By Ashley Legassic

Aberdeen Mall partners with Kamloops Homeless Mat project

Oct 16, 2018 | 1:48 PM

KAMLOOPS — The largest shopping centre in Kamloops has taken steps toward reducing its carbon footprint and giving back to the community.

Aberdeen Mall has announced it will now be a drop-off point for plastic bags, which will be donated to the Kamloops Homeless Mat Project, in which volunteers take plastic and crochet them into comfortable, portable sleeping mats for those in need.

Kristi Williams is the marketing and special leasing manager with Aberdeen Mall. She says employees got together to try and come up with ways they could reduce their footprint during waste reduction week.

“We didn’t have a lot of time to put a formal event together. So we were putting our heads together and thought ‘well what else could we do, what other things are in the community that we would like to be able to partner with, or what can we do more?’,” Williams says. “One of our employees here, the guest services supervisor, she had heard about this ‘make a mat’ project and she suggested us reaching out to them to see if we could be a drop-off point. So we reached out to her and she was fully on board with it.”

The idea may have stemmed out of Waste Reduction Week, but Williams says the two drop-off bins in the mall — one at each entrance — will be a permanent fixture. 

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“It’s been really important for us, especially because there’s so many people in this building, we’re very cautious of how much waste goes through this building,” Williams says. “Lots of people will just throw (plastic bags) in the garbage or they’ll use them as their garbage bags. It was a good way for them to be able to be reused instead of just ending up in the landfill.”

A few retailers in the mall already are on board with donating their plastic to the Kamloops Homeless Mat Project, including Hudson’s Bay, the Gap Factory Store, Think Kitchen, and Cleo. Any bags or packaging the stores don’t need are given to the volunteers who crochet the mats.

Other retailers in the mall can also donate any of their plastic to the project as well. Williams says the mall is happy to be able to help, and says she’s surprised at how comfortable the mats feel.

“It’s quite stable, it’s more stable than I thought it would have been and provides more cushion,” she says. “So it’s a nice insulator between a cold ground and a person or their pet.”