Recycling project will create 200 new jobs in Conwy

Mar 4 2010 by Eva Ketley, North Wales Weekly News

TWO hundred training and job opportunities will be created by a pioneering recycling project in Conwy.

Nearly 4,000 kitchens and bathrooms are being salvaged instead of being dumped in a landfill site.

The scheme is being masterminded by the housing association Cartrefi Conwy as part of their £30 million housing improvement programme.

They have formed a partnership with contractors G Purchase and the recycling social enterprise, Crest, based in Llandudno Junction.

The team from Crest is made of up of socially excluded people who would otherwise find it difficult to get a job.

The training and job opportunities will be created over the next three years.

This is the first recycling partnership of its kind in the UK and it’s already attracting widespread interest across the country.

Cartrefi Conwy is working towards achieving the target, set by the Welsh Assembly Government, of bringing all their properties up to the Welsh Housing Quality Standard by 2012.

Rod Williams, the operations manager at Crest, said: “All the waste that comes out needs to be reprocessed and recycled as much as possible.

“That’s where Crest comes into it.ŠWe take the baths and the kitchen units to our depot where we take all the hinges off and reprocess most of the timber.

“The majority of the stuff that we get is reused through our community stores, sold like in a DIY shop.

“The timber flies out – it’s bought by DIY enthusiasts for shelving, rabbit hutches and all sorts.

“We reprocess the items that we can’t sell – like the metal sinks that are completely damaged – through a scrap metal merchant.

“The money out of that actually funds the social inclusion places for people working on the Crest site.

“We can provide work opportunities for the long term unemployed and this scheme has created three jobs.”

Andrew Bowden, chief executive of Cartrefi Conwy, said: “This scheme is innovative and pioneering.

“I’m advised that this is a first and the only one of its kind in the UK and other organisations are already looking very closely at it.”

mari.jones