Information Sheet for CRN website on Enabling Community Waste Initiatives Partnerships (ECWIP)

Join in, Join up!Setting up county community recycling networks.

Community waste organisations are beginning to see the light! More and more groups are starting to appreciate the benefits of working together to achieve waste reduction, reuse and recycling more efficiently at a local level. Co-ordinating activities by forming a county network brings multiple benefits to groups. By networking, groups can maximise existing precious resources, better access information and funding, and share ideas and skills to develop new projects.

Set up by The Recycling Consortium in Bristol - Enabling Community Waste Initiatives Partnerships (ECWIP) has researched existing local partnerships to see how they do it - what services the provide to their members, how they provide those services and whether they have developed projects of their own. This research has created case study examples, providing options of how new partnerships could be modelled. By providing the tools to set up county networks, the project is designed to dovetail in with CRN's support for community waste groups at a national level, and its increasing role in supporting the development of regional networks.

An example of a local network is Cardiff Waste Forum (CWF) which has two members of staff and ten member organisations including Newport Wastesavers (kerbside scheme), ReCreate (children's Scrapstore) and Cylch (Wales' CRN). CWFs main purpose is to provide an information base for 3R's activity in the Cardiff area. Its mission is to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill through promotion of 3Rs to the general public and through education work in schools. CWF acts as a co-ordinating body for 3Rs activity, to ensure where possible that community waste activity is not duplicated within Cardiff. It also provides a the single point of information for community waste activity for Cardiff County Council.

Another example is the Devon Furniture Forum, which is a membership organisation for ten furniture projects across the county. The Forum has six members of staff (the majority of whom are involved in DFF's own furniture project) and the regional development co-ordinator provides advice and information, help with funding applications and support with project delivery. DFF's funding is project based through various sources including the Regional Development Agency, landfill tax and the local authority.

ECWIP has now developed a training and facilitation programme to enable the development of new county networks. This programme has been tried and tested during the development of the first three networks set up by ECWIP, in Lancashire, Cambridgeshire and Essex. The programme comprises six facilitation sessions, taking community waste organisations in the county through the process of:

o creating shared aims and objectives o identifying resources to support the network

o choosing the membership

o identifying a legal structure

o writing a constitution (if appropriate)

o developing a work programme

o developing a monitoring programme

ECWIP has a trained facilitator, if groups do not have someone locally who can provide that role for them. If groups do have access to a facilitator in their area, then the project is currently developing a guide to setting up a local network, which includes background information, worksheets and exercises to take them through the process. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of networks, ECWIP has also developed a methodology to measure tonnage of materials collected and re-used, gather information on how the network reduces social exclusion and identify the positive effects on the local economy. This methodology will be made available to existing networks to test and gather information on the contribution they make to the local area. ECWIP is now going on to support networks and groups to develop informal partnership agreements with their local authorities such as memoranda of understanding and utilising their local Compact. These agreements once established will provide a formal framework for more beneficial partnerships - establishing 'ground rules' as to how each party would like to be treated by their partner.

For further details about the project, advice about setting up a new network or developing a partnership agreement contact Liz Smith at the Recycling Consortium on 0117 930 4355 or e-mail lizs@recyclingconsortium.org.uk.