Resource Issue 42 July to August 2008
The stars of the community recycling sector once again donned their glad rags and headed to the glitter of the Resource Awards. Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, this year’s ceremony was bigger and better than ever before, with an excellent range of entries competing for a recycled glass award and the all
important prizes of £2,500. Leonie Bennett reports
London-based Food For All was presented with the Community Recycling Project of the Year for its innovative work in diverting food from landfill and into the mouths of those that most need it
Founded nearly a decade ago, thanks to Big Lottery Funding, Food For All’s mission is to divert the surplus food in and around London to those who need it: homeless people, those on low incomes and people with mental and physical disabilities.
The organisation, based in Kings Cross, works by collecting surplus food from food businesses, such as supermarkets and local shops, and passing it on. As Coordinator Peter O’Grady explains: “All fruit and vegetables have a display by date; when that date is short, the supermarkets skip them. It’s a wasteful system in a country where people are suffering from poor diet due to financial or educational reasons or addictions, but we can make a difference; we can fill a gap in the business world and fill a gap for marginalised people.”
Two rickshaws – one bought from the winnings of a Sustainable City Award 2007 – and one van, collect the food.  It is then sorted into ‘useable’, ‘compostable’, and food for animals that live in a nearby animal sanctuary. The useable food is turned into meals, which are then distributed to the local community. The range of food Food For All picks up is varied: it recently picked up a batch of organic muesli that had mistakenly been contaminated with non-organic apricots.
In fact, Food For All manages to divert at least one van load of good food from landfill every day. Not only that, but 800 disadvantaged people get free, healthy meals daily, six days a week. This is all managed with just one part time employee, Paul O’Grady, and 28 hard-working volunteers. O’Grady is immensely proud of the volunteers: “Our dedicated team of volunteers have managed to keep the service going without fail, not missing a single day in two years.”
As well as regular volunteers, Food For All has additional support from Camden Council’s Youth Offending Team. Working in partnership, Food For All gains extra pairs of  hands and the kids carry out their community service hours by serving meals to the homeless at the Kings Cross Resource Centre.
What makes the project unique is the way it has managed to expand with limited resources: it also includes an eco garden (www.ecogarden.org.uk) that is used to educate children about food waste and the environment in general. Nearly 200 school groups visited the eco garden last year.
O’Grady was thrilled to win the Resource award, not least because the money won will provide the organisation with another rickshaw and, therefore, even more potential to help. “I wasn’t expecting us to win because there were just so many projects from all across the country doing amazing things, so it was that much more exciting to win!” he exclaimed.
With an impressive list of partners and high diversion yield, Cheshire Furniture Re-use Forum stood out as a deserving winner of the Yell Partnership Project award
With an impressive list of partners and high diversion yield, Cheshire Furniture Re-use Forum stood out as a deserving winner of the Yell Partnership Project award
The idea of getting Cheshire County Council and Cheshire’s community waste projects to partner up came about in 2002 when Ruth Evans, Cheshire County Council’s Recycling Officer, began negotiations to address the issue of Cheshire’s high level of household waste. Two years later, Cheshire Furniture Re-use Forum was founded, and a year later it was fully constituted.
Initially funded and led by the council, the forum has had support from the Recycling Consortium (now Resource Futures) and Community Waste Solutions; now 80 per cent of funding comes from the Cheshire Waste Partnership and 20 per cent through project members. For the partnership it is a means of increasing the amount of reusable bulky household waste diverted from landfill; while the furniture reuse projects get more reusable furniture to meet the growing demand of people on low incomes and are able to establish themselves on a sustainable footing financially.
