Recycling Centre Proposed For Cloonagh Road Site

A proposal to relocate the Civic Amenity recycling centre in Cloonagh Road in Downpatrick to the NI Water site next door   has been welcomed by Down District Councillor Cadogan Enright.  

The Downpatrick Councilor said, “This site has much more space and will allow us to enhance our approach to recycling. We are missing opportunities in Down District that other areas have already tackled.

Councillor Cadogan Enright looking forward to the opening of the new recycling centre in Downpatrick. 

“Anybody visiting our local civic amenity centers over Christmas would have seen dozens of perfectly good bicycles in the skips, furniture, doors and many other reusable items like furniture. As rules currently stand, ratepayers are not allowed to re-use what is in the skips.

"This makes no sense. Council Management have agreed to see if an area of the new larger civic amenity site can be used to allow people to leave out perfectly reusable goods for others to take away for free as is done in the USA and Australia”, he said.

“There are other options available too. For instance, Banbridge District Council opened a ‘restore Centre’ on the Scarva Road in Banbridge in summer 2009. Since opening over 1,656 individuals have visited the shop and purchased items ranging from sofa’s, tables, chairs, dressers, washing machines, tumble driers and cookers to name just a selection of items for sale. All shoppers are told of the positive environmental and sustainability issues around the ‘Restore’ project.

"Restore has helped the council get across the principals of full sustainability and created a more positive outlook on reusing second hand goods with the financial benefit this has for the whole of society in these economically tough times."

The ‘restore’ project brings together all three strands of Banbridge District Council’s sustainable development commitment as:

• the useful life of household goods is prolonged rather than being prematurely discarded in the landfill. Making a carbon saving of around 60 tonnes in the first year.
• it provides a valuable social role by providing training opportunities for people who are unemployed or have barriers to working; and
• it offers low cost quality tested household goods to the public who are experiencing hard times.

 Councillor Enright added, “Banbridge Council Management believe that the three full-time jobs and many ‘trainee scheme posts’ will shortly become self-sufficient given sales receipts and the reduction in land-fill taxes resulting from the scheme.

“There is no reason why the Council could not operate such schemes with local NGO’s or charitable groups either.”