EcoDepot Montreal | Amateur art and our trash cans

You can completely redecorate a room there for a few hundred dollars.

There are thousands of used objects there: a lot of furniture, but also crockery, lamps, vases, household appliances, paintings… Pretty much everything you could need in a house. (Or off, considering I also saw several skis and two scooters there.)

I could spend hours detailing the items for sale at ÉcoDépôt Montreal, but it would be in vain. The ones I see today won’t be here in a few days. The 10,000 ft warehouse^⁠2 regularly renews its stock. If an object has been on the shelves for a month, the price is reduced by 25%. You have to make room to ensure a good turnover rate.

The company was founded by Robert De Pellegrin. At the time, he operated a franchise of 1-800-Got-Junk (a residential and commercial junk removal service). By looking at his operating costs, the entrepreneur quickly realized that the furniture he was bringing to the dump was a problem: “It’s expensive to bury! »

Was there a solution to divert furniture worthy of a second life from the landfill?

Robert De Pellegrin toured thrift stores and ecocentres, without success. He therefore chose to create his own business model.

In 2016, ÉcoDépôt Montréal opened its doors to the public looking for used furniture at low prices. Today, the items for sale still come from waste management companies, but also from auctions, moving companies and individuals. “It’s not the best business model,” candidly admits the businessman.

“Furniture makes up more than 50% of the store, while the other companies that donate used items mainly sell clothes and trinkets. It allows them to hold more items in the same space and generate more sales. We are aware that our model is not profitable to the maximum, but it fills a need for the community. It allows you to furnish yourself inexpensively, to avoid overloading landfills, to create jobs, to buy local, to encourage sustainable development and to choose unique objects. »

Items so unique that the ÉcoDépôt team sometimes has to do a lot of research to be able to recognize them. The entrepreneur gives me as an example a laboratory tool used in the 1960s and an object first identified as a “weird stool” which turned out to be… a camel saddle.

We understand better the mission of the place, now: “to transform garbage into treasures”.

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I am one of the 83,000 people who follow ÉcoDépôt Montréal on Facebook. I love detailing new arrivals and wondering if I need this giant puppet or even this antique radio… Moreover, the company is going digital and will soon allow online purchases. I predict golden deals for them, on the side of impulsive buyers.

If I observe the store from afar for months, this is the first time I set foot there. And I am not disappointed.

Next to the two scooters is an old snowblower that I would exhibit in a museum, if I had a museum. I am also charmed by a wooden coffee table. Unfortunately, my lover reminds me that we don’t have room for that — while holding the exhibition notebook We Want Milesabout Miles Davis, offered to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, in 2010.

As if there was room for more books…

Beyond the astonishing objects, what I notice are above all the dozens of works that litter the floors of the place. There are stacks of paintings, the prices of which range from $5 to $200.

“We receive a lot of amateur art and we don’t sell it at a high price,” explains Robert De Pellegrin. This is appreciated by many interior designers among our customers. It’s also valuable for the people who come to us to create film or TV sets. Then, it’s great for artists because a new canvas is expensive! Here they can buy cheap paintings and paint over what is already there…”

All these ideas make me smile.

Since the start of the pandemic, many of us have been looking for new hobbies. Around me, we started to crochet, draw, paint. I myself experimented with watercolor (what I do is very ugly). We try to find the creator in us to lull the anxious a little… So I have the impression that there is some amateur art happening these days.

In a few years, will we part with our works? Will they end up in a warehouse, ignored, having their price reduced by 25% month after month? On the set of a Hollywood movie shot in southwest Montreal? In the hands of a lost artist, happy to replace our lines with his? Or in the kitchen of a kitsch lover who will love them, without any irony?

Do the creators who produced the paintings I have in front of me know that their work is here today? Perhaps they were offered to relatives who got rid of them on the sly. Perhaps they were worshiped by a deceased person whose possessions are now for sale…

What destiny brought them to these used product shelves?

Faced with so many questions and so much romanticism, my lover recognized that there would probably be room for one or two more paintings at home.

We left with two works.

The portrait of a dignified and magnificent woman painted (or printed?) on velvet, signed “Minh” or “Mink”.

As well as a landscape painted in 2000, in which a carriage advances towards a mansion. The name of the artist — Aline Lacroix — is engraved at the bottom of the frame. The whole thing was too official to be left in a warehouse…

Since I adopted these two works, I wonder what course they have taken. What hands held them between those of their creator and mine? If you know more about it, if you recognize these paintings or the people who executed them, I would love to hear from you. Do not hesitate to write to me…

Suddenly we would come across a good story.