Recycling of Souls
Piotr Małecki

Ekon Association in Warsaw is a recycling plant that provides jobs for people with learning difficulties
or mental health issues, who would otherwise find it difficult to get work. Some people working in Ekon
have developmental problems and mental disabilities which they were born with, others have developed
schizophrenia and other mental diseases as adults. But there's something that they have in common; their
unusual affection to their job. A job, which many „healthy” citizens would't like to do: collecting and selecting
rubbish to use for recycling.

Some of these people have gone through the trauma of mental hospitals, which they recall as hell. They say
that the combination of human touch, teamwork and feeling important to the society gives them the reason to
live. That it heals their poor heads much better than any hospital could. In comparison to the expensive and
closed mental hospitals, Ekon association runs an open facility that operates like a normal enterprise and
even generates profits. This seems like an ideal alternative to the mental clinics: healing through teamwork
and by creating real personal relationships.

Ekon's existence is in jeopardy. The grounds it rents from Warsaw council have become very attractive for
developers. Ekon is fighting with the growing powers that want them gone. If they loose the battle, they will
go bankrupt and hundreds of their disabled employees will loose their reason to live. We will not see them
smiling and collecting our waste anymore. They will be all back at their homes somewhere, lifeless and
bored, going insane in front of their television sets.