Harrogate Borough Council has won a Golden Carton Award for its work to increase beverage carton recycling in the district.
The awards, which are designed to celebrate environmental leadership and recycling best-practice, recognise local authorities achieving the greatest improvements in beverage carton recycling.
The council entered and won the category for ‘Best Communications Campaign’ recognising its wide ranging communications activities, from direct contact with residents to easily accessible information on the council’s website.
The council also made excellent use of major events in the borough to reach local residents and proactively engaged with community groups, schools and local interest groups to promote the recycling message.
Commenting on the entry, the judges said: The campaign showed great creativity in finding ways to reach the widest possible audience and this is reflected in a 20% increase in beverage carton recycling in Harrogate over the last three years, and hope that 2014 will produce even further increases.
This is a great achievement at a time when local authority budgets are being squeezed from all sides.
Sally Wilson, Recycling Communications Officer at Harrogate Borough Council said: Our residents have always responded positively to our recycling programmes and this award is testimony to their efforts as well as the council’s.
We put a lot of thought and effort into our communications programme and it is great to see it pay off in our recycling rates and to be recognised nationally for our efforts.
Councillor Phil Ireland, Harrogate Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment, Transport & External Affairs said: We have made some really great progress on recycling but with tough targets to meet, it is important that we continue to actively engage with our residents.
Increasing the amount of waste we recycle from this area, reduces disposal costs and harmful greenhouse gas emissions, making our service more environmentally-friendly and providing better value for money for local residents.
Fay Dashper, Senior Recycling Manager at the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE) UK which runs the awards added: Entries for the awards were of a very high standard this year and demonstrate just how much excellent work is going into recycling within local authorities.
As an organisation we are committed to increasing carton recycling in the UK and with the opening last year of our UK-first dedicated beverage carton recycling plant, we hope to encourage many more councils to add cartons to their kerbside collection services.
Beverage carton recycling has come a long way in the last seven years. The positive working relationship between ACE UK and local authorities has resulted in a 14-fold increase in the percentage of local authorities collecting cartons at kerbside- from 4% of local authorities in 2006 to 57% in May 2014. When ACE UK’s own bring-bank system is included, 91% of local authorities now collect cartons for recycling compared to just 20% in 2006.
Picture: left-right: Sally Wilson, Harrogate Borough Council Recycling Communication Manager, Councillor Phil Ireland, Harrogate Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment, Transport & External Affairs; and Fay Dashper, Senior Recycling Manager at the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE) UK
