Anthea Rossouw is a natural organiser. For many years she was a community organiser in her native South Africa, criss-crossing that country to tackle poverty, promote small business development and empower neighbourhood groups.
More recently, she has rekindled her passion to get people to take the initiative in her adopted home of Crawley. Already an avid recycler, Anthea signed up to the West Sussex County Council waste prevention adviser course taught by the University of Brighton. She then decided to apply her new knowledge to develop a recycling and composting programme in the extra-care housing scheme where she was living. The scheme, Walstead Court, run by social enterprise Housing 21 (the country's leading provider of extra-care housing) consists of 26 individual apartments as well as communal facilities such as a restaurant, lounge and gardens. Each tenant has their own front door like any other apartment block, but 24-hour care is available if tenants need this..
Before the scheme was implemented all the waste from Walstead Court was being sent to landfill. Anthea persuaded the local Housing 21 manager, Caroline Hatton, to support her plans. Starting in August 2007, through a mixture of briefing sessions, one-to-one chats and relentless enthusiasm, charm and friendly persuasion, she brought the elderly residents and cleaning and catering staff on board. The initial response was positive and recycling increased from nothing to 40%. But food waste was still a problem. At this point, Anthea recalled that her University of Brighton course tutor, Dr Ryan Woodard, had introduced her to a simple Swedish product, The Green Johanna, which converts garden and food waste into compost, all year round, using a technique known as "hot composting".
Anthea spotted that the Green Johannas could potentially meet her needs – but there is strict regulation on how food waste is managed. Working with the Environment Agency over four months, Anthea managed to get the appropriate legal exemption so that the Green Johannas could be installed on site. She also organised fundraising on Walstead Court to buy additional recycling boxes for individual tenants to use in their own apartments.
Today, tenants are enthusiastically recycling; the smelly rubbish storage areas are now pristine and odour less, and the Green Johannas in the communal gardens are producing high-grade compost. The site has seen a 55% reduction by volume in waste to landfill, with the rest going to recycling, charity shops, or the Green Johannas. For environmental campaigners, it's an interesting case-study of how to engage with hard to reach communities and how tackling waste is a first step to improving the physical environment.
For organisations like Housing 21 that want to improve the quality of life for older Britons – besides ticking sustainability boxes – the Crawley pilot meets goals to get elderly tenants involved in the running of the apartments' scheme; it helps to keep tenants mentally alert and more physically active (taking waste out to the Green Johannas, crunching up plastic and cardboard containers etc.), it provides an added reason for neighbours to chat to each other and can be a conversational ice-breaker and it encourages growing your own flowers and food. For a generation who have lived through the Second World War and post-war rationing, recycling is nothing new – it is part of their mindset.
Housing 21 has already repeated the project in a sample of its other Sussex group housing and care scheme. In partnership with the University of Brighton, local authorities and another social housing group, it is looking to roll out the initiative more widely – it contributes to both environmental and social sustainability. For politicians and philanthropists looking for a "big society", it should be a humbling reminder that community engagement is most likely to grow organically, given a bit of encouragement, rather like the Green Johannas producing compost.
David Grayson is chairman of Housing 21.
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