Launched at County Hall, Preston, on Wednesday, the Lancashire Community Recycling Network will build on the county council's Community Solutions Project. Members are being drawn from new and existing community waste groups and the new network will have close links to national community recycling, composting and furniture recycling organisations.
 Cllr Brian Johnson (left), Lancashire's cabinet member for urban and rural regeneration, with Andrew Swarbrick, chairman of the Lancashire CRN |
Lancashire currently recycles or composts about 16.8%, almost twice the average rate of the North West region of England. Through the new group, Lancashire's community recyclers have been set a target of recycling or re-using 5% of the waste produced in Lancashire each year. If the Lancashire CRN members are successful, they should be recycling about 30,000 tonnes of material by 2005.
Lancashire CRN members will be involved in waste minimisation, re-use, recycling and composting initiatives as well as waste awareness campaigning. Sub-groups within the network will specialise in encouraging composting and furniture recycling and re-use activities.
Speaking at the launch, Lancashire cabinet member for urban and rural regeneration, Brian Johnson, said: “The community sector has an important role to play in helping Lancashire turn its annual mountain of rubbish into a molehill. This new group will play a vital part in helping this sector achieve the challenging target that it has set itself of recycling 5% of Lancashire's rubbish.”
The Lancashire CRN has two years of initial funding from the Lancashire Environment Fund and Lancashire county council, from which a full-time officer will be appointed to provide support. This will see about 90,000 provided in the first year – 70,000 from the council, although budgets for the second year have not been finalised.
The first chairman of the Lancashire CRN, Andrew Swarbrick of Trinity Community Partnerships, said: “Lancashire CRN is committed to working with new and existing groups across Lancashire. We can help them develop partnerships with relevant organisations and encourage them to share resources, ideas and good practice to make their schemes successful. The group will also be promoting the community sector in Lancashire, its important role in recycling and developing markets and promoting training and employment.”
Although the Lancashire CRN has two years of funding, the group intends to become self-supporting, and will be charging members a small membership fee to join.
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