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School Children Lead the Way in Recycling
School children from across Somerset showed how easy – and how important – it is to wake-up-to-waste last week, at Somerset Waste Action Programme’s (SWAP) Celebration Event (2nd July 2004), and Cheddon Fitzpaine Primary School led the way, winning first prize at the event.
“The event was created to celebrate the excellent efforts schools from all across the county have made in reducing, reusing and recycling waste,” explained Rupert Farthing, SWAP Programme Manager. “Each school was asked to design a poster to encourage people to minimise their waste, recycle or compost. The quality of entries was excellent, and it was a tricky task trying to pick the eventual winners.
All the posters from the twelve schools taking part at the event, kindly sponsored by Wyvern Waste Ltd, are going to be put together to make a calendar for the next academic year, which will be sent to all the schools in Somerset”.
The event took place at Lyngford House Conference Centre in Taunton, where children from the schools excelled at the chance to show the fantastic initiatives they have started and to share their good practice with other schools in the County.
The winning school – Cheddon Fitzpaine Primary School - won £500 to spend on environmental improvements in their school; Redstart Primary School from Chard took the second prize of £200 and Catcott Primary School the third prize of £100. The Countess Gytha Primary School from Queen Camel was also awarded a highly commended prize of a wormery!
Cllr Nigel Woollcombe-Adams, Chair of the Somerset Waste Partnership said: "It is wonderful to see such enthusiasm and commitment from all the school children, the standard of the presentations and the commitment from the schools was superb with most schools having set up sophisticated recycling and reuse schemes for a variety of materials and most importantly involving the children in the decision making. It was inspiring to see how far the schools had come in a year."
The SWAP team encourages schools to take a 'Pledge' to commit to sustainable practices such as using a composter and buying recycled products. The Pledge scheme offers a series of awards for schools to progress through and so far 75 schools have won a bronze award and 15 have won silver.
The SWAP team, based at the Carymoor Environmental Trust, team visit schools and community groups free of charge, to run workshops, give talks and inspire action on reducing, reusing and recycling waste. To book a visit with SWAP and to find out more, contact Rupert Farthing on 01963 351350, or logon to www.recyclesomerset.info
Notes to Editors:
The Somerset Waste Partnership dealt with 271,900 tonnes of household waste during 2003 - 04. Of this figure, 27% was recycled.
The Somerset Waste Partnership has a statutory household waste recycling target of 40% by 2005/06.
The Somerset Waste Action Programme is a joint venture between the Somerset Waste Partnership (made up of Somerset County Council and its five District/Borough Councils) and the Carymoor Environmental Trust, to promote waste minimisation, reuse, recycling and composting.
The schools that attended the event were:
Baltonsborough Primary
Burrowbridge Primary
Catcott Primary
Cheddon Fitzpaine Primary
Countess Gytha Primary
Crowcombe Primary
Meare Primary
Redstart Primary
Rode Primary
Taunton Prep School
Timberscombe School
Wookey Primary School
A series of photographs to support this press release are available on request - please contact Paul Chiplen at Somerset Council on 01823 355665 pchiplen@somerset.gov.uk
Interviews:
Rupert Farthing, SWAP Programme Manager, on 01963 351350, rf.swap@carymoor.org.uk
Nigel Woollcombe-Adams
06 July 2004
For further details contact Rupert Farthing
01963 351350
Email: rf.swap@carymoor.org.uk
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