Now in its second year, the Recycle for Greater Manchester (R4GM) Community Fund has awarded a new tranche of funding for community and voluntary sector groups focused on “creative solutions” for recycling, repairing or reusing household waste throughout the region.
Securing between £3,500 and £20,000, each of the successful groups was recognised for their “commitment to sustainability and delivering social value for their communities”.
The annual fund of £220,000 comes from the sale of “preloved” household items in a joint initiative by R4GM and waste contractor Suez Recycling and Recovery UK.
The items are collected at household waste recycling centres across Greater Manchester, before being cleaned and repaired for resale in three ‘Renew Shops’ in Oldham, Trafford and Salford, alongside a newly launched eBay store.
Congratulating the successful applicants, Cllr Martyn Cox, lead at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) for the green city-region and waste and recycling, said: “Community-led projects like these can not only support green jobs and skills in our towns and cities, but also – crucially – offer help and support to residents during the exceptional challenges of this cost of living crisis.”
Projects
Several of the successful projects are based on reducing food waste and providing free healthy food to those in need, such as the Manchester Urban Diggers project.
Humans MCR are using the funds to “break the cycle of food poverty”, by providing clients with the tools and resources to sustain themselves without relying on emergency foodbanks as a regular measure.
The Community Buds project in Bury is creating a community garden using people’s waste. They intend to bring members of the community “out of isolation” and help them overcome mental health barriers.
In Trafford, the Little Green Sock project won funding to increase storage at their clothing and baby bank to help reach more families in poverty and provide access to pre-loved baby clothing and accessories.
A number of projects from 2021/22 have been successful in bidding again this year, including Future Directions CIC, which creates and delivers accessible and inclusive training sessions about recycling to people with learning disabilities.
Jennifer Neville, project manager at Future Directions CIC, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to have been successful in receiving this grant for a second year running. This funding has allowed us to work with people with learning disabilities to enable them to understand the importance of recycling to help save resources and protect the environment.”
Other projects also address wider community issues including mental health, food poverty and sustainability.
‘Triple bottom line approach’
John Wrigley, regional director for Suez, said the company operated a “triple bottom line approach” to everything it did, “to ensure that our work benefits people and the planet.”
Mr Wrigley added: “Our reuse project in Greater Manchester with the development of the ‘Renew Shops’ and hub is a perfect example of this, saving items that would have previously gone to waste and benefiting local people at the same time through the money raised.
“We are extremely proud and it’s a real pleasure to see the community initiatives that will make an impact in their local areas benefiting.”
Manchester
Representing an estimated population of 2.8 million, the GMCA had a household waste recycling rate of 47.7% in the 2020/21 financial year.
In 2019, Suez signed two five-year contracts, combined worth more than £1 billion, with the GMCA to manage waste from the region (see letsrecycle.com story).
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