Community Waste Management
What is Community Waste Management?
It is about communities
Many communities across Northern Ireland have decided to take control of the waste in their area, often using community recycling as a vehicle to deliver a wider range of activities and services to local people.
It is about more than recycling
Community Waste Management covers an array of different activities including: recycling; reuse; refurbishment; reprocessing; remanufacturing; community and home composting; waste prevention, minimisation, reduction, prevention and avoidance; waste education and awareness raising, to name but a few.
It is about resources rather than waste
Community Waste Management urges people to think about waste as resources currently stored in the wrong place. Most of what is considered waste is still useful or has value. Waste management is about finding these resources a new home and realising the value of these unwanted resources to do good.
It is about people
Community Waste Management offers numerous employment, training and volunteering opportunities to people, often to those who have been excluded from mainstream society such as the long-term unemployed, people with learning difficulties and people recovering from addictions.
It is about the environment
Community Waste Management helps protect local environments and make better use of scarce resources.
It is about social enterprise
Community Waste Management provides communities with an opportunity to make a significant contribution to their local economy by developing local businesses that deliver services to local communities, for the benefit of communities, whilst being accountable to their communities.
It is about innovation
Community Waste Management has been at the forefront of innovation in the waste arena for many years; from tackling difficult to recycle materials such as mattresses through to intensive education and awareness programmes that reduce waste arisings and increase recycling by more than 50%.
Click on the link to find out more about the Community Waste Sector.
Check out the 2012 Spring edition of Waste Watch Magazine!
