A fabulous Zero Waste Day!
Zero Waste Day on 28 January in Thurso was no waste of time!
What a great, busy and fruitful day we had in Thurso on Saturday, 28th January 2023, when Thurso Community Development Trust, together with Highland Community Waste Partnership, organized the whole day-long range of events to celebrate great principles like re-using, re-purposing, repairing and sharing things!
Thurso Youth Club was buzzing with people in the morning who came to attend our Keep Warm swishing party.
Powered by our awesome volunteers and members of the Trust, we were able to welcome visitors at our warm space with hot drinks and hearty soup, after they had their stroll through the aisles of the winter necessities swish. With Thurso Sharing Shed just on the doorstep, we got plenty of great ingredients for a huge pot of soup, and fresh rolls in abundance.
And with most generous donations of over 150 items of warm clothing and over 40 pieces of various household appliances and utensils aimed at tackling the effects of cold weather – there was a lot to choose from. “We were able to find what we were looking for, and the biscuits are also delicious!” – said one of our youngest visitors, and we were even asked to run these “recycling markets”, as another visitor put it, on a weekly basis!
In the afternoon, our great bunch of talented repair wizards – Sara-Jane Hardy with Thurso CDT, George Ewing from Cycling UK and David Sutherland from local community – were teaching folk how to repair and keep in good working order their clothing, bikes and various home appliances. It was incredible to watch one gentleman fixing his antique mantle clock at the repair café all by himself, just because he got the necessary confidence boost and reassurance! The mantle clock that has been in the family for 3 generations and was silent for years, is now diligently chiming every hour again!
It only took a couple of hours for our repair experts to return 8 great items to life that otherwise would most likely have ended up at landfill or recycling centre for low-level recycling. And thus saved quite a few hundreds of pounds in total for the owners. With everyone nowadays facing the effects of the living crises in one way or another, isn’t it a very pleasant side effect of responsible attitude to waste reduction?
We thank everyone who came to Zero Waste Day, to swish and repair things, or just for a chat and cuppa, and of course our wonderful volunteers! Do share your photos and stories featuring your newly adopted or repaired items in comments below, we would love to hear from you!