The ‘Win on Waste’ scheme asks members of the public to donate parts of their rubbish that are not collected by the local authority to prevent them from going to landfill. Items include, toothbrushes, pens, corks and biscuit wrappers.
The scheme is run by Ideas2Action, a local charity that runs community recycling projects across the conurbation and south east Dorset. It relies on a team of volunteers to help out at monthly drop-off sessions at venues in areas including Creekmoor, Southbourne and Canford Heath.
Monique Munroe, Business Manager for the charity, says, “we say to people, if you’re going to go to the tip or put things in the bin, please check our ‘We Need That’ directories first because there may be something we can use. Where there is a need for these items it can benefit a good cause.”
Win on Waste currently has 15 drop-off locations across Bournemouth and Poole and new venue is planned to open for Christchurch in May.
The volume of waste being collected at these sessions has grown recently as the scheme has gathered more attention. The issue of plastic pollution has also been high in people’s minds following greater media attention this year. A survey by the supermarket Waitrose found that enquiries about plastic packaging from its customers went up 800% in 2018-19.
“We are getting so much now that we are desperately looking for a central storage facility where we can get our volunteers in to sort the donations, get it sent out or get it collected by the organisations and businesses that use it”, Monique says.
“We need to deal with our success and deal with the waste. Now we have 45 volunteers. When we started we only had 3!”
The majority of the material collected including, crisp packets and biscuit wrappers, are sent to TerraCycle, a niche recycling firm whose claim is to ‘recycle the un-recyclable’.
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