Unfortunately the busier I am, the less time I have for updating this site. The last few weeks have been particularly frantic for various reasons - leaflet deliveries, lots of meetings both in the ward and in the council house, and preparing for an AGM at work which means reviewing the entire year's work to date.
A couple of highlights from recent work; I attended the Community Steering Group at The College High School a couple of weeks back. A little over a year ago, the school was pretty much in freefall - GCSE results stood at 11% A-C grades and there were numerous vacancies. This year's student got 34% A-C grades, attendance is up, truancy is down, we have a full complement of staff, the school is bidding for specialist Performing Arts status and a complete rebuild- lots of
positive stories in the press, and congratulations from
the Minister just go to show that we are getting somewhere with this.
We had a final evidence gathering session this morning on our recycling review, with presentations about procurement, sustainability, and from an organisation called
Urban Mines which aims to reuse waste materials in a beneficial way. One of the thoughts that occurred to me during this presentation was that whilst many products now advertise the fact that they are recyclable, there is no standard mark for advertising which products contain recycled components. I was thinking of something like the Fairtrade mark; something that could indicate adherence to a certain standard in terms of use of recycled materials. I'm not sure who would actually lauch something like that, but I liked the idea - especially because of lot of recycled goods have a potential for non-obvious everyday applications.
