top of page
About Ground Score Association

Our Mission: Ground Score Association (GSA) is an association of informal recyclers, canners, dumpster divers, and other waste pickers who create and fill low-barrier waste materials management jobs in Portland, Oregon.

 

Ground Score is collectively-organized and radically inclusive, prioritizing work opportunities for those facing work and housing insecurity.

 

Ground Score seeks to build a more environmentally and socially aware community, while also changing society’s perceptions of what and who is considered valuable.

Note: Ground Score is now fiscally sponsored by Trash for Peace.

Photo of a middle-aged woman working at The People's Depot in Portland, Oregon. She has long brown hair and is wearing a black beanie with a cat face design, a black hoodie, and black work gloves. Her hands are in a kiddie pool filled with empty bottles and cans, which she is counting or sorting for recycling. In the background are about eight people working at the depot or redeeming containers, another pool filled with beverage containers, multiple tall rectangular boxes lined with plastic bags, and two open shipping containers used for storing the recyclables. There is small gray text on the top right corner that says "Photo by Brodie Cass Talbott."

Photo by Brodie Cass Talbott

Ground Score Association Pathway to Housing

We formally employ 62 people as of April 2025, about 90% of whom are or have been houseless.

​

Since having started working with Ground Score, over 70% of unhoused workers have become housed.

Ground Score Association Benefits
Ink-style graphic that reads "Since Ground Score launched in 2019"
Ground Score Association Digital Inclusion

Because of Ground Score, our team is able to provide life-saving support services, including stable income, digital equity training, CPR/first-aid training, de-escalation training, and resource navigation support—including support with re-entry into the formal workforce.

Ground Score pays a living wage and ensures that all workers have access to supportive social benefits like healthcare. Ground Score also supports workers to access housing, addiction treatment, mental health services, legal identification, and other services.

Portrait photo of Carlos, a Ground Score worker with short brown hair, a short brown beard, black-framed eyeglasses, a blue checked flannel shirt, and a blue Ground Score vest, smiling and looking at the camera.

"Ground Score provided me with the tools I needed to start digging myself out of the hole I was in, and gave me a sense of worth and taught me that I have value as a human being. That no matter what I had been through in life I was still worthy of friendship, community, a good job, and the opportunity to grow personally and professionally."

– Carlos De La Maria,
Ground Score worker

Graphic that says "By the numbers"
Copy of Test design 1 (3).png
Graphic that says "G.L.I.T.T.E.R. 2,590,417 pounds of trash collected since 2021. 167,300 individual or 100.65 pounds of cigarette butts collected in 2024."
Ground Score Association How We Organize
Two workers in blue Ground Score vests wearing helmets and giving thumbs up on two adult tricycles with large white bins mounted in the front heading out to pick up trash and provide essential services along City of Portland funded G.L.I.T.T.E.R. routes. They are on the road in Old Town, and there is a colorful mural with a rainbow umbrella design on a building behind them. A rainbow Pride banner is mounted beside that mural on a plain gray side of a building. Three vehicles are parked along the side of the street. Green tree foliage is visible in the upper left corner of the image.

Ground Score Association is a peer-led initiative, organized and led by and for workers who identify as canners, scrappers, dumpster divers, waste pickers, and/or ground scorers. Ground Score holds quarterly General Assemblies to facilitate training, develop policies collectively, vote on policy changes, elect leaders, and foster the democratic growth of the association.


An elected Workers Council helps to resolve disputes and develop new policy proposals. The Council helps to guide Ground Score’s organizational vision and represent workers. 

Ground Score workers are paid a minimum $20/hour, and we work to ensure that payroll and non-payroll workers have access to social protections and other supportive benefits. Our payscale and benefits are constantly being evaluated to ensure that a living wage is provided.

An older woman with light skin, wavy reddish hair just past shoulder length, a khaki top with a black area in the middle, and blue bottoms with a white pattern standing outside posing in Portland, Oregon. She is a Ground Score worker standing in front of a side of the People's Depot shipping container, which is light purple. The words "By Canners For Canners" are painted in dark colors on the container and appear right above her head.

Ground Score Association is fiscally sponsored by Trash for Peace, a 501c3 organization, 

EIN: 45-4715889

bottom of page