Villagers celebrate recycling success and get Greener Together
Chepstow villagers became recycling ambassadors, after hosting a fantastic Community Recycling Day recently where over 50 guests took part in activities including scarecrow making.
Volunteers at community enterprise, Brockweir and Hewelsfield Village Shop and Café (BHVSA), organised a fun-filled day, to show local adults, children and visitors practical ways of recycling, after they signed up to Greener Together – the co-operative way, a new initiative run by Co-operatives UK.
Greener Together is a major project which encourages and supports individuals to overcome the barriers of lifestyle change and live in a more sustainable way, and the team at BHVSA, inspired by the project, ran workshops on how to make compost, how to recycle fabric and offered advice on energy saving in the home.
Greener Together pioneer, Chrissy Birch, who helped organise the Chepstow event, said the day was a huge success with everyone getting involved and learning new recycling skills. “The day was fantastic and it was great to see so many people interested in learning more about recycling, making compost and saving energy,” she said.
“And with fun workshops including scarecrow making, fabric recycling, making bird feeders from juice cartons and a clothes swap, it was a great day out for all the family.
“The Greener Together project gave us the impetus to hold the event. We would never have thought of a community recycling day, but everyone enjoyed themselves and we all felt we really could be ‘greener together’.”
Michelle Lockwood, Manager of the Greener Together project at Co-operatives UK, said: “The team at BHVSA did a fantastic job in helping to raise awareness of the importance of recycling and energy saving, and we are delighted that so many people went along to find out more about these key issues and about Greener Together.”
BHVSA is among hundreds of individual co-operative members across the country supporting Greener Together – the co-operative way.
With its dedicated website www.greenertogether.coop, Greener Together helps co-operatives make a significant impact on climate change, and reduce their environmental impact in the three key areas of energy, waste and personal transport.
Part of the Greener Living Fund, sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the project aims to help people to live in a more sustainable way, by focusing on the small actions every individual can take in their daily lives and enables member organisations of Co-operatives UK, the Confederation of Co-operative Housing (CCH) and the Plunkett Foundation to work with their members and customers in achieving greener behaviour.
