Across the myriad of Toronto's gridded streets, long thawed-out from the icy winter, more and more people are meeting to trade items they no longer need in exchange for items they do.
You can take a ride down one of the city's lengthy streets on an outdated and rickety - but undoubtedly charming - street-cars and spot, with no trouble at all, total strangers meeting at intersections and outside subway stations.
Beer, clothing, food, home-grown veggies or transit tokens. Even services like gardening or wrapping presents; some try volunteering simply to do something different.
People correspond through the Facebook group or app:"Let's meet at the corner of College and Bathurst. I'll be on a bike wearing a blue t-shirt."
Bunz has spread across Toronto like a wildfire and is now proliferating across many cities throughout North America and beyond. It begins with a Facebook group set up by locals who are wanting to facilitate life in areas where it's too tough to get by on minimum wage.
But Bunz is much more than a scattering of Facebook groups, it's an organisation with a downtown office and the overheads that go with it. Yet despite this, and the fact that Bunz are guiding people over the voyage from Facebook group to app, they are still alive and well and come in all forms to discuss various issues and to trade different things.
Regardless of which group you're in, they are all benefiting people across the city from all backgrounds by fostering a community mindedness, expressing a hatred of waste and generally helping people get by in a city which is astronomically expensive to live in.
"We're an internet company that makes people get off the internet." (Eli Klein, Publicity, Community and Events Manager at Bunz).
Eli Klein, who works for Bunz, said: "We're an internet company that makes people get off the internet. People review each other, and when they do we consider that a completed trade. We can see that between 700-800 trades a day are completing; that's 15,000 people meeting offline a day."
Many trade for the occasional item, and treat it more like a hobby, to dejunk their homes and maybe meet new people, but some do it out of necessity. To survive.
An urban survival tool
Eli is still amazed at how the company he works for can bring such warmth into people's lives: "Ultimately, what it comes down to is community and that people are helping each other. That's why this started, that's why we do what we do and it's really warming to hear stories where that is happening."
The story of Bunz's synthesis is so widely known by users of Bunz that it has achieved mythic status in and around Toronto. Founder, Emily, had posted online looking for ingredients she lacked to make a dinner. She ended up sharing a meal with a neighbour, and the group took off from there.
Eli said: "It literally went from the floor of their apartment, to their block, to their neighbourhood, to all of Toronto."
Meet Lisa Gardner
Lisa has lived in Toronto for 20 years. For much of that time, she's been a line cook, a role that has been both physically and emotionally draining, without being paid a living wage. She has previously suffered from symptoms of anxiety, like agoraphobia. Lisa now works part time in a bakery, while studying psychology: "I know I can't carry on working in a kitchen all my life," Lisa told me, explaining how much it took out of her to cook full time and the impact it was having on her mental health.
"I've been to culinary school and I've never earned more than $14 an hour. And that's why I'm trying to get out of this field of work." She started using Bunz so that she could afford to survive in the city.
"The cost of living in Canada generally has increased, whereas the wages have generally remained stagnant. So where twenty or thirty years ago someone could go to college or finish high school and get a job and support a family on one income; a modest family, a modest home. You really can't do that any more," she added.
"I am getting better at negotiating and I am learning that my skills are valued. which is building my self-esteem."
Lisa told me that although there are soup kitchens and services in the city which help those who are on low incomes, or who suffer from food insecurity. Some often ask to see pay slips or proof that you are indeed struggling - processes Lisa believes some people may find invasive and embarrassing. Though she sees the reason for these checks, Bunz allows individuals to feel they are giving something back, rather than simply taking off and abusing people's altruism: "I've known about Bunz for a year, and used the Facebook page before crossing to the app.
"I feel it really has a sense of community and it's a really great way to survive, for those on a lower income."
"A lot of young people starting out, students and people living in poverty are really benefiting from Bunz. People who have a home and might make a living, but what they earn is not sufficient to meet all their needs. This is a great way for them to get a little further.
"We all have homes full of objects; some we don't need or use. It's much better to be able to trade something you don't need for a service or item that you do and I think this is beneficial to both parties, making use of all the resources in a community that way."
