Green Apple award for Torbay Council’s recycling scheme

By PRSD, on Wednesday, January 21, 2009

posted by Cptn

Torbay Council has been awarded a Green Apple environmental award for its attempts to promote recycling across the Bay.

Apparently, this all happened in November last year, but we haven’t seen it anywhere, so we thought we’d recycle the story.

A project tackling the problem of plastic bags impressed the Green Apple judges, who’ve awarded an apple to Torbay every year since 2004 for imaginative recycling initiatives. This was the council’s fifth award.

Torbay Council’s recycling officer, Carol Arthur, explained the background to this year’s award. “Working with Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust and the Transition Town community group, we ran a competition asking primary schools to come up with an eye-catching and thought-provoking design for a re-usable bag,” she said.

“Fifty thousand organic natural unbleached cotton bags were produced with the winning design on them. More than 50 local retailers, both large and small, have supported the initiative by publicising the re-usable bags in their stores.

The rest of Torbay’s Green Apple award winning green initiatives read thusly:

Torbay’s first Green Apple award in 2004 resulted from a project in which waste audits were carried out in 26 schools, with the provision of recycling and composting facilities.

In 2005 the council worked with the over-55 sector, providing people with information that enabled them to recycle more.

The following year, several local tourist attractions accepted offers of can recycling facilities provided by the council. Clients from Hollacombe Community Resource Centre emptied the containers and sorted and crushed the cans, with money from their sale ploughed back into other recycling initiatives.

In 2007, pupils submitted more than 300 designs on a theme of waste and recycling, with the winning entries put on the council’s refuse vehicles.

How do you like them apples?

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