EMERGE - Recycling In Manchester

Greetings,

I realised the other day that I've been running this blog for well over 6 months now but I've not explained in any depth to you who and what EMERGE is/are and what we do.

EMERGE was set up as a voluntary organisation in 1996 by myself and a group of like-minded individuals, the objectives of which were to help bolster the local economy of Openshaw, engage the wider community in thinking and doing more about sustainable resource management and thereby act as a catalyst to get businesses and households recycling.

We registered the company as limited by guarantee (effectively a not-for-individual-profit basis) in May 1998 and ran on a new business support plus a Princes Youth Business Trust grant and loan but it wasn't until 1999 that we actually employed our first full-time member of staff. EMERGE now collects from over 700 businesses, 125 schools and 7000 households in the Greater Manchester area. We employ 30 local staff from our HQ in Openshaw and recycle a comprehensive range of materials including most dry recyclates and some hazardous waste.

Have a look at the history page on our website for more information about how we have developed since the outset. I'd like to believe that many of the people who work at EMERGE aren't only here because they need to earn a crust, but because they genuinely believe that through high quality recycling services, environmental education and positive engagement we can make a genuine difference to conserving resources and protecting our precious planet now and in the future. Sounds idealistic? Maybe, but I'd say we need more idealism, optimism matched with tenacity in order to sort out the mess we are making!

I've been grafting on some red tape recently and hopefully I should have something quite interesting to tell you about EMERGE soon, we're keeping it under wraps for now but it will definitely put us into a unique position in the recycling industry!

I'll keep you posted, watch this space!

Onwards & upwards!

Lucy.