St. Josephs Recycling Rewards assembly

Pupils at St Josephs Catholic Primary School in Brighouse learned all about the launch of the new Recycling Rewards for Schools campaign in assembly this afternoon. In a bid to encourage more of us to recycle, Calderdale Council have relaunched their popular recycling campaign across most of the primary schools in the borough. At the assembly today pupils were all issued with ‘Pledge books’ and were tasked with persuading their parents to help them get as many friends, family and neighbours to sign a pledge to recycle. Pupils that collect three pledges will be awarded a handy ‘Flat Ball Pen’ all branded with the Recycle logo. Those pupils that collect 5 pledges will be awarded a trendy Carabiner (A climbers clasp) and compass. As a top award, the pupil in each school that collects the most pledges by the time the campaign finishes on 31st March 2008 will receive a smart new monocular.

The Recycling Rewards for Schools campaign has run through 82 of the 87 primary schools in Calderdale over the past two years and during that time almost 26,000 householders have made the pledge to recycle. The good news is that during this same period recycling levels in Calderdale have risen from 17% to approximately 25%.

However, as councillor Graham Reason, Portfolio Holder for Health and Social Care explained,
“There are 88,000 households in the borough, so there’s plenty of scope for all our pupils to collect plenty more pledges. In fact in this year’s campaign householders that have already signed a pledge in a previous year can now sign a new pledge, this time as a reaffirmation of their commitment to recycle”

Calderdale schools also benefit from pledges too. As in the previous campaigns, pledges are linked to the borough’s recycling tonnages and generate points that schools can exchange for all sorts of equipment available to them in a Recycling Rewards for Schools catalogue. Simply put; the more pledges a school collects and the more recycling that householders do, the more points that school will accumulate and the more equipment they can order.

For more information about Recycling Rewards for Schools go to www.recycle4schools.net/calderdale.