RWM - A Place To Do Business

A visit in September to Recycling and Waste Management (RWM) was a great opportunity to meet existing customers and discuss their ongoing requirements, including expansion of our services; it also proved an excellent way to meet new ones.

Our stand was designed to give visitors the feel of entering one of our SATCoL charity shops and attracted a lot of attention. Designer Emmeline Child, who works at SATCoL’s Princes St shop in London’s West End, created the eye-catching designs for our stand’s shop windows, all re-worked from clothing collected by SATCoL.

Forum Fans

At SATCoL we are big fans of Recycling Officers Forums/Recycling Officers Groups. This year we’ve attended them in Norfolk, Hampshire and Suffolk. Feedback we’ve received from officers is that they find these groups the ideal place to hear about our services and welcome the opportunity to discover how we can support their textile recycling objectives further. So thanks to Norfolk ROG for starting the ball rolling.

Of course if you have any questions you would like answered in a follow-up meeting we are more than happy to make those arrangements. Do e-mail me at paul.ozanne@satradingco.org if you would like to schedule me to visit your next ROG or ROF.

Paul Ozanne pictured visiting Norfolk's ROG

Carmarthenshire County Council has just held a successful clothing collection event called Rumble In Your Jumble, in its Pensarn workplace.

Karen McNeil, waste minimisation and recycling officer, organised the event during European Week of Waste Reduction.

“We’ve got about 40 staff in this office and took over a meeting room for a day for people to donate clothing and shoes they no longer wanted for collection by SATCoL,” says Karen (pictured above with other members of the waste team).

“The plan now is to replicate the event throughout all the council offices to be organised by their own Green Teams, which is a group in each office that looks at how to reduce energy consumption and waste in the workplace. The aim is to make this something that each Green Team runs perhaps three times a year to target thousands of council employees.

“During the week we also ran a public campaign to encourage recycling and textiles was high on our agenda as we know it is the fastest growing household waste stream.”

Island Initiative

We have been working with the States of Guernsey since May 1996 and recently visited Guernsey to discuss ways in which recycling options could be further maximised.

This visit has resulted in fresh initiatives being implemented including new collection banks for bric a brac. There are now also 100 counter top recycling bag dispensers which have been placed throughout the island at locations as diverse as garages and libraries. On the bags are printed the addresses of clothing collection banks throughout the island.

We are grateful to the States of Guernsey for its determination to facilitate the recovery and re-use of as much clothing as possible by providing residents with easy ways to reduce the amount of unwanted clothing and other goods that they discard in rubbish bins.

Deputy Minister of the Public Services Department in Guernsey, Scott Ogier, said: “We are very supportive of The Salvation Army and the bring bank upgrade, and have been encouraged by the response from islanders. The amount of recyclable material deposited is increasing month on month, with 302 tonnes recycled so far this year. We have many ideas about how to further improve our bring bank system and are committed to continuing the development of recycling on the island.”

Deputy Scott Ogier and Captain Barry Ashton of The Salvation Army pictured above with a bric a brac bank. Picture reproduced courtesy of The Guernsey Press Co Ltd.

Seal Of Approval

There’s been a lot of talk about a code of conduct for door to door clothing collectors and recently we met Grahame Davey from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to discuss the subject.

Stamping out bogus collectors and communicating to the public about giving to reputable organisations is key to increasing the amount of clothing that is collected for re-use or recycling.

Our ISO 9001:2000 gives our customers confidence in our business. But we believed that it was time the public had something to look for, such as a kitemark, which would be a standard they could use to measure the door to door collection’s credentials.

For a long time there have been far too many grey areas and loopholes making it simple for unscrupulous operators to profit. Bogus collection is a crime and we want to see an end to it.

Trailing The SATCoL Message

SATCoL is thinking big when it comes to getting our recycling message across. Our 40ft trailers are currently undergoing a distinctive branding makeover to help communicate what our business is all about.

Our research shows that people want to donate their unwanted clothing to a reputable collector and the message on the new trailers clearly states that The Salvation Army’s clothing collection service is dedicated to ensuring that the profits go to support the good work of The Salvation Army in local communities.

By branding our trailers we are able to reach out to an even bigger audience to help reinforce our recycling message. Our website address is also on the trailers to encourage people to log on and find their nearest clothing collection bank.