Your Town, Your Future: Let's go green
A RUBBISH-FREE town is the vision of an environmental worker in Cheltenham.
Talking to the Echo as part of our Your Town, Your Future series, Mike Harrison, the co-ordinator of a network of recycling champions, said the aim was to get people to send nothing to landfill.
Mr Harrison said his team of volunteers worked to help people produce less waste and wanted residents to make a permanent change.
He said: "It's a different way of life and, of course, if people do reduce what they use and reuse things and then recycle what they throw away, it leads to changes in other areas.
"They will look at the energy they use, how far their food has come and make a real change to their life."
Mr Harrison, who works for campaign group Vision 21, said it was necessary to help people make positive changes.
He said: "Our latest campaign is slim your bin. It will tie up with zero waste week in late January and we'll be showing people how to produce an absolute minimum. When we've done this before, we've had people with just a couple of kilos left in their dustbin."
The Cheltenham recycling champion network was set up in 2006 as a joint venture between Cheltenham Centre of Change – now Vision 21 – the borough council and Cheltenham Federation.
It scored a notable success earlier this year in getting people to collect old copies of Yellow Pages and has also put 60 battery collection boxes around the town.
Mr Harrison said: "We kept more than half a tonne of them from landfill. It shows that if you make it easy for people to recycle, they will.
"I think the council should be helping people to reduce their rubbish."
5 Comments
by Neil, Cheltenham
Thursday, November 27 2008, 4:27PM
“A very good point from ADie. It is high time the supermarkets were taken to task by the Government for all the wasteful and unnecessary packaging they produce. Instead they have a go at the easy target - the public.”
by Doing our bit!, Cheltenham
Thursday, November 27 2008, 3:49PM
“I love to recycle and the fact that Cheltenham has opportunities to do so is great, but why not plastics? If we could recycle that I would have little to put in my bin every week.
We need to change our attitudes to rubbish and go back to the Good Life!!”
by Anon, Cheltenham
Thursday, November 27 2008, 2:25PM
“My bottles get recycled, so do my cans, so do my newspapers, but the useless council can't recycle plastic (why not?) nor cardboard (why not?), yet they and their environmental confederates are always shouting at tax payers to do more. Have these people ever bought a large consumer item, such as a washing machine, and then wandered what to do with the cardboard? Don't tell me to take it to a recycling centre, because in trying to minimise my carbon footprint, I got rid of the car. If I want to get throw away anything major I have to pay the council to take it away.
Rather than go green I should have kept the car and at least I could pollute while filling the landfill site.”
by ADie, Chelt
Thursday, November 27 2008, 12:50PM
“How about having a go at manufaturers and supermarkets instead. After all, it is them who actually produce the waste. e.g wrapping individual bananas in plastic is not needed. Putting a computer memory card that is less than 1 inch squared, into a package that is 7inch squared is hardly helping is it? Allow people to have cardbaord boxes for thier shopping as in years gone by instead of just throwing the boxes in a skip!
Start having ago at them instead of contsantly blaming Joe Public for a change!
Until the Supermarkets and manufacturers are made to do thier bit and penalised for OTT packaging, I won't bother to do my bit.”
by Neil, Cheltenham
Thursday, November 27 2008, 12:46PM
“I agree totally with what Mr Harrison is seeking to achieve. It would also be nice for everyone in the town if Cheltenham's litter-strewn streets could also be cleaned up. They are a disgusting sight, with discarded take-away food rubbish providing the worst mess and attracting both gulls and rats who are taking advantage of this disgusting and unsightly mess, which has been carelessly and negligently discarded by people.”