NEWS FROM THE REGIONS

EASTERN REGION

Community Mapergy Goes live in the East! The Mapping Community Capacity project quantifies and maps the reuse and recycling of waste in the East England by using a geographic information system ( GIS ) Remade East Mapergy website to map the location of projects in the region and the types of services they are delivering to their communities. The website identifies over 120 organisations that provide re-use and recycling services in 24 material categories.

All the groups listed are community sector, not-for profit organisations operating in the East Anglian region. 

Information regarding the types of waste and resources collected, the tonnage collected in the past year, numbers and types of volunteers and training places provide reliable, up-to-date information to waste managers, social services, training partners and businesses to use within their organisations.

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NORTH WEST

Things are slowly moving forward in the developing relationships between waste contractors and the community waste sector in the region. Cheshire has now appointed the contractor for household waste recycling centres (HWRCs) and partnership working between them and re-use organisations is being reviewed. in Manchester. The Furniture Re-use Network (FRN) and the preferred contract bidder went on a tour of HWRCs to see what was required to maximise re-use at the centres and a similar plan is in progress in Cumbria.

Meanwhile commercial waste collections continue to climb up the agenda, with several recent surveys revealing the potential importance for sector development of this waste stream.

Last week, CRED held a seminar in Manchester, hosted by Emerge Recycling on business waste collections.

The other area of major development is in community composting. Both Cheshire and Cumbria have produced waste prevention plans that highlight the need to develop more composting initiatives and are looking to the regional network to initiate this. Developments should be interesting and you ideas are welcomed.

Contact: Ian Scott ian@crn.org.uk 0161 273 6976

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SOUTH WEST

The national regional programme funded by Defra has recently come to an end and there has been a great deal of work on finding continuation funding for the work that has been going on in the South West over the past two and a half years. At this stage it is necessary to cut back on the services organisations receive whilst this search continues. The CRN UK will be providing a peer exchange email address to allow SW CWN members to share information directly with other groups within the region.

The Community Waste Network South West steering group will continue to meet and feed back important information to this peer network.

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YORKSHIRE AND HUMBER

There is a strong link between waste education work and the education for sustainable development agenda, particularly into schools and colleges. The latter is being pushed by the new Department for Children, Schools and Families, which has identified waste as a key theme in a recent guidance document, and increasingly by local authorities and local education bodies. How to improve reduction, reuse and recycling messages in communities generally, not just through schools, will be discussed by Yorkshire & Humber waste education workers when they gather for a network meeting on Wednesday 5 September, in South Leeds. This event is hosted by BTCV, contact Paul or Mary for further information.

The Community Waste Network team is hoping to be part of a cluster of recycling organisations displaying at this year's Footsey 100 conference on Thursday 18 October at York Racecourse. It provides a great opportunity to network with other community organisations and social enterprises and make links with support agencies & funders. If you are interested in taking part, either as a delegate or an exhibitor, or have already booked, please let Paul or Mary know. If you've been put off by the registration fees, there may be opportunities to share stands with one another.

Contact: Paul Forrest paulf@crn.org.uk , Mary Goldsworthy, mary@crn.org.uk   0113 2003977