Talking Rubbish

This Saturday Sustainable Bungay's Give and Take Day at the Community Centre has a different "take" from previous events. As well as the main hall for swapping free stuff and enjoying refreshments at their Happy Mondays cafe,  the local Transition crew have an additional “info room” where you can find out about all aspects of waste management. There will be several stalls  run by “rubbish” organisations from Freegle to Waveney District Council. We are also delighted to welcome Karen Cannard of The Rubbish Diet and Jake Kerr from Canarchy who will instruct us all in the key essentials of personal and community recycling.

Jake Kerr explains how his crew tackle producer responsibility, but also show consumers how much waste we create and make us face our responsibility:

"Canarchy is direct action recycling. It couples many years of experience in the recycling industry with a long history of environmental activism. If you think the story is over when you shut your wheelie bin then think again. The multi billion pound waste industry and local and national government are only interested in the money this industry generates, not how the final destination of the waste stream impacts on the environment. In fact you are paying them to take away valuable resources and then pollute the environment with them. With the building of the new incinerators it’s becoming more profitable for councils to actually recycle less.  

Canarchy runs recycling schemes at festivals where we are given groups of young volunteers to work with. We try and use recycling and the politics of waste to educate them into environmentalism and to inspire them to do something about it themselves. We also run the recycling at local community events. We find that people are much more open to our message after they have seen us in action. We walk the walk and then we talk the talk.

We also are planning to use recycling and other practical green skills, i.e. compost toilets, alternative power etc, to promote the Transition message into local government agendas via their own Community Resilience initiatives. This is emergency planning that utilises community skills."

If you want to find out what happens to your rubbish after it leaves your bin and what you can do about it, don’t miss Jake’s talk with Q&A session afterwards. See you there!

Give and Take Day, Bungay Community Centre, Upper Olland Street, Bungay, Suffolk is on Saturday, 22 September, 10am-1pm. (bus from Norwich about 30 mins). Further details here. Talk by Jake Kerr is at 11.30am.

Images: processed and unprocessed cans; 18-point recycling at Sunrise Off-grid Festival, 2012