Top marks for Raymond Brown

Company educates more than 1,000 schoolchildren as part of last month’s National Recycling Awareness Week

FOR the seventh year, Raymond Brown have welcomed local schoolchildren to their Rookery Farm aggregates recycling facility, near Fareham, to coincide with National Recycling Awareness Week (16-23 June 2014).  

The initiative, which includes class lessons, activities at their own schools and a site tour of the company’s recycling facilities, has directly educated more than 1,000 children aged 7-9 years to date.
 
The event was arranged and funded by Raymond Brown and covers a range of learning objectives from the National Curriculum, targeting geography, history, science, maths and citizenship.  

This year, a total of 150 children from Parkgate and Whiteley Primary Schools took part.  The interactive lessons at both schools and on site focused on rocks, soils and recycling awareness.  

Local councillor Sean Woodward, executive member for Economy, Transport and Environment at Hampshire County Council, has always supported the project and joined one of the classes on their site tour.

He said: ‘Rookery Farm is a valuable resource, achieving high recycling rates which contribute greatly to the county’s waste-management performance.  During National Recycling Week, Raymond Brown provided the children with a great opportunity to see firsthand how waste can be recycled into a useable product.’

Lauren Finch, environmental & quality officer for Raymond Brown, added: ‘The behind-the-scenes tour and on site lessons were planned to give the children an into the process of aggregates recycling operations, awareness of the local environment and the importance of site safety. Due to the locality of the site, environmental management has always been of paramount importance to us and a high level of safety is at the forefront of all our recycling operations.

She continued: ‘We are constantly improving our educational programmes and facilities and look forward to continued future community engagement with the local schools.’