Exeter University’s Student Community Wardens have been delivering the termly ‘Glass Caddy Scheme’ for over five years and, due to increasing demand, we are pleased that we are now trialling the scheme as a monthly service.
The Glass Caddy Scheme simply involves collecting glass from multiple student properties who do not have access to a vehicle, and delivering the glass to the closest bottle bank. This scheme was initially developed with our Students’ Guild in response to the fact that Exeter does not provide doorstep glass collections. Glass was sometimes being placed in grey waste and many students without cars struggled to transport the glass to glass banks.
The service is strictly offered to students without access to a vehicle. They also use the scheme to highlight the benefits of not taking a car to the city.
Using one collection vehicle to collate multiple glass donations into one glass bank ‘visit’, also reduces Exeter’s carbon footprint.
The surge in demand for the service has led to a monthly trial of the scheme.
We are pleased to see that this recycling trend also coincides with a significant spike in student donations of unwanted goods to charities like The British Heart Foundation for their ‘Give It Don’t Bin It’ campaign. Increased awareness of the recycle/reuse message has been very positive and we hope to build on this success with other projects.