Press Release
Jan 2005 - Ring the changes and reuse your old mobile phones and print cartridges
Make a New Years resolution to reuse your old mobile phone or printer cartridge and help local community groups at the same time.
Cambridgeshire County Council has launched a new collection scheme for old mobile phones and printer ink and toner cartridges at its Household Waste Recycling Centres to help reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.
In 2003, between 12 and 14,000 tonnes of cartridges ended up in landfill in the UK and research suggests that there are over 20 million potentially toxic redundant mobile phones.
This initiative not only aims to reduce the negative environmental impacts but also to provide local community groups with the chance to raise more funds for their organisations.
Three community groups will collect the phones and cartridges from the County Council's ten recycling centres and sell them to the recycling industry. The groups will be able to keep the money they make to fund their work with the County Council funding the running costs of the project.
The community groups taking part in the scheme are: Opportunities Without Limits (OWL), based in Sawston; Branching Out, based in Littleport and Fenland Area Community Enterprise Trust (FACET) based in March.
Mark Shelton, Waste Reduction and Recycling Manager for Cambridgeshire County Council, said: "The County Council has been working on a number of initiatives with local community groups and charities through the Community Reuse and Recycling Network, and we are very pleased to be able to launch this new collection scheme that will help to provide some additional income to local groups as well as recycling old phones and cartridges".
Notes for Editors
For more information about Recycling in Cambridgeshire, contact Victor Perez, Waste Campaigns Officer on 01223 717572 or visit www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk.
For more information about CCORRN activities contact Nikki DiGiovanni, Network Organiser for CCORRN on 01354 742300, or visit www.ccorrn.org.uk or www.choose2reuse.org.uk.
Cambridgeshire Community Reuse and Recycling Network (CCORRN) is a community-led Network (unincorporated not for profit association) that supports the development of community reuse and recycling schemes across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
CCORRN is a partnership between the community, public and private sector that started in early 2003 with financial support obtained by Cambridgeshire County Council from the DEFRA Recycling Challenge Fund and from Enventure, an environmental body that administers Landfill Tax Credits for the waste operator - Donarbon Ltd of Waterbeach. The project was initially co-ordinated by Anglia Polytechnic University's WasteWISE Champion.
