Rookery Recycling Awareness Week 2013

Raymond Brown Aggregates has again opened the doors at its Rookery Farm Aggregate Recycling Facility to local schools in the Fareham area as part of the ‘National Recycling Awareness Week’. This year, a total of 170 children from Parkgate Primary School, Whiteley Primary School, and Lord Wilson School have participated in the initiative which includes lessons at their schools, visits to the Aggregate Recycling Facility and activities at Bursledon Brickworks.

The event, organised by staff at Raymond Brown, covers a range of learning objectives from the National Curriculum, targeting Geography, History, Science, Maths and Citizenship. The class lesson is delivered by Raymond Brown personnel and focuses on rocks, soils and recycling awareness.

The second part of the project involves a visit to Rookery Farm Aggregate Recycling Facility to see large scale recycling in action. The classes are divided into two groups, with one group being taken on a tour of the recycling facility, whilst the second group remain within the educational visitor centre to learn about key topics such as health & safety and the local environment. The children are encouraged to write their own individual promises to the environment which are displayed within the educational centre.

The behind-the-scenes tour and on-site lessons are planned to give the seven and eight year olds an insight into the process of waste collected from local Household Waste Recycling Centres and construction sites.

Following the visit to Rookery Farm, activities at Bursledon Brickworks provide the pupils with an opportunity to conduct experiments on materials and make a clay brick from the recycled clay produced at Rookery Farm.

As a souvenir of the event and to help keep them safe in the local community, each child is given their own hi-visibility jacket and goody bag.

Raymond Brown’s Environmental & Quality Officer, Lauren Finch said: “It’s never been more important for people to recycle their waste and protect their local environment. School trips like this, where children get to see the lorries and heavy machinery in action, really help to get them excited about recycling and we hope they will take this away with them and be more aware of recycling waste in their own home.”

Cllr Seán Woodward, Executive Member for Economy, Transport and Environment at Hampshire County Council said: "As National Recycling Awareness Week 2013 takes place, this is an ideal chance for Fareham’s children to see how waste that would previously have been tipped can be recycled into a useable product. The recycling of construction waste at Rookery Farm not only provides materials for use in new construction and development, it also helps in reducing the reliance on the extraction of sand, gravel and rock from the land."

Over the past five years, Raymond Brown has directly educated in excess of 600 children between the ages of 7 – 16 years. We are continually improving our educational programmes and classroom facilities in order for the project to develop and improve engagement with the local community.

The continued success of the Rookery Recycling Week is due to the support from local schools and communication, cooperation and enthusiasm from staff involvement at Raymond Brown, and more recently, Bursledon Brickworks.