Volunteers sort recyclables into the correct compartments before they are taken for weighing and recycling

The small Welsh estate of Glyncoch used to have a bad reputation. Once a flourishing mining town in South Wales, the town fell on hard times when the industry came to an end, and – as is often the case with high unemployment areas – became known as a hot spot for burglaries and petty crime. But things are changing for this community in the Welsh Valleys – thanks, in part, to a surge in community pride.

Glyncoch hit headlines in 2012, when it became the first town to launch a crowd-funding project to build a new community centre in the area. Despite having secured funding for the project from the National Lottery, when the organisation leading the charge – Glyncoch Regeneration Ltd – registered as a charity, the funding was pulled, leaving the group in a sticky situation. It had around two months to find £790,00 if it were to keep the grant funding already secured through other sources. Thanks to donations from people in the local area, as well as from strangers (actor and Twitter behemoth Steven Fry tweeted about the project to his six million followers, leading to a massive amount of interest), the project raised £792,021 in six weeks.

Having completed the first phase of the building, Glyncoch Regeneration Ltd is already using it for various activities, including Taekwondo, and computer literacy classes. But it’s the activities being done at the front of the building that are making new headlines; volunteers from the community are using the concourse to sort through recyclable material collected in the neighbourhood for processing. And it’s not just the sorting that these volunteers are doing, they’re also collecting the stuff from the kerbside and educating those in the area about how to recycle properly too.

It’s all part of a new third sector scheme run in partnership with Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) Council. Falling under the Green Glyncoch initiative (first launched in 2009) – which aims to turn the village of Glyncoch into a ‘Zero Waste Area’ – the project hopes to see at least 95 per cent of residents recycle both their dry recyclables and their food waste. And it seems to be working. Indeed, in November 2013, a survey found that over 95 per cent of local residents took part in dry recycling and 71 per cent in food recycling at least once a month. This compares to just 34 per cent participation in 2009, when recycling was first introduced to the town.

But how has this been achieved? Not through a lack of hard work, Councillor Nigel Wheeler, Service Director for Streetcare at RCT tells me. “When I first thought of the idea of getting volunteers to collect the recycling, none of the councillors thought it would be possible. But I don’t ‘do’ fail. Glyncoch is one of the few areas where this would have worked, because it’s self-contained, has a small population (around 3,000 people in 2,000 properties), and a high unemployment rate. It’s been through the hard work of the volunteers, local councillors, and the streetcare team that we’ve managed to pull this off. If everyone puts in a little bit of work, things can get done.”

However, if it weren’t for the fact that Wheeler secured a free collection vehicle for the initiative, it might not have gone ahead, he tells me. “I didn’t have the budget to buy a vehicle for the project, but luckily for me, the Welsh Assembly were calling for bids on a collection vehicle that had been used in a project that had gone wrong somewhere else. So I wrote a submission and outlined what we wanted to do, and added that if we didn’t get the vehicle, we wouldn’t be able to go ahead with the project! I think that helped swing things in our favour”, he says, with a mischievous smile.

Rewarding the community

Perhaps the most interesting and unique part of the scheme though, is that all the money collected from selling the recyclable materials collected from Glyncoch residents, will go back into the community.

Councillor Doug Williams, ward member for Glyncoch and one of the six Directors of Glyncoch Regeneration Ltd(as well as a former Mayor of Rhondda Cynon Taf), explains: “The council commitment is just the vehicle and the driver, as the Welsh Government supplements all the equipment. So the council is picking up the money to run the programme, and the community are picking up the benefits of the clean recycled material that is being taken to Bryn Pica (RCT’s waste recycling centre in Aberdare).” At the moment the exact price of the materials vary, but it’s thought that the community could receive around £50 per tonne of paper from Amgen Cymru (a waste disposal company wholly owned by Rhondda Cynon Taf County Council), with higher rates for more valuable items, such as cans.

“What we use the money for will be decided upon a the end of the year. We’ll set up a group and everybody that partakes in the programme will put in a suggestion where they want to see the money spent. And then my group will decide where it will eventually go.” Ideas circulating at the moment include setting up a children’s day care in the community centre, providing ‘meals on wheels’ for the elderly, and putting the money in a time bank for voluntary work, so anyone volunteering can earn credit for every hour worked, which can be collated into a voucher for use at local centres or swimming pools.

The council says it’s not concerned about the loss of money coming in from Glyncoch’s recyclables however, as using volunteers to pick up and sort the dry recycling means it doesn’t have to employ as much agency staff (though the council’s streetcare team still pick up the residual waste and food waste recycling). Williams adds there were no redundancies as a result of the scheme, though, saying: “If there were going to be any loss of jobs then we wouldn’t have done it. That’s not the intention – the intention is to benefit the estate.”

