Dozens of Cumbrian schoolchildren have been rewarded for their recycling efforts at a special event at the Rheged Discovery Centre near Penrith.
The children from schools across the county picked up prizes for their schools, as well as for themselves as part of the huge Recycling Rewards for Schools initiative which has seen more than 42,000 households pledge to recycle more of their rubbish.
Youngsters from more than 170 Cumbrian primary schools took part in the scheme which encouraged kids to collect pledges to recycle from family, neighbours and friends. The initiative has increased recycling rates and kept hundreds of tonnes of potentially environmentally damaging waste from being buried in landfill sites.
The event at Rheged on Thursday 10 May saw those recycling pledges turned into prizes. Photographs of the event and captions can accessed via the links at the bottom of this news release.
Individual pupils who collected the most pledges at each school were awarded with an underwater digital camera while the top performing pupil overall will get a special trophy as well.
The school in each district which collected the most pledges was given a state of the art Yamaha PSR275 keyboard and the two runner-up schools in each district got a classical acoustic guitar each.
The top three performing districts were given cash prizes of £3,000, £2,000 and £1,000 respectively to be allocated between schools within the district.
The scheme has been run by Resource Cumbria - the strategic waste partnership between Cumbria County Council and the six district councils.
The awards were presented Jack Richardson, Cumbria County Council cabinet member responsible for waste and recycling and chairman of Resource Cumbria.
He said: "This has been a great scheme. It pushes all the right buttons because it helps get households in Cumbria recycling more of their waste. It has got school children involved in recycling for the environment and, crucially, it has also encouraged a generation of adults to change their behaviour and get to grips with the issue of waste and what to do with it."
"Over 40,000 households made pledges and that means this scheme has really reduced the amount we needlessly throw out - that is good for the Cumbrian environment and good for the Cumbrian council tax payer."
ENDS
Media enquiries to Mark Graham, Media Officer on 01228-606337
Notes
Schools taking part in the awards were:
Allerdale - St Michael's CE School, Fairfield Junior School, St Matthew's CE School, Barrow, Dane Ghyll Community Primary School, Chapel Street Infants School, Newbarns Primary School
Carlisle - Stoneraise School, Warwick Bridge School, Shankhill CE Primary School
Copeland - Ennerdale and Kinniside CE Primary School, Bookwell Primary School, Gosforth CE School
Eden - St Catherine's Catholic Primary School, Long Marton Community Primary School, Kirkoswald CE School
South Lakes - Heron Hill Primary School, Windermere CE Junior School, Lindal and Marton Primary School
The image shows Eden's top performers