Builders on bikes
Winnipeg's cycling contractors renovate sustainably and choose their own pay.
More than 16,000 km. That’s how many vehicle kilometres the employees of Velo Renovation in Winnipeg, Manitoba have avoided by riding their bicycles instead. These “carbon-conscious contractors” transport tools and supplies by bicycle, only relying on vehicle delivery for larger loads; they also source sustainable building materials and consider their carbon footprint in design work. To find out more, Christian Courier interviewed Velo Renovation founder Nathaniel De Avila about his innovative approach to business, including his unusual human resources style.
De Avila started Velo – the French word for bicycle – in October 2020. Unable to work in his former field as a music producer during the pandemic, he considered renovation because home repair was allowed to continue during shutdowns. He knew right away that he wanted to put “people over profit,” both socially and environmentally. And that included a lower carbon footprint via cycling.
“Most of the world is doing things on bike,” he told the Winnipeg Free Press in 2021. “It’s just North America where it’s a bit of a novelty. Are we going to save the planet by having the eight of us pedal to work? Of course not. But that doesn’t make it unimportant, either.”
Pushing back against “the consumeristic nature of society” also matters, De Avila told CC. “An easy way for renovation companies to feed into consumerism is by telling homeowners to put renovations on existing mortgages, which is to say you’re sliding people into being indebted to a bank, so that you can take profit out of their house. And people don’t see that coming. Renovators tell you to roll anything onto your mortgage, because they can spin it as ‘home improvement,’ right?”
Saying ‘no’ to projects
“I’ll roll into someone’s house and ask, ‘Ok, so what doesn’t work about this for you?’ And sometimes people have a legitimate reason: ‘we have three generations, and we want to use this house together. We’ve got to take out this wall because it’s not enough space for a family.’ I say, ‘great, sounds like you’re increasing the number of people per square foot, which is the best thing you can do for the climate in terms of your heating bill.’ And I’m all for it, let’s do it. It’s going to be a big expensive project but it sounds like a good idea.”
But not every renovation request makes environmental sense – and when it doesn’t, De Avila will say so. “You walk into someone’s house,” he explained, “and they say, ‘I just want to tear out this whole kitchen because I don’t like the way it looks anymore.’ And I say, ‘Why, is it broken?’ I know the answer is that it’s fully functional; it’s just stained Golden Oak and it’s not hip anymore. ‘I would consider painting it for you, but I don’t want to rip it out.’”
“Most companies,” he said, “would say, ‘yeah, let’s rip that out, that’s 50K in the bank.’ I’m not interested in that, because that harms other people. I don’t want to feed into the consumer system. It’s like the flywheel; once you start rolling, it keeps itself going.”
True teamwork
In addition to reducing carbon emissions by cycling, Velo Renovation pays attention to the health of its employees – using strategies as unusual as biking to work in a Winnipeg winter. “There is no compulsory work,” De Avila said. “People can set their own wage, [and] financial documents are open to anyone to look at and ask questions about.”
In terms of staff, Velo started with three members in 2020 and now employs 13 – though some of those only work a few hours per year. “Some of the policies that we have don’t function in the world of business normally,” De Avila admitted. “But that was never my goal. At the end of the day, we are going to pay people what they request.”
This challenges the misconception, in his words, “that your time is only worth what your boss decides it’s worth.” For larger projects, the company defaults to an hourly wage. “[Velo has been] figuring out over the long haul how much is coming in and how we can share. I think workers have been very understanding of that,” said De Avila.
To the source
Part of Velo’s carbon-consciousness, in addition to cycling, is a commitment to using sustainable building materials. It’s a lofty goal, made more difficult due to building codes, extra cost or customers unwilling to try something new.
“We still use all kinds of standard products,” De Avila said, “sourced from the same place a lot of contractors in Winnipeg source them, and we have large product loads brought via truck to the job site. That’s less fuel and it’s less money for the client. [In some cases,] to transport the same amount of materials by bicycle would make our budgeting such that no one would hire us.”
If there’s one product Velo wishes it could find locally, it would be flax. “You can make paint out of flax,” De Avila explained, and “you can make wood finishes out of it, in combination with sunflower oil.”
In the past, hot pine tar and linseed oil were used on cedar shake barns. “That’s why you have these 100-year-old barns with simple wooden cedar shakes on the roof, totally preserved because they were filled with natural oils and they shed water beautifully.” But even though the province still grows flax, it’s processed elsewhere.
“In Manitoba [now],” he said, “we grow flax, we grow sunflowers, yet nowhere in Manitoba exists the processing to create products we could then use to lower our dependency on petroleum based paints. That’s just a small example. We have pulled apart and globalized the mechanism with a profit motive. And it has alienated both workers and the environment.”
One of the books that De Avila said influenced him as a teenager is a staple in many Christian homes: The More with Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen. Published by Mennonite Central Committee, this best-seller from the 70s had the health of people and the planet in mind long before those issues were trendy.
It’s not true, De Avila stated, that “the economy needs to improve for our lives to improve. It is true that you need to adequately pay the people who are working for you, [but] we also need to take into consideration that […] my freedom is intrinsically tied to your freedom. Now the sad thing is that if you try to run a company with that in mind, that company is going to struggle at times.” But Velo is fortunate to have found employees who commute by bicycle and help figure out how to keep its vision of people over profit rolling forward.
