Schools recycling league

Luke, the Youth Parliament Member for Hastings and Rother made an impressive presentation to officers from both authorities. Both see this as an opportunity to support the educational and communications programmes needed to encourage everyone to deal with waste responsibly.

However, initial approaches to East Sussex County Council, who are responsible for the management of the waste disposal function, consider that they may have to treat any recycled waste collected in this way as commercial waste. This would mean that it might not all count towards government targets, attract recycling credit payments and indeed would be to the detriment of the proposed recycling schemes both authorities would be introducing in the forthcoming year. If this position is confirmed the proposal may come to an end and an opportunity to engage with the school communities where a change in behaviour could bring about lifetime benefits, could be lost. The difficulties being experienced in taking the matter forward were reported to a Joint meeting of Councillors from Rother and Hastings on 20th October.