Memphis Church Nonprofit Turns Recycling Work Into a Fresh Start

Christianity Today reports on the Business Hub of Binghampton Development Corporation, known as the Hub, a large-item recycling nonprofit founded by Christ Methodist Church of Memphis. The magazine says the Hub was inspired by the Bible's commands to care for the poor, and in particular by gleaning, which let the poor and the foreigner work for their own living with dignity instead of depending on charity. There, employees work toward a new life.

Mariah is one of them. Christianity Today reports that her mother was shot to death in a West Memphis police chase when Mariah was 11. At 19 she took her first job at a local McDonald's, then left two days later when she learned her father had liver cancer. She became his only caregiver at home and lost 80 pounds as depression took hold. She says she is grateful now for an arrest that sent her to rehab through Tennessee's drug courts, and it was a sober-living facility that led her to the Hub.

The Hub processes extra-large recycling: city streetlights, Styrofoam, large Amazon returns and mattresses, 3,341 of them in 2025. Used tires collected from Memphis streets are cut by Hub employees to build safety barriers for the city's bike lanes. Employees join a paid, full-time development program that runs 3 to 15 months and aims at a living-wage career. The Hub is only five years old but has employed more than 200 Binghampton residents, even as companies like Cummins and Georgia Pacific have left the area.

Many come from prison, homelessness or addiction recovery, the magazine reports. A third of Hub employees fail their first drug test, and 57 percent arrive with a criminal record. Warehouse supervisor Erby Price set up a point system for attendance to prepare workers for life beyond the Hub. "If you can't make it with the training wheels," he says, "you're not going to make it on a different bike." Gary Henderson, a co-supervisor, suffered a stroke after finding his brother's body, and PTSD and depression led him into alcoholism. Now sober, he is a manager and one of the Hub's longest-serving employees.

Daniel Henley, a pastor and psychologist, meets at least monthly with every employee. Staff teach weekly classes on work life and the Chalmers Center's Faith and Finances course, and outside groups give literacy support. On Monday mornings the employees gather to share prayer requests and praises. As the magazine puts it, at the Hub, Jesus comes to them.