Powerday And Barratt Homes Teach School Children A Lesson About Recycling

Powerday and housebuilder Barratt Developments have teamed up with schools throughout Kent, Southern Counties and London to promote some important sustainability messages.

The innovative project, designed to educate pupils about the importance of recycling, saw schools collecting unwanted hard plastic toys and rigid plastics such as tubs and trays and replacing them with a piece of recycled furniture for their playground.

In line with its own sustainability messages, which sees Barratt recycle as much as 95% of its own onsite waste at its new home developments instead of going to landfill, the developer worked alongside Powerday to deliver the project. With plastic waste currently very high on the media agenda, both parties saw this as an excellent opportunity to raise awareness of recycling plastic.

Gary Ennis, Regional Managing Director for Barratt London and Southern, commented: “This is a very topical campaign, and one that will see pupils in schools neighbouring our new home developments understand the importance of recycling […] Together with Powerday, we have delivered skips to many schools throughout Sussex, Kent and London and collected as much recyclable plastic as possible. Pupils have been rewarded for their efforts with a recycled piece of playground furniture.”

Alison Gross, the Headteacher at Fryent Primary School who participated in the project, stated: “It is so important that children are made aware of their responsibility to the environment, and this has been a fantastic campaign in building that consideration for how they re-use waste. It has helped them see the effect their contribution to society makes on a larger scale too.”

Simon Little, Sales and Marketing Director at Powerday says: “We were happy to assist Barratt to deliver this recycling project to local schools. The developer goes above and beyond the necessary requirements to ensure sustainable construction practices at its new homes sites, and this is an approach that we feel should be adopted by the housebuilding industry.”