Dorset Council Archives - Swanage and Purbeck Rotary

da993167 4c72 4c77 a8ee 67720fbd2140 — Our Rotarians getting down to work!

Swanage & Purbeck Rotary is proud of its fast response to disasters around the world when they happen.

So when the earthquake hit Haiti last week, it was “all systems go” to try and do something to help.

Thanks to Dorset Council granting us a Street Collection Licence in double-quick time, we were out in Station Road Swanage on 24th August collecting money for a ShelterBox to help those in Haiti who are in dire need.

The ShelterBox charity provides equipment that enables up to 10 people to have shelter and basic equipment to be able to survive the aftermath of a natural disaster until more permanent help is able to be provided. More details about the charity is available on their website.

Each ShelterBox is numbered so that they can be tracked wherever they go around the world and organisations like Rotary who raise funding for them can see exactly where the money that they have raised has gone.

We were also indebted (as always) to Corbens Estate Agents, who once again offered to take donations in envelopes on our behalf. Total funding raised from the day so far is almost £900, from both cash and card donations, which is a fantastic achievement and we are incredibly grateful to the generous Swanage residents and visitors to our town who gave so willingly.

Grateful thanks also go to Rotarian Maggie Hardy who co-ordinated the day and to our Rotarians and friends who turned out on the day to help collect.

We were delighted to welcome Marten Gregory, recycling Team Leader from the Commercial Waste and Strategy Team at Dorset Council, to our first get-together of 2021.

Marten presented a detailed overview of Dorset’s waste operation, explaining how many people work for the team, what it costs to manage the waste created by Dorset’s 176,000 households and how much is able to be recycled every year.

It was a fascinating insight into how much effort goes into trying to ensure that as little rubbish as possible goes into landfill. Volumes that do end up in landfill have reduced by around 90% over the past twenty years.

Dorset is very proud to have its own food waste recycling facility, near Dorchester in the Piddle Valley. Here the food waste collected undergoes a process that generates power for houses in the area. It also has its ‘We Need That’ directory, which shows which commonly thrown away items can be used by not-for-profit organisations and individuals.

Other recycling goes further afield, such as to Hampshire where Energy from Waste plants can convert it into energy and as far afield as North Wales and Tilbury, where bespoke facilities have been set up to process it safely.

There were several questions for Marten after his presentation, including whether there were plans to expand the recycling scheme to items that can’t currently be recycled and whether postcode tracking could be introduced to inject an element of competition into improved recycling in the county.

More information can be obtained from Dorset Council’s Waste Team. On behalf of Swanage Rotary, President Deirdre thanked Martin for taking time out of his busy day to speak to us.

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