Recycling officers given chance to win trip to Africa

The visit will be made as part of Alupro's Trees for Africa campaign, which sees the industry organisation planting a tree in Burkina Faso for every tonne of aluminium packaging recycled by participating local authorities.

Two council recycling officers will be taken to see how UK recycling efforts are helping to fund tree-planting projects in Burkina Faso

Two recycling officers will be taken on a fact-finding mission to the West African country in November.

Through the Alupro campaign, 10,000 seedlings have already been planted in Burkina Faso, where the planting of trees helps slow the desertification of the Saharan country. Alupro is hoping to plant about 40,000 trees in 2006.

Invite
Alupro is now inviting recycling officers that have taken part in the campaign to send in details of how their authority has operated the campaign to encourage recycling. Officers are asked to describe what they did, what events were held and how it helped to increase the recycling of aluminium by householders.

Ros Shepherd, regional programme manager at Alupro, told letsrecycle.com that the decision on which recycling officers would win the trip to Africa would not be based on the tonnage of aluminium recycled.

She explained that doing so would be unfair on smaller local authorities. Instead, the competition would judge how the Trees for Africa campaign has been used.

Message
Ms Shepherd added: “For those local authorities that have not already signed up there is still time to join the scheme and get an entry in. Recycling officers simply need to get the message out to people.”

Entries need to be in by September, when Alupro will select the two officers to join the November fact-finding mission, which will take in both the Gabio Forest and a forest seed bank in the country's capital, Ouagadougou.

Cherry Hamson, communications director at Alupro, said: “It is a fabulous opportunity to see first hand the reality of what we are hearing about all the time in the media, and be able to do something to help.

“We went out to Burkina Faso last year and it's a wonderful place – with welcoming people, no tourists and a lively culture. And we have the best guides possible in our African colleagues,” she added.

• Ms Hamson will be one of the experts speaking at the free packaging seminar at the letsrecycle.com/Live event at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire on June 1. The seminar will provide an opportunity for local authorities to find out how to gain more support from packaging producers for the collection of packaging waste for recycling. See www.letsrecycle.com/live for more details.