Arthur Rank Hospice Charity has teamed up with Cambridge City Council and ‘Just Helping’ in a bid to recycle your old Christmas tree and raise money for their new £10.5m hospice. Cambridge residents living in CB1, CB2, CB3, CB4 and CB5 who wish to have their tree collected should register before 5pm tomorrow (Wednesday 6 January).
A team of mighty tree collection volunteers including teams from Babraham Bioscience Technologies Ltd, Barnes Construction, Munro Building Services Ltd, Mick George Ltd, Wrights Mower Centre Ltd, Sawston Carpets and Flooring Ltd will then collect registered trees across this weekend, Friday 8, Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 January. Trees must be left outside by 9am on Friday 8 January, with residents making a suggested minimum donation of £5 per tree. Currently just over 200 trees will be collected, meaning that approximately £1800 will be raised for the Cambridgeshire’s new hospice building at Shelford Bottom.
A Christmas tree recycling scheme for another hospice near Manchester, which is now its fifteenth year raised an incredible £91,300 in January 2015! Chloe Christine-Wallis, Community Fundraiser explains that this is something that Arthur Rank Hospice Charity will aspire to, as the initiative becomes more established: “We are delighted with the take up so far, especially considering it is only our first year. Eventually we would like to be recycling trees at a scale comparable to those elsewhere in the country, but for 2016 we would be very happy to have 300 collections registered. Please don’t miss the chance to have your old tree taken away, hassle free and get in touch today!”
Arthur Rank Hospice Charity is indebted to the generous businesses and individuals of Cambridge who have made this fundraiser a possibility: Cambridge City Council for the use of their recycling facilities; those businesses who have volunteered to help collect over the coming weekend; as well as individual volunteers Paul Henry, Roger Billings, John Brown, David Skinner, Ian & Joanna Griffiths and Ralph Rickards; and Granta Cricket Club who kindly distributed leaflets about the recycling scheme over the Christmas and New Year period.
While raising money for a great cause and preventing those dreaded pins and needles ending up stuck in your car’s upholstery, those signing up to the scheme will also do their bit for the environment at the start of 2016, with trees being delivered to the Cambridge City Council’s waste management depot to be composted.
To arrange for your tree to be collected, please book in at www.arhc.org.uk/treerecycling or call Chloe Christine-Wallis on 01223 723115.
_________________________________________