LARAC is delighted that it’s very own Executive Officer, Colin Kirkby, has been awarded an MBE in the 2013 Queen’s Birthday Honours list for ‘services to the environment and to the community in Powys (Presteigne Powys)’. Colin’s volunteering activities are well known and were covered in an article in Issue 35 of the Loop. He started his waste career by setting up the award winning Presteigne Recycling Scheme in 1987, which reached a recycling rate of 30% in 1994 and put over £40k back into the community. He then became the Recycling Officer for Cardiff City Council in 1989 as part of the FoE Recycling City Project and introduced the ‘Green Bag’ collection scheme, one of the first co-mingled kerbside collection services in the UK which is still running today. He then became the Executive Officer for LARAC in 2001, a job he has held since then. Working in conjunction with Cwm Harry Land Trust, Presteigne Town Council put in a bid in 2009 to the Welsh Government for it’s Zero Waste fund for a one-year project for a community to see how far it could get to Zero Waste. It turned into a three-year project and got to a recycling rate of 74%, The project ended in April of this year. His volunteering activities within the community are numerous over the last 30 years and he is now the longest serving Town Councillor having started in 1987 and has been Mayor on 5 separate occasions. At the 2008 National Recycling Awards he was presented with the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ by the then unknown John Bishop. Joy Blizzard said:
"This must be one of the most well deserved MBEs ever presented. Colin's list of volunteer activities have not only been recycling related, but so many are deeply embedded in his local community. Tree planting, music festivals, zero waste projects, acquiring meadows for the town, mowing, bulb planting, fundraising, being Mayor more times than Dick Whittington and, of course, putting out the occasional fire …. how he finds time to support his local hostelry by having an occasional pint I'll never know! It has been a privilege for me to work with Colin for over a decade and LARAC has been extremely fortunate to have snapped up his services when we had the chance. Congratulations!"