The project employs 38 paid workers and has more than 240 volunteers – many of whom have learning or behavioural issues.  However, what is most exceptional about the Cheshire Forum is the breadth of its partners: 14 not-for-profit community organisations and three from the public sector. The community groups include: Balcon Community Trust; Chester Aid to the Homeless; Christian Concern, Crewe; Furnaround, Macclesfield; Furniture Finders of Winsford; North Staffordshire Furniture Mine; North Shropshire Furniture Scheme;
St Vincent de Paul, Chester and Ellsemore Port Furniture Unit; Salvation Army Ellesmere Port and Northwich; Save the Family; Tree of Life Centre, Wythenshawe; Wesley Community Furniture, and Wythenshawe Development Trust.
According to Project Coordinator Ged Edwards, the model provides a practical opportunity for the public sector, private sector and community waste partners to meet the needs of all concerned in environmental terms: “It enables local authorities to strengthen local projects and help provide them with the means to become a sustainable part of the waste solution. Furthermore, it enables community projects to fulfil to a greater degree their social mission and at the same time contribute to the regeneration of their areas, particularly through social inclusion activities (redistribution and volunteering) and training. As such, the Forum partnership achieves far more together than the sum of its constituent parts.”
Over the years, the Forum has almost doubled the tonnage diverted from landfill: last year it reused 663 tonnes of bulky household waste and electrical appliances. The organisation has achieved all this with cooperation, mutual understanding and respect between partners, and has also added to the social capital between the partners and within Cheshire generally, which will be important as the government looks to the third sector to take on more responsibility in the future.
On receipt of the award, Ged said “everyone was absolutely delighted to received the award”, and that the Resource Award donation would go a long way towards funding the Forum’s 2008-09 training programme.
New to this year’s awards, the Kerbside Project category attracted a huge response. A veteran of the awards and close runner up many times, the scale and range of Mid Devon Community Recycling’s operation made it a worthy and popular winner
New to this year’s awards, the Kerbside Project category attracted a huge response.  A veteran of the awards and close runner up many times, the scale and range of Mid Devon Community Recycling’s operation made it a worthy and popular winner
Founded in 1996, Mid Devon Community Recycling (MDCR) is funded 47 per cent through the sale of materials collected on its household and commercial collection rounds, 38 per cent from a local authority contract, 10 per cent from commercial collections and five per cent from grants. Its funding means the project is financially stable and this has enabled it to grow considerably over the years.
The organisation employs 32 people full time, five part time, and has five volunteers with special needs that work together to collect paper, glass, cardboard, aluminium, textiles, printer cartridges, tetrapaks, steel, plastics and batteries from nearly 33,000 households. In the last year alone, the organisation has diverted over 6,000 tonnes from landfill.
What impressed the Resource judges most was how MDCR works tirelessly to reduce waste in Devon, even adding low profit items like tetrapaks to its collection round to help people reduce the volume of their waste and make the impact and value of recycling much more visible.
In addition, numeracy and literacy training is given to all staff, along with first aid training to drivers, an NVQ in Recycling to all manual staff and Health and Safety in the Workplace to all supervisors. Indeed, MDCR is very conscious of supporting volunteers: “Since starting to work for us, four of our learning disabled volunteers have moved out of institutions and into their own flats. Their carers attribute this success largely to the work we do in raising their confidence and self esteem,” says Ken Orchard, Project Coordinator. “They love working here and we love working with them.” In addition to the volunteers, 40 per cent of the board is made up of representatives of the community and nearly 90 per cent of the community is involved as service users.
In fact, through being made to feel valued, six staff members have volunteered to become directors of the company.  “This work is completely unpaid and demonstrates their commitment to helping to make the organisation work. They have benefited through an increased sense of ownership and an ability to guide the strategic direction of their company,” notes Ken.
A key to the project’s success is that for 10 years, MDCR has worked under a partnership agreement with the local authority. The relationship has now been formalised in a contract, although Ken says they are still trying to “run it in the spirit of a partnership”. The organisation is also currently in the midst of negotiating a similar arrangement with the local health trust.
As Ken noted in his acceptance speech, having doggedly persisted with nominating themselves for a Resource award, it has, at last, paid off, and Mid Devon Community Recycling is an excellent example of what the community sector can achieve at the kerbside. With its winnings, the project is buying equipment for its planned eco education unit, which will form part of children’s experience when their school visits the site.
