Helping Hands supports recycling for businesses
Helping Hands is collecting recyclables from businesses around Golden Bay. To date, businesses are not part of the recycling run offered to Tasman ratepayers, and Helping Hands has filled that gap by providing a pick-up service for bins and crates, if required, and a service for designing and building collection stations for recyclables.
Co-ordinator Peter Pontier said the recycling added to the Helping Hands services already in place. Following a successful trial period and finding a price that works for the customers, Helping Hands is now looking for more businesses to join the scheme.
“Businesses are not supposed to put their recyclables out in the blue bins, and so we got into contact with the Nelson Environment Centre about a year-and-a-half ago. With the help of Claire Webster, TDC’s environmental education officer, we contacted local businesses and now we pick up recyclables from various restaurants and cafes, Fonterra and the golf club. The next step is now to approach builders to recycle stuff from building sites; we have already talked to a few to see what is possible.”
Pick-up is twice a week during the summer season and weekly during the winter months, but it is a custom-made service, tailored to needs, Peter said.
“All the recyclables—we take glass, tins, cans, plastic, batteries, cardboard and paper—are taken to the transfer station and we are now looking into picking up plastic wrap and timber cut-offs and maybe rubble.”
Helping Hands is a community-based project under the umbrella of the Outreach programme, an additional service to the residential programme provided by Te Whare Mahana. Helping Hands has two sides, explained Peter: a practical side, which actively involves people in hands-on, personal work in the community, and vocational work. This in turn includes talking to people about their dreams and ideas and working with their strengths in an environment that provides a place and time to enable people to re-evaluate their lives.
“We work with people who have come through some personal crisis, younger and older people, and those who are vulnerable. Some had burnout, others have been bashed around by life; they are totally capable but need a period to bounce back,” said Peter.
Under the Helping Hands programme, people set up a small business that they run themselves with a back-up of two or three support people. Peter said it was very much a co-operative, teamwork approach that builds on the individual abilities people brought into the programme.
Peter’s background is in landscape gardening and creative art therapy, specialising in therapeutic gardens, using a garden setting as therapeutic medium that enables change. Helping Hands was similar, Peter said. By creating a business as an environment for change, people could find out what they were good at and could feel positive about themselves again.
Those interested in the recycling scheme or any other Helping Hands services (garden maintenance, lawn mowing, small construction jobs, painting, firewood and pest-trapping), can contact the office on 525 6226.
Ina Holst