She uses the skills honed from her career as a cook to facilitate her trades on Bunz. She has already traded over 25 jars of jam she made herself. She also reciprocated the love from the Bunz community she had received, by filling a backpack with food and giving it to an individual she had seen, through a Bunz post, to be struggling in the city.
Lisa told me she was interested by how rural ways of living - in the sense of community spirit and sharing - seemed to be permeating life in big, Canadian cities like Toronto and Montreal.
She grew up out West and whenever they were visiting friends or relatives they would take a bag of food, clothing and groceries that were no longer needed to their houses in order to give them away. Sharing resources. It is this way of thinking which, she believes, is beginning to thrive in Toronto, noticeably through the medium of Bunz. "The great thing about Toronto is that million dollar properties sit next to ramshackle properties, but everyone does their best to get along. We're all part of this society so let's do our best."
"Financially, Bunz has been a lifesaver for me. I'm unable to work full-time, due to classes and my mental health issues, but Bunz has helped me so much. I no longer worry so much about running out of groceries, toiletries and household products, because I know I can trade for them on Bunz."
Lisa used to struggle living with a low income, but found it such a relief to know that she could survive in the city, even when she was low on money: "I enjoy baking in my spare time, as well as making jams and pickles. Selling these at markets would be a pain, but it is easy to trade them for things I need.
"Bunz has also been really good for my mental health in lots of ways. It gets me to interact with people, despite my social anxiety, and gets me out of the house, despite having mild agoraphobia."
Lisa is getting better at negotiating, improving her self esteem and improving her physical health, by cycling to trades for meet-ups, which simply wouldn't happen if it were not for Bunz: “It’s given me a reason to go out on rides and for the first time in my adult life, I’m feeling confident on my bike. I’ve gone on so many short rides, that not only am I improving my fitness, but also boosting my mood and self-esteem through bike riding.”
Meet Russell Boden
"Back in 2014, my wife and I were planning for a child. We were both unhappy with our living area. It was cluttered, messy, hard to maintain. Borderline hoarding. We were just miserable in it."
It was at this point that Russell and his wife decided to dejunk their home. They trashed almost 50% of everything they owned, some of it in great condition, but seldom used.
"Then we moved to a better place in preparation for our son's arrival. We hired movers, but first we had to purge some more. I threw out a perfectly good bar fridge, a window air conditioner, computer parts and monitors.
"There weren't any charities that I knew of, that would come and take the stuff from me. So I ended up putting the useful stuff in the laundry room of my old apartment building, giving them up to whoever wanted them.
Shedding all of these items, built up over years, with nothing in return never sat right with Russell. "I felt like it was such a waste," he said. "I gave away a lot of stuff, there was no way to hold a yard sale as apartment buildings don't really lend themselves to that concept. But in my heart of hearts, I knew there were people out there who would have gladly come to my door and took these items, if only they knew about them."
It wasn't until Russell was settled in his new apartment, that he heard about Bunz on CBC News: "We'd used Kijiji, Craigslist and Ebay all before, but hadn't had great luck on them. I didn't fancy the chances of trying to get $5 for an old CRT computer monitor, or $50 for a Bar Fridge."
Russell is 44 years-old and has now used Bunz for over a year. He used to be a financial advisor, but had to put that on hold in order to take care of his child who needed additional care. He's lived in Toronto since 2008, but is from Dowling, Ontario, a small, sleepy town reminiscent of the setting for David Lynch's Twin Peaks.
After the financial crash the speed at which people moved to cities seemed to shift up a gear. "What really drew me to Bunz was need. It was the need to get stuff without paying for it," jokingly adding: "without stealing."
Despite his love for Bunz, Russell does feel disheartened by some of the changes to the community and doesn't feel that he is included in the "community spirit" that many of Toronto's young are espousing they feel. The crossover from the Facebook group to the app also left him cold: "People who access Bunz through a laptop or desktop computer don't have a fraction of the utilisation that the Bunz app and mobile users do."