With companies across the board now starting to look into their impact on the climate, Proper Job was an obvious choice for Biffa’s Climate Conscious Award – it’s been doing it for years
What Devon’s Proper Job doesn’t do is probably not worth talking about. Put simply, it’s an all singing, all dancing environmental community group that at each stage of its 13-year development has kept the environment and its impact on the environment as the number one priority.
Having set up in the early 90s as one of the first community composting projects in the UK, it has since inspired 22 other groups in Devon to set up; and countless other groups have visited and as a result gained the courage to start their own scheme. Over the years, Proper Job has expanded and now makes household kerbside and commercial collections of over 18 materials, including: paper, cardboard, glass, metals, printer toners, wood, batteries, compost, furniture and paint. At the same time, it promotes market gardening; runs a wholefood café, which uses the garden’s organic vegetables and plants grown with its own compost; and lobbies for climate action work such as persuading local authorities to adopt innovative schemes like paying reuse credits and employing a community composting coordinator.
According to founders Richard Gomme and Nicky Scott, two of 20 part time workers and 18 regular volunteers, Proper Job has always taken the most energy or resource efficient option when making decisions and setting policies and has even offered a bike mileage allowance to encourage staff to cycle to work.
However, last year it went one step further when RE4D (Renewable Energy for Devon) conducted an energy use and efficiency audit and renewables assessment at Proper Job’s Reuse, Recycling and Composting Centre and the shop/café in town. As a result, and because maximum energy and efficiency measures were already in place, Proper Job was able to successfully apply for £25,000 funding to install 4kw (30sq metres) of solar photo voltaic panels. It now even counts itself as an electricity exporter.
Add to that its biodiesel pickup truck, using scrap wood for heating, a compost loo,  giving out free energy lightbulbs to customers and a re-fillable bottle scheme in the shop for liquid cleaning products, and you can see how lightly the organisation is treading its carbon foot.
According to Gomme’s application, the organisation deserved to win the prize because of its dedication: “Proper Job is blazing a trail of inspiration. It has overcome great obstacles, moved mountains and has never given up! Lots of dedicated people work together as a great team for something we all believe in – making a positive difference, finding creative solutions to our common challenges and problems and inspiring other people to take action.”
He continued: “We traded in LETS currency 12 years before the Totnes Pound, were the first Community Repaint scheme in the South West and were among the first to use sheep’s wool insulation bats. Indeed, in order to support a fledgling idea, expensive, but ethical choices were made. We are now creating a centre for combined community networks – bringing together Devon’s Community Recycling and Composting and Climate Action Networks in one shared office.”
Having won the Resource Award for being Climate Conscious, the organisation says it will be spending the money as match funding to draw down additional resources to support climate action and awareness raising work. This will include developing an interactive website and maximising community benefits.
Founder of Proper Job and all round community good guy, it was a pleasure to thank and recognise Nicky Scott for all his hard work in the sector by awarding him the Individual Contribution award
Nicky has worked tirelessly to champion community composting and the value of networking since the early 1990s and inspired many others to take action on reuse, recycling, composting and now ‘climate’ action in their communities. A founding member and ex-Chair of the Community Composting Network, he is involved at local, regional, national and international level, and is widely recognised as a leading expert in his field.
A vocal campaigner on exemptions for community groups under the Animal By-Product Regulations, Nicky isn’t afraid to innovate and has been experimenting with systems to compost biodegradable and compostable carrier bags. His guide to composting, Composting for All, is a modern classic, and Scotty’s Hot Box – a heat retaining compost box – is an innovative solution for one-site composting.
Once working out of the most stylish shed in the country, Nicky has more recently been addressing the carbon issue and bringing a wide range of environmental groups together under one roof. He was a popular and deserving winner whose influence has been far-reaching.
We’ll be looking for entries for the Resource Awards 2009 next April so check back on the website for details.
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