately half
of what they estimate they will
need for a good adventure in
the homeland of their ancestors.
Amma Lisa is a third-generation
and Jordan a fifth-generation
Icelandic Canadian, and both
are excited about the now real
prospect of travelling to Iceland
together to explore the land of
their foremothers and forefathers
and see the places where they
had lived, to soak in Iceland’s
incredible hot pools, to stand in
the spray of as many phenomenal
waterfalls as they can get to, to
visit family and friends who live
there, and to simply enjoy reaping
the harvest of all this hard work
one summer very soon. These
happenstance entrepreneurs are
happy with their progress and,
overall, with the process that
is bringing them, every week,
one step closer to their dream of
flying away together. Icelandair,
here we come!
Recycling all the way to Iceland
Jordan and Lisa at the recycling centre.
Jordan separating the recyclables.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF LISA SIGURGEIRSON MAXX
It doesn’t take long to fill a van. It feels like a windfall.