Takako Horie
Director, Aozora Welfare Service Workshop for Disabled People,
Cosmos Welfare Group (Social Welfare Corporation)

Our activities directed towards creating a workshop primarily for disabled people living at home began in September 1984 and the social welfare corporation Cosmos Welfare Group's “Cosmos Disability Welfare Service Workshop” (at the time, a sheltered workshop for people with physical disabilities) was established in April 1990 as a successor to the “Ichinomiya Asuka Collaborative Workshop”, a small-scale facility. It currently provides assistance with daily living and support for continuous employment – type B services to 34 users. In addition to recycling tasks which have been carried out since the days of the small-scale facility, such as collecting and sorting empty cans and bottles, they engage in the recycling business by collecting and sorting plastic bottles and polystyrene trays, extracting copper from electrical wires, and knitting cotton work gloves to sell from leftover thread.

At present, 32 years after Cosmos was established, the corporation has 7 workshops offering daytime activities, 9 residential group homes, a welfare home, a support facility for disabled people, an advice and support centre, and a business providing nursing care at home. Aozora was established in December 2005 as the fifth of the workshops offering daytime activities. It currently provides 19 people with assistance with daily living and 12 with support for continuous employment – type B; its users are intellectually disabled or autistic. As a workshop offering opportunities to work, it is engaged in the bicycle business, the recycling business, and candle production as a recycling project. In every task, each person has a role suited to their personality and pace: as we support the work, we take care to ensure that they can each exercise their strengths.

In the bicycle business, we go out in a truck with the users to collect the bicycles within Aichi Prefecture, of course, but even as far afield as Gifu, the neighbouring prefecture. The users look forward to going to various places, and so it serves as a change of scenery. Although removing rusty screws is hard work, the users have become proficient at it, taking apart the bicycles which we collected for free (sometimes for a fee), one after another. The tasks of removing the tyres, saddles, bells, and baskets, taking the rubber and tubes from the tyres, cutting the spokes of the wheels, and removing the pedals and handles are assigned to different users according to the roles which suit them best. After the bicycles have been taken apart, the iron, aluminium, stainless steel, and so on are sorted and delivered to be used as resources for recycling. Components which can still be used are sold, and some find their way overseas. At first, we carried out marketing activities to the management companies of blocks of flats to ensure a supply of unwanted bicycles. As a result, there were years in which we collected more than 10,000 bicycles. We still maintain a steady supply of around 8,000 – 9,000. Moreover, we have received disposal requests from local governments as initiatives under the Act to Promote Preferential Procurement from Disabled People, and there have also been requests from universities to dispose of 700 – 800 bicycles. People find out about us by word of mouth or by seeing our website. Moreover, in the course of continuing with this work, we have come to collect wheelchairs from welfare equipment companies and facilities for the elderly, dismantling them just like the bicycles to recycle them as resources. We also have links with local bicycle shops. The advantages of dismantling bicycles, a business which we run independently, are that there are no mistakes and we can work at our own pace.

Photo 1:  Removing a rear wheel with iron cutters

Photo 2: We make candles using wax pieces cut one by one with shaped cutters. Assembling large and small pieces using tweezers requires an extremely high degree of skill.

In our recycling work, we partner with Cosmos to pick up, sort, and deliver the resources (bottles, cans, plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, newspapers, magazines, etc.) brought to Ichinomiya City’s resource collection points every Saturday and Sunday. We also open up a space within our workshop as a resource collection point for the local community, so our work on this project is also an aspect of our links with the community.

Candle production is another aspect of recycling: we use wax which we have received from funeral parlours to make and sell creative candles. Wax which was filled with sorrow is reborn as living candles.

In order to be able to continue with our current work, we hope to develop projects which add further value to bicycles so that we can raise our wages even a little.