Gamesley's golden girls recognised for recycling right

Willy Wonka isn't the only one handing out golden tickets this Christmas - as three lucky recipients from Gamesley can testify.

Champion recyclers Denise Ashworth, Hannah Forde and Janet Mills have each won £50 for their sterling efforts to recycle more of their household waste via their brown bins and green boxes.

The golden ticket prize draw is part of the Recycle for Gamesley campaign which has seen team members visit over 1,000 homes in the area to spread the word and encourage residents to recycle.

And it's a message that's been enthusiastically received with 400 golden tickets being issued to people who left the right bin out, with the address label on, and with the right items in it on the right day.

Tickets returned to golden boxes in the library and neighbourhood office were entered into a prize draw and Denise, Hannah and Janet were the lucky names to the drawn.

Councillor John Haken, Executive councillor for Operational Services at High Peak Borough Council, said: "This project has been really positive and I'd like to say a big thank you to Gamesley residents for their impressive efforts to recycle more of their waste.

"The golden ticket draw has been a lovely way to recognise the contribution made by local people and, whilst this is the final draw of the project, I'm sure the good recycling habits that people have now established will continue over Christmas and into the New Year.

"In particular, I congratulate Denise, Hannah and Janet for leading by example and getting their recycling right."

And all three have pledged that their winning ways will continue. Janet, who did recycle before the campaign, now recycles even more of her waste and Denise feels that recycling has become second nature to her. Hannah commented that recycling has left her with plenty of room in her black bin for her non-recyclable rubbish.

The Recycle for Gamesley campaign is a partnership between the Borough Council, Derbyshire County Council and Resource Recovery Solutions Ltd.

Derbyshire County Council's Deputy Cabinet Member for Highways, Transport and Infrastructure, Councillor Paul Dunn, added: "I am delighted that this partnership approach to encourage recycling in Gamesley has been such a great success.

"We need everyone to recycle as much as possible and help to reduce the considerable costs of waste disposal. Each year the county council spends £20million on dealing with waste that residents put in their non-recycling bins.  This is money we can ill afford at a time when we are getting less money from central Government to run our services. So schemes like this one in Gamesley, which spread the message about the importance of recycling, have our full support."