Recycling at Christmas

Over the years a target for BCS has been to reduce the amount of waste that we produce during Christmas week. Ted, our top recycler, speaks about this in our first YouTube video.

This year we used one medium skip, and managed to recycle:

1. 30 bundles of paper/card;
2. 10 bags of cleaned and crushed metals;
3. 10 bas of plastics [it is frustrating that many plastics, especially those that are black, are not accepted];
4. 3 bags of glass;
5. 1 bag of crushed foil; and
   
6. 4 bags of compostables.

As ever, tetrapacks caused Ted some distress as they cannot be recycled. Maybe next year, huh?

Christmas Shelter 2008

We had a great Christmas Shelter last year. Some of the highlights can be seen on our Birmingham Christmas Shelter YouTube channel.

Some headlines follow.

1. We had the following number of guests eat or sleep over with us each day.

	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Male sleep	Female sleep
23rd		45	66	41	2
24th	46	60	90	80	5
25th	90	145	110	97	6
26th	93	99	98	80	5
27th	85	110	102	86	7
28th	105

2. We had the following number of guests use our services

Service	No. of guests that used service
Showers	92
Manicurist	16
Hairdresser	15
Citezens Advice	7
Chiropodist	23

3. We had some good media coverage locally and nationally, and Liam Byrne, Cabinet Office Minister, made an announcement about volunteering whilst he visted us on 27/12/08.

The Trustees of BCS would like to say a huge thank you to all our volunteers and service-providers who made this such a wonderful Christmas experience.