by SWNS
Mom recycles TON of trash after building public recycling center in her backyard
A mother of three has recycled more than a ton of rubbish after setting up a drop-off point in her front yard shed where people can leave things bin men don’t collect. Liz Pinfield-Wells, 43, set up the DIY recycling center after the birth of her third child after struggling to recycle his squishy baby food bags. The environmentally conscious mom found that many items, like packets of crisps and toothbrushes, could not be included in the community’s weekly curbside collections. So she set up her own drop off point at the end of her driveway in Dawley, Telford, Shrops and encouraged people to drop off their mixed recycled items. And since Liz started her green project four years ago, she’s recycled more than a ton of trash, raising thousands for her local community in the process. At first, Liz placed a few boxes at the end of her driveway, but her 20′ x 7′ shed is now stacked with labeled bins to help locals reduce their landfill waste. Liz says dozens of people use her drop-off every week and over 30 different household items can now be recycled there. The adult carer said: “Our family has always done what we can, where we can help as a household to reduce our carbon footprint and recycle as much as possible. “We only have a small bin in our kitchen that goes to landfill and we recycle everything else. “My son Albert is four now but I had him for a while after my other two children so when he was born there was a lot of new mixed recycling products. “A lot of them, like B. the squeezable food pouch packaging, was made of mixed plastic and I didn’t know how to recycle that through the community so I started my own recycling hub here. “Then I discovered other items like packets of chips and toothbrushes that were more difficult to recycle, so I added those to the list of things people could donate. “We also take Pringles tubes and these items contain metal and plastic so they really shouldn’t be tossed in the roadside bin. “Hopefully, setting up the recycling drop-off point in my front yard has helped the community to recycle more. “Sometimes it might seem a little scary to know where to start recycling, but with every small step it gets that little bit easier. “I definitely think it helped raise my kids’ awareness of the need to recycle more, too.” Since launching in March 2019, Liz has collected 1.2 tons of trash, most of which she recycles through the TerraCyle company has. Each month, she sends trash in vacuum-packed bags to the company, which shreds it into small plastic pellets that are made into other items like watering cans and benches. The weight of litter collected by Liz is then converted into cash points, which can be paid out twice a year to a charity or sports organization of her choice. In the last three years, Liz has raised more than £1,000 which she has donated to her 14-year-old daughter Zoe’s gymnastics group to buy new equipment. She also donated some of the money to another local charity to buy wood chips for her community garden. Items on the list she recycles include Pringles tubes, bread wax wrappers, household hygiene wrappers, plastic bread wrappers, cheese bags, pens, rubber gloves, printer ink and used postage stamps. The mother-of-three, whose Facebook group now has more than 1,000 members, added: “Almost all of the items we collect are shipped and recycled by TerraCycle. “The only exceptions to this are items like the printer ink or used stamps, but they’re all still recycled, just by a different company. “I hope the recycling hub now grows even further and eventually moves to the new Climate Action Hub Telford when they find a new building. “We want to raise a lot more money by recycling trash so we can help more people in the community. “At the end of the day, through my trusteeship and recycling center, I just want to help people do their part to address the climate emergency.”
