Our community RePaint project wins Best Community Recycling Initiative
7 May 2017
Community RePaint is delighted to announce that it has won ‘Best Community Recycling Initiative at the Awards for Excellence in Recycling & Waste Management. Organised by letsrecycle.com, The Awards for Excellence in Recycling & Waste Management recognises and rewards those striving for excellence across the waste, resource and recycling sector.
The Community RePaint network collects unwanted, leftover paint and re-distributes it to individuals, families and communities in need, improving the wellbeing of people and the appearance of places across the UK. The network won the award based on its key successes in 2016. This includes the successful launch of two paint remanufacturing centres, in March, Cambridgeshire (CCORRN) and in Wallasey on the Wirral (Recipro). This is a new initiative to remanufacture sizeable quantities of leftover paint into new good quality paint using technology developed by NewLife Paints and sponsored by Dulux paints. The centres provide the perfect solution to the issue of over 50 million litres of paint being wasted, through landfill disposal or via incineration, in the UK each year.
With the help of these paint remanufacturing centres, the Community RePaint network (comprising over 70 schemes) collected over 464,000 litres of paint in 2016, the largest amount since its formation. Over 70% of this paint was successfully redistributed, meaning 332,000 litres of paint helped improve communities across the UK and coloured 419,000 lives.
The remanufacturing centres processed over 26,000 litres of paint, which was redistributed to their customers, other Community RePaint schemes and groups and charities in need of larger quantities of paint.
Speaking ahead of this year’s event, Jacob Hayler, Executive Director at the Environmental Services Association and part of the expert judging panel, said “Judging this year’s Awards for Excellence was a real honour and a pleasure. There were so many strong entries and it was exciting to see the amount of energy and enthusiasm out there devoted to improving recycling and making the most of our resources.”
Reflecting on the award, Martin Pearse, Community RePaint Network Manager commented:
‘We are thrilled to have all our hard work in 2016 recognised with this award. It was an exciting year and this is the icing on the cake for the network as a whole and for all of our schemes. This is a pivotal time for Community RePaint as we continue to open schemes in new areas whilst our existing schemes grow and develop. Our remanufacturing centres have offered a great boost to the whole network, and the good quality, affordable paint produced by them really helps to maximise the amount of paint we can prevent being disposed of.’
Other organisations nominated in this category were Community Wood Recycling, Usel (Ulster Supported Employment and Learning) and Belfast City Council, Mattress Recycling Partnership and Reach Homes: Affordable Eco-Homes.
