Environmental group calls for place to trade used goods

Saturday 15 July 2023

An environmental group has proposed a new use for the currently closed recycling reception centre at La Collette – suggesting it becomes a place to donate and pick-up free goods that would otherwise be thrown away.

Jersey in Transition is suggesting that the building close to the entrance of the Household Reuse and Recycling Centre is reopened as a place to leave and pick up items which are better shared than recycled.

The purpose-built facility opened as the Acorn Reuse Centre in 2017, with Acorn partnering with the Government to help reduce the amount of waste going into the incinerator.

However, it closed in October 2021, after Acorn found it easier just to operate from its headquarters in Trinity, having been forced to change the way it worked during lockdown.

Pictured: Jersey in Transition is proposing that the staffing of the La Collette Household Reuse and Recycling Centre is increased by two full-time staff.

When the main recycling centre was at Bellozanne, there was a shipping container close to the tip where people could leave items, from chairs to toys, in case someone else could make use of them.

It is this concept that Jersey in Transition hopes to resurrect.

The group is calling for the Council of Ministers and States Assembly to consider its idea, arguing: "The secret to the success of all the monthly, fortnightly and occasional reuse initiatives that JiT has organised and JiT members have run, is that no money changed hands at all: no one was trying to make a profit or derive an income."

Pictured: Members of Jersey in Transition have been running free reuse events, stalls and pop-ups across the island for many years.

It adds: "We propose that the States of Jersey decide to increase the staffing of the La Collette Household Reuse and Recycling Centre by two full-time staff.

"These extra staff are a tiny contribution to the ‘green new jobs’ that are expected to come from, and to make possible, the island’s response to the climate and biodiversity emergency.

"People arriving to dump or recycle household goods will be able to choose whether to donate them to the reuse centre; staff out by the skips will be able to suggest that attractive and reusable items be walked across to the reuse building rather than put into a recycling skip. "

The charity argued that the centre would not affect charity shops as the items were probably destined for the recycling skip, were it not for this service.