It’s the fact that the scheme could directly benefit the town that the councillors believe will lead to its success. Williams says: “There’s always going to be that hardcore group that won’t recycle. But once you’ve identified the hardcore group, you can target them and ease off targeting the rest, because they do it anyway. So we’re identifying now who are not buying into it and finding out what the problems are – is it laziness, or is it just that they’re not sure about what they’re meant to be doing? But with the money from the recycling coming back into the community (and hopefully with peer pressure and neighbours saying, ‘Hey, you’re costing us money!’), that could be the deciding factor that helps bring them round.”

‘You feel like you’re doing something’

Nigel Wheeler, Service Director for Streetcare at RCT, promotes recycling at Glynoch Community Centre

The recycling scheme in Glyncoch differs to that running in the majority of RCT wards not only because its run by volunteers, but also as it is a separate-sort scheme – while the rest of the council largely follows the co-mingled, twin-stream approach. But when I visited Glyncoch in February, residents were not yet doing the sorting.

Instead, the eight volunteers collect the dry recyclables (put out in bags on different days depending on the street) in a caged vehicle, take it all up to the community centre concourse and then separate the materials out into a multi-compartment vehicle, which is driven up to Bryn Pica for processing.

But residents will soon have to start sorting the materials themselves, to avoid contamination. Indeed, when I visited Glyncoch the recycling programme had only been running for two weeks but the community had not made any money off the materials collected, as it was badly contaminated with food waste (and therefore needed to be cleaned in the onsite processor at Bryn Pica).

The change in service will also benefit the volunteers too, as Huw Cook, one of the volunteers in the recycling project tells me: “The worst thing about the job is going through a contaminated lot (or when it’s raining and you get soaking wet). Old food going all over the place is not nice.” But generally, the volunteers are happy to be doing the work.

Cook explains: “It’s a good chance to meet new people and its enjoyable. You get a lot of people saying ‘I wouldn’t do that for nothing’ but I think, ‘Be stuck in your house then, its up to you.’ We’d rather get out and do things. It’s a big difference when you’re unemployed – it’s easy to just spend the whole day sitting at home – but if you can volunteer and spend just four hours out of the house, you feel like you’re doing something. You can come to the community centre afterwards and get on with the job search in the computer room or go to job club on the Monday – it makes you feel motivated.”

Michael Tucker, another local volunteer agrees: “We work around four hours a day (starting around 8.30 and finishing around 12.30) but if I could do it all day, I would. The worst thing [about being unemployed] is not having anything to do. Plus, doing this you get free bacon rolls!”

Both Cook and Tucker are well-known faces in the community – as well as being involved with Green Glyncoch, Cook also helps out cutting the grass around the community woodland area, while Tucker is one of the key-holder volunteers for the community centre. It was exactly this popularity that had Cook nervous when he first started working on the recycling project, he says. “Everybody knows me on the estate – I thought at first that would go against me, that people wouldn’t listen to me because they know me, you cant go round telling your friends what to do, but they did. And I’m quite pleased with that.

“All this recycling was down to me and a friend who knocked on doors with questionnaires and issued all the bags, and explained to people what they could put out for recycling and the like. Within six months we went from 33 per cent to 96 per cent participation. If you just offer people the tools for the job, they really have no excuse not to do it.

“Plus, if the scheme can help provide a new facility for local kids to play football in, or a new park even, it gives people more of an incentive to do it – especially if it benefits their kids.”

Councillor Williams tells me that to try and get everybody recycling, he’s hoping to have a major supermarket chain sponsor the scheme and give those participating a discount card to be used in its stores. But on the flip side of the coin, he says the council is not afraid of having to fine people who do not recycle (or recycle incorrectly). He says: “We don’t want to fine people, for obvious reasons, but if it means you have to fine people because they wont buy into recycling, then so be it. At the end of the day, it’s the authority that will be fined if it doesn’t achieve the Welsh Government’s recycling figures, so if the authority is going to have to pick up the tab at the end of the year, there’s no reason why the people who aren’t contributing shouldn’t pick up the tab for it too.

“But we’re really proud of how residents have taken the project to heart and what you’re able to do with good volunteers. It just goes to show that if you give people ownership, people will get things done. Sometimes a pat on the back works just as well as being paid. Everybody can contribute something, it’s just giving them the opportunity, respect, and thanks that makes all the difference.”

To thank the volunteers for their work, RCT is now working with a training company to award those volunteering with National Vocational Qualifications(NVQs). Wheeler explains: “When I was talking to the community service people and trying to understand why unemployment is so high, we were finding that a lot of the adults on the estate really lack English and Maths GCSEs, and so they’re not getting through the first round of job application processes.

“The people volunteering are showing that they can turn up for a job every day, they’re enthusiastic, and they get the job done, so although they might not have done much in school, they are now. I can’t give them all jobs (but if I could, I would), but we’re hoping that the NVQ will help open a few more doors for them. They deserve it.”

A video about the recycling project can be found online.