Community Waste Network North East (CWNNE)

In April 2003 the Children's Warehouse and SCRAP (Schools and Community Recycling Awareness Project) organised the "What a waste" event with presentations and workshops aimed to get some new projects and/or partnerships going. However the 30-odd attendees decided they needed more information and support to bring people together and build capacity within the community sector. Therefore over the summer an investigative report was pulled together which looked at:

• Relevant forums and networks already working in the North East
• Successful models of forums and networks in the UK

The report "A Community Waste Network for the NE?" can be downloaded here (.doc). The results of this report were presented at the Community Development Conference on October 21st 2003, which incorporated presentations on:

• Initial investigative report on the need for a community waste network the North east
• Community recycling funding (CRED)
• Our regional local authorities priorities in partner shipping the community sector
• Social enterprise opportunities in our region.

After initial consultations, we have continued to meet to establish what we want and how to achieve it.

Our aim "To facilitate the achievement of zero waste in the North East through community engagement, empowerment of groups and individuals, and influence on policy and legislation locally, regionally and nationally. The three key areas we aim to focus on are: To raise awareness by facilitating education, trainings, events and activities To facilitate the provision of support, information and dissemination of best practice To work in partnership and influence policy and decision making organisations at all levels.

Our aim is given above and at present we are deciding our constitution. We continue to map activities and have set up a database of “NE Recyclers” with the help of VONNE, which is NOW freely available on-line here.

In the short term we aim to continue mapping activities and set up a database of "NE Recyclers" with the help of VONNE which will be available on-line to all.

We now provide regular e- newsletters and hope that expand support to meet these aims. Contact us if you would like to be added to this e-mail service (sorry we don't have the funds to provide a paper newsletter as yet).

The next stage is to establish how we will operate across such a large geographic space that takes in the four sub-regions and twenty six local authorities. We also need to locate funding and with this is place we can compile a more detailed action plan.

We have been most encouraged by the support we have received from the amongst others NE Waste Awareness Initiative, GONE, VONNE, the EA, Connexions, VONNE, and several departments with different LA's, not to mention the groups involved in re-use, refurbishment, composting and recycling (see members).

Download the 'rationale for the network' here (.doc).