In 2002, not long after graduating from Queen’s, Mike Thorne, Artsci’01, found himself working at Bell Canada in Toronto after spending previous summers as a telephone-line repairer. First assignment for the 23-year-old: get rid of old office furniture and other detritus.
“If there’s this much stuff just on this floor in this building, how much other stuff is in other buildings throughout Canada?” he thought. The seed for a business was planted.
Mr. Thorne left Bell in 2003 and moved back home with his mom in St. Catharines, Ont., where he put an ad in a local paper’s classified section.
You call, we haul, it read, with Mr. Thorne’s number.
He got nine phone calls the day the ad ran. The demand was there.
He showed up to his first job – removing a shed – and had no idea what to charge, so he asked what the customer felt was fair. He pocketed $300 that day. He had borrowed his friend’s “very sketchy” 1985 Econoline van and later bought it for $500.
Mr. Thorne continued with the classified ads and the jobs picked up. When he’d ask what customers wanted removed, they’d simply say, “Oh, it’s just junk.” And with that, JustJunk was born. Sometimes it would be a fridge in a basement; other times a couch or patio stones.
Two decades later, Mr. Thorne is the CEO of a company with franchises in 160 locations across Canada. And he has learned that one man’s trash truly is another man’s treasure: His company is doing its part to find sustainable ways to keep junk out of landfills. About 70 per cent of the items his teams pick up go to Habitat for Humanity, such as old sinks or cinder blocks. Electronics are recycled and scrap metal is sold to steelyards. In some markets, nearly 100 per cent of their junk gets recycled. Halifax and Victoria are among the best in the country at recycling, Mr. Thorne says.
The company is also testing out a new program in Edmonton where they give away furniture. They’ve had long lineups as many across the country deal with a deepening affordability crisis.
When it comes to what customers want to get rid of, the JustJunk team has seen it all: a life-size animatronic elephant, a human skeleton, war medals, and 300-year-old medical textbooks. Mr. Thorne has also flexed his creative side. He successfully pitched a reality show: the adventures of two employees on board the junk truck. Corus signed on for 10 episodes of Hammer & Chew: Lords of Junk. Be the Boss Canada also featured the company as two employees competed for a promotion.
Demand will always be there because of society’s throwaway culture, Mr. Thorne says.
“Millions and millions of products are filling up people’s basements and sheds and garages at a rate that’s faster than companies like ours can remove them.”
Mike Thorne graduated from the Faculty of Arts and Science. Find out more about the faculty’s giving priorities and initiatives related to sustainability and research.
