Celebrating 25 years of meaningful work experience for adults with learning disabilities through Recycling Ollerton and Boughton

A service dedicated to enabling adults with learning disabilities to carry out meaningful work has celebrated 25 years in operation.

Recycling Ollerton and Boughton (ROB) was formed in 1999 by two parents — Mike and Joan Tomlinson — involved in Nottinghamshire County Council’s Whitewater Day Service for adults with learning disabilities.

They found the service users enjoyed crushing cans, and so began a scheme to collect aluminium cans and newspapers from houses in the area for recycling.

Now, it has grown from 12 service users to 49 and employs 20 staff, and its collections have risen from 200 houses to more than 10,000 houses and 130 businesses across 11 villages.

Current chief executive Neil Pike, who took over the role 16 years ago in 2008, said: “Our service users can choose to come between one and five days a week, depending on their needs and what else they’re interested in.

“The most important thing is that the guys want to be here. If they weren’t here they’d be at a different day service without the opportunity to do meaningful work.”

Some of the current members have been attending the service since it began, with many others over the ten-year mark.

Each collection team consists of two or three staff members and three to four service users with a wide spectrum of needs, who work together out in the community collecting the recycling before returning to sort it at the depot.

ROB moved to its current site, on Boughton Industrial Estate, in February 2000, and has continued to expand operations there since.

In 2006, it moved to collecting glass as well as cans, cardboard, paper, newspapers, and textiles.

Each year it turns over 380 tonnes of cardboard from business collections, and this year has reached 500 tonnes of glass from household kerbside collections.

Despite the recent launch of Newark and Sherwood District Council’s in-house kerbside glass recycling scheme, ROB is now collecting more than ever before, and was supported by the district council to buy 200 additional boxes.

The collected materials are all sorted with basic machinery or by hand, then sold on once processed.

“Everything we do is inefficient really,” added Neil.

“If you did it efficiently there would be nothing hands-on, but we need to be busy.

“Everything we do is just about the activities, the fact it is recycling is great, it ticks a box, but it’s about the activities and that people see us doing it.”

ROB gives important opportunities for adults with learning disabilities to interact with their communities — something which wouldn’t have occurred not all that long ago.

As well as being out and about during collections, service users also deliver animal bedding products made from some of the recycled newspaper and clean cardboard to their customers.

Neil added: “Whatever we do has to have a benefit for the guys who do it. Our mission is giving people work opportunities.

“We operate as much like a normal workplace as we can be — but we also have care plans, we keep record of what they’ve done and how they’ve been and give feedback to parents and carers as we know what happens here has a knock-on effect at home.”

As part of the work experience, for a nominal fee the canteen serves up lunch for those working, each day prepared by a different service user who can choose what they’d like to make and serve.

“The canteen is the real hub of the workplace,” Neil added.

“They come in first thing and they make a cuppa, they pay £3 for dinner and pudding — just enough to cover the costs of the food — and have unlimited tea and coffee.”

An expansion of the canteen — the current ‘sticking point’ for ROB’s growth — will take place in the new year, and allow it to welcome more people.

It costs ROB around £700,000 a year to run its services, with the sell-on value of its recycling providing about a third of the money needed, and Nottinghamshire County Council’s funding for individual placements is the major contributor.

While household collections are free, ROB charges businesses for its services, and also pushes for grant support for specific projects such as the expansion of the canteen.