Community

Greater Manchester Waste Group and community projects.

At Greater Manchester Waste we place great emphasis on education and community links to encourage the public to reduce, reuse and recycle their waste instead of it being taken to landfill or incinerated. We run a dedicated visitor centre, The Waste Experience next to our thermal recovery facility in Raikes Lane Bolton. The visitor centre contains an interactive display area about our company, as well as waste facts and images, plus a 50 seat auditorium that screens videos and films about waste minimisation as well as the capacity to show presentations and OHP work.

PLEASE NOTE: THE VISITOR CENTRE IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED AND SITE VISITS SUSPENDED

As part of our efforts to engage the local community, especially younger members, we have devised a series of workshops that can be held on site at our purpose built visitor centre, The Waste Experience or at schools and community groups. The workshops deal specifically with waste and environmental issues and concentrate on the 3 R’s principles. Some of the workshops on offer include making waste monsters out of everyday rubbish destined for landfill. This plays both a creative and educational function as the children are asked to think about the design and production of a ‘creature’, as well as the implications of what would normally happen to the rubbish they are making. This workshop is particularly aimed at young groups up to the age of 11.

We also hold workshops on poster making, paper making, recycled jewellery, and various other practical workshops that increase participant’s knowledge of the waste problem in the UK. In addition to the workshops we hold regular site visits. The visits to Bolton thermal recovery facility and the four material Recovery facilities offer visitors the opportunity to see first hand what happens to their everyday waste. We can also arrange visits to one of the 25 Household Waste Recycling Centres that the GMW group manage throughout the Greater Manchester region. These sites have recently been upgraded to encourage higher recycling rates, and risk assessments have been undertaken on each one so that participants can be assured of the company’s commitment to their safety and well being.

As part of our continuing commitment to all areas in Greater Manchester we have strong links with many NGO’s and community groups. These include working in partnership with Groundwork bury to provide site visits and waste workshops to groups from all over Bury. We have held regular workshops with The Mersey Basin Campaign in their efforts to clean up the water ways in the Manchester area. We have also established links with the Bolton and Bury Education Business Partnership who have held recycling competitions at our visitor centre. In other community initiatives GMW has offered sponsorship and support for sports equipment, musical equipment and arts projects. Some of these include The Gorse Hill Sports and Arts festival, the Darcy Lever Cricket Club, Salford Festival of Sport, Rochdale Go Clubbing festival, Mossley’s Basket Ball Camp. We have worked with two community sports initiatives run by The Salford Reds rugby league team and the Bolton Wanderers football in the community programme. Both these projects involve working across a diverse age range of kids, and getting them to think about the amount of energy they waste in their day to day activities.