Funded by the Association of London Government, London Remade, the Environment Agency and the Social, Economic and Environmental Development Programme, the project currently supports 16 community recycling groups and hopes to increase that to at least 40 by the end of 2002.
“We are keen to receive more applications to participate in the Sharing Resources sessions,” said MaryEllen Etienne, London CRN’s Sharing Resources co-ordinator. “Feedback on Sharing Resources has been very positive. Groups have felt sessions made a real difference to them, encouraging them to focus on and develop areas of improvement as well as pinpointing and filling in knowledge gaps.”
Consultants
The project aims at improving and strengthening the position of the community sustainable waste management sector by matching community recycling groups with their available consultants entirely free of charge.
 Ealing Community Transport's Gary Clark (second from right) provides a Sharing Resources tour of a civic amenity site to (left to right) Neil Carrett, and Ben Metz (London CRN), Michelle Cornwell, Alice Roberts, Matt Cook, Anna Carmichael, and Tim McLoughlin (DEFRA), and Richard Mehmed (London CRN) |
“The experts providing these services continue to be drawn from organisations in the Community Recycling sector both within London and beyond,” explained Ben Metz, London CRN Director. “Consultants cover subjects from business planning and marketing to composting and kerbside collections services.”
So far, consultants have given assistance in the expansion of an existing kerbside collection program, the expansion of a city farm's composting programme, the provision of sector training to several education and training organisations, the strategic planning of two start-up scrap stores and the preparation of fundraising strategies for a furniture recycling agency.
Sipi Hameenaho, whose Greenwich Cooperative Development Agency made use of Sharing Resources for human resources training, said: “The advisor’s knowledge of the sector provided a comprehensive introduction of the key issues for the recycling sector and offered us relevant case studies.”
London community-based organisations either already involved or who may be looking to get involved in recycling schemes are asked to contact MaryEllen Etienne by emailing: sharingres@lcrn.org.uk.
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