Entries were invited in one of five categories, including: best communications campaign of the year; best waste minimisation or prevention project; best partnership award; best regional project/initiative; and, recycling officer of the year.
Ms Gosling was the winner in the latter category for her tireless work promoting recycling and waste reduction on behalf of Westminster city council, and the judges were particularly impressed with how much she had achieved in a year – including work on free newspaper recycling and coordinating a Zero Waste Week. She beat off competition from David Bailey, recycling and waste minimisation officer for Leeds city council and Yvonne Crace, waste education officer for the London borough of Brent, who the judges also commended.
Other winners included a communications campaign in Barrow in Cumbria, the work by a waste prevention advisor in West Sussex to drive down waste from a housing estate in Crawley, North London's 'Watch Your Waste Week' waste minimisation initiative and Scottish Borders' work to divert books from landfill with local book re-use organisation, Bookdonors.
The night kicked off with a champagne reception, sponsored by compliance specialist Wastepack, followed by a sumptuous three-course dinner and the Celebration Awards.
The awards were hosted by former Top Gear presenter and motoring expert, Quentin Wilson, who entertained the audience with stories of green motoring and achieving the lowest ever score on Strictly Come Dancing. This was followed by music and dancing until late.
Celebrate
The event was organised by letsrecycle.com and ran alongside LARAC's two-day annual conference, entitled Shaping the Policy Agenda, which ran from October 7-8.
Joy Blizzard, chair of LARAC and one of the judges, said: “It has been a tumultuous year for local government recycling but the awards tonight are a time when we can celebrate the great work being done by local authorities and LARAC members as individuals, teams and partnerships across the UK.”
“We had a huge number of entries for this, our first LARAC awards so thank you to all of you who have supported us in this way and to my fellow judges who took the time to scrutinise them all carefully,” she added.
The judges were: Joy Blizzard from LARAC; Andy Doran, national manager for aluminium recycling firm Novelis; Linda Crichton, ROTATE manager at WRAP; Peter Selkirk, managing director for container manufacturer Taylors; Caelia Quinault, news editor from letsrecycle.com; and, Mark Parkinson, recycling and marketing manager for Staffordshire county council.
The winners were:
WINNER -Recycle for Barrow
Resource Cumbria's campaign to improve recycling figures in a poor-performing area and promote an expanded kerbside collection service.
Best Partnership Award (Target Success) – sponsored by Viridor
WINNER – Scottish Borders council and Bookdonors.
Partnership between Scottish Borders council and a Community Interest Company to divert unwanted books from landfill.
WINNER – North London 'Watch Your Waste Week'
The North London Waste Authority and seven North London boroughs' campaign to focus attention on waste prevention for a week in October 2008.
Best Waste Minimisation or Prevention Project – sponsored by Novelis
WINNER – Waste prevention advisors encouraging and supporting waste prevention initiatives in West Sussex, some of them developing their own ideas.
WINNER – Jennifer Gosling, Westminster city council
Since being appointed recycling officer at Westminster city council in July 2008, Jennifer has developed a communications plan, reviewed recycling collection containers and co-ordinated a Zero Waste Challenge Week.
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