cleanercities.co.uk

ENVIRONMENT NEWS

Hi I'm the creator of cleanercities.co.uk and have been owner and general manager since September 2004 - when the first version of this site was published to the web.

I had been planning to set up a social enterprise to supply mini bin keyrings to 1) reduce cigarette and chewing gum litter in our towns and cities and 2) generate revenue to fund a free community and voluntary environmental advice service.

Why? I had been working for a national environmental charity who liked to profess the importance and such of community development, empowering deprived communities, creating more sustainable environments, etc.

From left to right: Emma - Me & Paul

Overtime, I felt my employer was always looking to take a cut from community/voluntary groups in return for professional services (at professional prices) that the group would be encouraged to buy in to help develop and implement their projects. (Where's the charity in that?)

Staff working at ground level did excellent work but it was not always what I would describe as charitable - everyone (except the community group) would be paid for their efforts.

Some of the costs were warranted and justified - but in my humble opinion, some were not.

I can state first hand that money was wasted on inefficient and convoluted working practices. So I resigned in frustration and disappointment.

Now I understand that charities have costs - and there are many that do a lot of good work, I'm just confirming from first hand experience some aren't as selfless and giving as they may appear on the surface. There are a lot of expensive gala dinners & self congratulatory award ceremonies within the charity world. The average Chief Exec salary of the largest UK charities has now reached £103,000 (click here for more info). So personally, I no longer wish to work for one.

I saved up for several years to fund cleanercities.co.uk start up costs and have invested all of the money generated since, straight back into the running costs of the advice service, the business and in expanding cleanercities.co.uk capacity to supply our unique mini bin keyrings to a wider audience. We have also given financial support and donations to some worthy environmental charities and organisations who share our ethos.

We supply our low cost mini bins to individuals, business, charities and Local Authorities in an attempt to help rid our towns and cities of cigarette and chewing gum litter. We supply most of our mini bins at heavily discounted rate to Local Authorities, neighbourhood wardens or groups who want to sell or distribute the mini bins in areas blighted with cigarette and chewing gum litter.

I have tried to create a small business that gives community and voluntary groups the opportunity to start generating an income stream that can be used as the group sees fit - whether to create paid employment or make some improvements to their local areas, it would be at the discretion of the group. Contact me to see if cleanercities.co.uk can help your group.

Our advice service allows members of the community and voluntary sector to contact a qualified environmentalist for advice at no charge. The same service from my previous employer (the charity) would have cost a community group £45-80 per hour. Our costs are covered by the profits generated from the sale of our mini bins and other products.

There are many groups who work often unpaid to try to create improvements within their local environment. On the whole, community and voluntary groups contribute massively in creating positive changes and I think it is only right to support these groups in whatever way our resources at the time will allow.

Although we do operate a small web shop, the majority of our business comes from organisations ordering large quantities of mini bins for awareness raising campaigns or to sell in their local areas. The mini bins are manufactured in China and are produced in a factory with international quality standard ISO9002. Cleanercities.co.uk imports the mini bins directly into the UK fvia ship as this produces less CO² per tonne of freight than air transport.

We import less than half a tonne of mini bins each year and receive no more than 2 deliveries in any 12 month period, we buy as many as available storage space permits to reduce our transport miles as much as possible. I have yet to find anything similar being produced on a commercial scale, closer to home.

We have recently entered our fifth year on the net. When we first started in 2004, cigarette litter was hardly in the public conscience. Now in 2008, laws have been in place for several years that deem it an offence to drop such litter. it is becoming increasingly commonplace for wardens to regularly hand out fixed penalty notices of up to £80 to those who are caught dropping their fag end.

I have seen a phenomenal positive change in public attitude in such a relatively short period of time and hope the trend continues.

On a final note, we discussed the idea of posting real photo's of everyone involved with cleanercities.co.uk up on the site, but the idea went down like a lead balloon. We'll give the matter some more thought. In the meantime I've posted our Simpsons avatars. If you are the sort of person who would simpsonise yourself or someone else please click here.

kindest regards

Petra O'Leary - November 2008

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