For Recycle Week 2023, we would like to give a big shout-out and thanks to all our Emmaus Mossley recycling and reuse champions.
Here are 10 ways we’re working together to reduce waste and keep items in use for longer…
✅ Within our community home, all companions are encouraged to recycle cardboard, plastic, glass, metal and food waste. We have separate bins for each and through recycling more, we’ve been able to reduce the amount of general waste.
✅ Our social enterprise ensures 10s of 1000s of items each year are kept out of the waste chain. Your donations and purchases have a huge positive impact on the environment.
✅ Our workshop team ensures furniture is repaired and refurbished to extend the life of these items. They also utilise wood to create new furniture and household products.
✅ Our talented Upcycling volunteer group creates products from surplus items and materials. As well as generating an income for our charity, these products give inspiration to our customers.
✅ Our volunteers also bundle up items, fabrics and materials to enable our customers to repair, create and be thriftier at home.
✅ Our companions and volunteers are busy every day in the warehouse, sorting donations and separating the products and materials that cannot be sold in our Secondhand Superstore. We have various outlets for these and always do our utmost to recycle and generate an income from every item we cannot sell in-store.
✅ On average, we’re currently recycling around 1,500kg of scrap metal each month. Thanks to Rob and his team, the metal is separated and sorted so that we’re able to generate an income from this recycling activity.
✅ Each week we recycle on average, 6,000 litres of paper and cardboard. A large quantity of which is boxes and packaging brought to us filled with donations. We do reuse as much as we can in store, along with plastic shopping bags and plastic storage boxes.
✅ Along with parts, project pieces and random supplies, we have recently introduced a wood reuse space within The Shed where customers can buy various pieces of reclaimed materials.
✅ Within Lucie’s Café, we’re working to phase out all single-use products such as individual sachets of salt, pepper, sugar and butter.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
As you’re likely already aware, recycling should really be one of the last options for all of us. As a community, we try and look at the options before recycling, encouraging everyone to consider their actions and reuse, repair and repurpose where possible. The difference we’ve made in the last year alone, to better sort and process goods, has helped us reduce our waste and frequency of tip runs.
As always, we can and hope to do more, but the progress we’re making is having a huge positive impact. As well as our community members, we’d like to thank all of our supporters who donate goods and support us with our reuse and recycling efforts.
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