Children from three Liverpool primary schools are designing artwork to decorate the communal bins in their areas, whilst reminding their communities about the importance of recycling.
The Alleyway Repair Programme was launched in 2019 to tackle issues of waste, litter and vermin. There are now over 1,500 communal bins across the city, promoting community wellbeing by helping reduce unwanted waste and making recycling more accessible.
Children from St Hugh’s Catholic Primary in Picton ward, St Francis de Sales Catholic Junior School in County ward and St Oswald’s Catholic Primary in Old Swan ward have been getting creative and becoming “Recycling Heroes” for the city.
Laura Robertson-Collins, Cabinet Member for Environment & Sustainability said “As a Council we are working hard to reduce waste and encourage re-use, composting and recycling. The amount of waste produced, as well as litter and dumping has a massive cost implication for the council and affects the look and feel of our communities. The reaction to the city-wide Alleyway Repair Programme and roll-out of communal bins has been really positive. Working with partners across the council and our local communities, the transformation of some of the spaces has been fantastic. Working with residents, we’re now building up a wider response on how they want to use these reclaimed spaces for their community.”
The Recycling team at Liverpool City Council has also commissioned a short animation to celebrate the project and mark #GlobalRecyclingDay2021.
Kay Bailey, Recycling Improvement team leader said “Since the introduction of community bins, County Ward has seen a 30% increase in recycling, and it’s great that this is happening. Some residents won’t have been aware it was possible or even had the opportunity to do it before, so we’re really happy with the difference the programme is making.”
“We want to showcase more designs on communal bins across the city and encourage more schools to get involved by asking their children to design posters promoting the importance of recycling. As there are over 100 languages spoken in Liverpool, we would also love to see designs that use some of our community languages. A big thank you to our young Recycling Heroes for leading the way!”
If you know of other schools who would like to get involved, please check out the recycling at home resource pack for more ideas.
Also, remember that the posters need to use
- Strong, bold colours to stand out
- Promote the importance of recycling through words and pictures
- Illustrate what to put in the recycling bins
- All designs should be in A4 landscape, saved as a jpeg and emailed to recyclingteam@liverpool.gov.uk.
In the meantime, if you see any designs in your community, please take a photo and share with the team on Twitter, tagging @lpoolcouncil and @LRecycles and using #LiverpoolRecycles.