Russell said he's also scared that what started as a place where people could "take charge of our consumerism with a rebellious spirit" has quickly devolved into a site where a lot of people are out to make a quick buck: "Take a look at the Toronto Talk page and you don't have to go far to find that someone is looking for gift cards or transit tokens only. So they just want money.
"Bunz used to be about the idea of trading item for item, but now it's here's my stuff. You want it? Pay me!"
Russell added that, as it stands, he doesn't see himself continuing to use Bunz past 2017: "I don't feel a part of it any more and fear what's left of that early community is going to implode."
Meet Annie Hussey
Conversely, Annie really sees the community spirit in Bunz and the value of trading items to save money. She has traded for tokens in the past and just sees it as a way to get by in a city where the cost of transit is expensive.
After studying Social Research at postgraduate level, Annie still found it impossible to find a job in her field that would pay enough to survive in Toronto.
She believes that without Bunz and the ability to get essential items, she might not have been able to afford to live in Toronto; it really helped her transition into living in the city and out of her parent's home, where she'd been forced to return to in order to save money.
"My aim after my postgrad was to get a job in Toronto, because my boyfriend and friends live here. I'd rather be here than anywhere else. I love the transit here, I don’t drive. I like to be environmentally friendly. But the cost of living here is just astronomical," she said.
An individual working full time on minimum wage would earn $25,877 a year, in a city where monthly rent leans towards $2,000 a month. And for those who fall on hard times, food and shelter can suddenly become hard to access.
She has also paid some of this love back, by donating food and items to shelters and homeless charities. What really drew her to the app was a hatred of waste:"I started to trade on Bunz when I was a post grad student. I really feel bad if I ever have to throw anything away. Also, the cost of living here is so expensive. I chose Bunz to save money and to get rid of the things I didn't want."
Annie said she has always tried to live frugally. She said: "The thing is we live in a consumer society and I'm not ashamed to say that with the age of social media it’s all about keeping up with whoever is around you and a lot of people spend beyond their means. They’re always buying things."
Meet Wandy Cheng
Last Christmas Wandy responded to a post on Bunz where a woman was looking to someone to help her wrap Christmas presents. She was asking for this service and in return was giving away a brand new laptop she had gotten from her work, which she had no use for. "Sharing time is the most important commodity. But I feel like that's the fun of Bunz," Wandy said.
When Wandy got there to wrap the presents, she didn't quite expect the amount that had to be wrapped - six hours worth. But she had fun chatting to this fellow Bunzer and got to hang out with their dog and try something different, communicating with strangers and exploring new parts of the city.
"I love the sense of community it creates, I love trying new things and trading different services. I also love the people I've met through using Bunz.
"I've gotten a brand new laptop, a backpack I traded for some acrylic paints I no longer use. Even movie tickets for some ceramic bowls I made.
"I feel like Bunz had been getting a lot of bad feedback, in the way it's changing but I feel people should just adapt. I still think it has a lot to offer and that people should stick with it."
Not only has Wandy used Bunz for clothes, movie tickets and transit tokens, she recently volunteered at an art space, and in return got studio time for her efforts.
Meet Taylor McCutchen
Taylor decided to trade eggs on Bunz as a way to meet new people and supplement her income, by getting items in exchange for eggs. Being a former baker, she also wanted high quality eggs for her home baking. Her three chickens have consumed much of the vegetation in her backyard, and she also feeds them flaxseed to ensure their eggs are rich in Omega 3.
Free-range eggs are expensive and sometimes prove hard to find in Toronto. The high quality of the eggs from Taylor's chickens have proved to be very popular with the Bunz community.
She purchased her chickens from a hobby farm in St Jacobs, Ontario and trades around a dozen every two weeks on Bunz.
She said that it does feel like a community and that it is a very trusting group of people who trade on the platform; she only feels she has been "ripped off" once.
"I do a lot of porch-trades with the eggs so that I can trade them quickly, while they are fresh. I don't see what they've left until they are gone and I was once left stale food that needed to be thrown out and dollar store replacements of what we agreed on."
When winter comes, Taylor intends on selling the chickens to someone with a winterised coop. But for now, she will continue to use Bunz and love what it offers her, and the way elements of rural life can be brought to the city.
