Green Champions
If you feel strongly about recycling and would like to do more within your community, you may like to join our Green Champions scheme. Green Champions can get involved in lots of different ways. You could:
- Encourage friends and neighbours to recycle more
- Help with the annual festival run by the Green Champions - Be Recreative
- Adopt a recycling bank
- Act as part of a focus group for the recycling team
- Promote the new ways to recycle in Hackney
- Get your workplace to adopt great recycling practices
- Help out at recycling events
We hold regular meetings for Green Champions with workshops and guest speakers. we also make all of our leaflets available for Green Champions to take away and distribute to friends, family and neighbours. This is a great opportunity to meet likeminded people and contribute to Hackney's community in a positive way.
View the events page and click 'Be Recreative' to see more about the annual festival created and run by the Green Champions.
Phone 020 8356 6688 or email recycling@hackney.gov.uk to request an application form for the Green Champions programme.
Meet some of Hackney's Green Champions
Rafe Benli, Queensbridge
Hannah Ahmed
Jo Homan, Brownswood
Rafe Benli, Queensbridge
What do you recycle?
I try to recycle as much as possible, paper, plastic bottles, glass, card board, and kitchen waste. I also have my own compost bin where I recycle my garden waste.
What methods of waste prevention do you use?
Wherever possible try not to use too many plastic bags, I use reusable bags, although I do recycle the plastic bags eventually, or try to find other uses for them. I look at what I buy and try to reduce the amount of packaged products I purchase. All my kitchen waste goes in the Blue Bin for recycling. I also home compost.
How did you first get into recycling and waste prevention?
I like to think I am a keen environmentalist, and I wanted to make a difference. I am on first name terms with a lot of the local residents, and I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to get people to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible.
Tell us why you’re a Green Champion
I thought it would be an ideal way to promote my green credentials and it would aid me in my discussions with residents, who I regularly talk with on issues of waste and recycling. By becoming a Green Champion I feel like I am part of something, and that this will hopefully bring change for the future, and thus a better environment for us all to live in.
Give us your top recycling/waste prevention tip
I really do say no to multiple plastic bags. I do not see the need for them. Always carry a cloth bag, or reuse a plastic bag. Where possible I try to reduce the amount of packaging I buy.
Hannah Ahmed
What do you recycle?
Most of my household waste.
What methods of waste prevention do you use?
I reuse anything I can, for example yoghurt pots, bags, anything that really does not need to be thrown away. I always carry cloth bags with me to stop using plastic carrier bags, and have a very big handbag! I always try and buy products that come in reusable or recyclable packaging. I get organic vegetables delivered to my door, which are less packaged than the pre packed vegetables in supermarkets. I do not have paper statements delivered from my bank, I do banking online to reduce paper. I always take unwanted items to charity shops.
How did you first get into recycling and waste prevention?
I think a lot of awareness has been raised over the last few years. When I became a Green Champion it gave me a lot more education into how much more I can do to help too.
Tell us why you’re a Green Champion
It’s a great way to try and help the environment by acting locally and hopefully making a difference to the global environmental issues. It’s also a great way to meet like minded people and exchange ideas and make new friends!
Give us your top recycling/waste prevention tip
Always think twice about how an item could be used in other ways before throwing it away or recycling it. Prevention is always better than a cure!
Jo Homan, Brownswood
What do you recycle?
Paper, cardboard, glass, cans, tin foil, plastic bottles, cloth, batteries, tetrapaks and drink cartons.
What methods of waste prevention do you use?
- I compost all my food and garden waste in my garden - wormery and compost bins
- Grow some food, get food delivered at home, bulk buy (from co-op, Infinity Foods) and buy larger containers where possible (eg rice, laundry liquid), use leftovers
- Use cloth bags and reuse plastic bags
- Buy clothes from charity shops, use old clothes as dusters for cleaning, use washable nappies, buy fewer clothes and gadgets but pay for good quality, ask for clothes as children's presents or specific toys I know they'll use
- Keep only the books I would actually re-read, put unwanted books on www.greenmetropolis.co.uk and buy books from there
- Tip bath water directly into toilet cistern, put bowl in bathroom sink to collect water, e.g. from running tap to get hot water), keep covered bucket in kitchen to collect water, e.g. from rinsing lettuce), keep two water butts
- Religiously unplug phone chargers, use low energy bulbs and rechargeable batteries.
How did you first get into recycling and waste prevention?
Was it at work, trying to get them to recycle paper? Or was it the green boxes at home? Maybe it was combination of both combined with a growing awareness of the global impact of over-consumption on climate.
Tell us why you’re a Green Champion
Meeting others who share my goals, and learning more about what Hackney Council’s recycling team is up to makes me feel involved in the solution to the problems we humans have created. I particularly enjoy the Be Recreative festival the Green Champions help organise because it's exciting and good fun.
Give us your top recycling/waste prevention tip
To manage items you leave on standby (mobile phones, TV, DVD players, computer), plug everything in your lounge into a big extension board with a switch. Mount this on an accessible wall and make sure you switch it off before you go to bed.
Page updated: 14 Mar 2008