Monmouthshire Circular Economy Project
This project works with local communities and schools to build on the considerable progress setting up and running circular economy activities in the county. These are projects such as Benthyg Libraries of Things, Repair Cafes, community fridges, uniform swap shops and so on.
These activities are extremely important in:
- Reducing waste
- Saving carbon
- Sharing skills
- Saving people money
The Circular Economy Project Officers, funded by UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, add invaluable resource to recruit, support, develop and retain volunteers to existing and proposed circular economy projects to make them sustainable and resilient.
Repair Cafés
Monmouthshire has three repair cafés run each month by volunteers where you can take broken items like electricals, clothing, toys, bikes and more, to be fixed for free, saving you money and saving waste from landfill.
Visit https://repaircafewales.org/locations/ to find your local repair café.
Community Fridges
Community Fridges offer a selection of quality, surplus food from local businesses and supermarkets, available for free. The food is free to all. By using your local Community Fridge you are preventing good quality food going to landfill and saving money on your food shop!
Find your local community fridge at : Support that’s local to you – Monmouthshire
Benthyg Monmouthshire – Your local Libraries of Things
The aim of a library of things is to allow you to:
- borrow things you need but don’t own, at low cost, saving money and space in your home
- donate things you own but don’t need, contributing to national waste reduction targets
- meet to share knowledge and skills with others, increasing community resilience
You can borrow items to help with gardening and DIY jobs as well as things for entertaining, camping and cooking. Check out the catalogue at the Benthyg Monmouthshire website.
Local Projects
Uniform Swap
A wonderful example of a uniform swap is from Pembroke Primary School in Bulwark. The Circular Economy Project enabled the development of a School Log Cabin, which serves as a swap shop for various items that support the local community. This project has been a great success and donations are received on a regular basis, all of which are well used by the school community.
Garden Club
Dewstow Primary School were supported to install both a wormery and a flat-packed compost bin for the school
The wormery was set up by the children of the school’s gardening club. They learnt about the food waste that can be composted in the wormery and began collecting, sorting and adding the fruit tuck waste to the wormery. This is now a weekly task for the children, with the expectation that in the future nutrient rich compost can be added to our vegetable and garden beds for more successful cropping and blooming. The children have already syphoned off the liquid produced and begun feeding it to what was our newly emerging daffodils which are now blooming beautifully.
The wooden compost bin arrived flat packed and untreated, so the first thing that the children did was to treat the wood with an approved ecological wood protector to prolong its life. They then set about constructing the bin. The children will learn all about the process and benefits of home composting with future plant waste from around the school grounds being placed in the bin to be composted. This will then be added to the flower and veg beds to improve the soil condition and productivity.
Contact: Claudia Blair, Circular Economy Project Officer, Phone number: 07929 724208
These projects are [funded/part-funded] by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.