Councilor Cadogan Enright’s has welcomed the potential new Civic Amenity site on the NI water site at the Clooney Road.
The Downpatrick councilor said “This site has much more space and will allow us to enhance our approach to recycling. We are missing opportunities in Down District that other areas have already tackled.”
“Anybody visiting our local civic amenity centers over Christmas would have seen dozens of perfectly good bicycles in the skips, furniture, doors and many other reusable items like furniture. As rules currently stand, ratepayers are not allowed to re-use what is in the skips. This makes no sense. Council Management have agreed to see if an area of the new larger civic amenity site can be used to allow people to leave out perfectly reusable goods for others to take away for free as is done in the USA and Australia”. Said Cadogan.
Cllr Enright pointed out that “There are other options available. For instance Banbridge District Council opened a ‘restore Centre’ on the Scarva Road in Banbridge in summer 2009. Since opening over 1,656 individuals have visited the shop and purchased items ranging from sofa’s, tables, chairs, dressers, washing machines, tumble driers and cookers to name just a selection of items for sale. All shoppers are told of the positive environmental and sustainability issues around the ‘restore’ project. ‘restore’ has helped the council get across the principals of full sustainability and created a more positive outlook on reusing second hand goods with the financial benefit this has for the whole of society in these economic tough times.
The ‘restore’ project brings togetherall3 strands of Banbridge District Council’s sustainable development commitment as;
- the useful life of household goods is prolonged rather than being prematurely discarded in the landfill. Making a carbon saving of around 60 tonnes in the first year.
- it provides a valuable social role by providing training opportunities for people who are unemployed or have barriers to working; and
- it offers low cost quality tested household goods to the public who are experiencing hard times.
“Banbridge Council Management believe that the 3 full-time jobs and many ‘trainee scheme posts’ will shortly become self-sufficient given sales receipts and the reduction in land-fill taxes resulting from the scheme”. Said Cadogan Enright.
“There is no reason why the council could not operate such schemes with local NGO’s or charitable groups either” concluded Cadogan Enright.