We are holding a Waste Reduction Event in the Garden Heritage Exhibition Centre in Antrim Castle Gardens.
The aim of the event is raise awareness of the many ways that residents and visitors can reduce the amount of waste that they generate and send to landfill.

The event also aims to encourage people to make connections within their community and hopefully volunteer, support or develop opportunities with local groups.

The event will have information aspects of Waste Prevention, Waste Reduction, Self-sufficiency, Reuse, Repair, Donation to Charity, Repurposing, Upcycling and finally Recycling.

We have invited a selection of organisations to have a stall with information displays, including regional charities such as Fareshare (a charity who redistributes surplus food from retail distributors and stores), NI Nappy Library (who promote reusable cloth nappies), Habitat for Humanity (who upcycle furniture that would otherwise have gone to the Recycling Centre and use it to raise funds to provide support for vulnerable people at home and abroad) and also a local charity shop who will be promoting a vintage re-love message.

We have also invited a selection of select local entrepreneurs to have a stall with reusable, sustainable and eco-friendly goods for sale, including Purple Earth (which has refill stations to minimise packaging and a great selection of zero waste and waste reducing goods). Hopefully people will be inspired to try a new zero-waste item or rethink how they shop to minimise the amount of waste they generate.

In an effort to develop new community connections, we will have representatives from established and developing local community groups who have a sustainable and waste reduction ethos such as Men's Shed, the newly established Repair Café Antrim and Newtownabbey (we are actively supporting the development of this new group), allotmenteers/garden volunteers etc.

We are also using the opportunity to continue to promote the "Refillution" – a reusable water bottle refill scheme which local councils are delivering in partnership with NI Water. The aim of the scheme is to have people use reusable water bottles and have a refill station (participating businesses who will allow people to refill from the tap for free) or two in each town or village, thereby eliminating the need to buy a single use bottle of water.

It is our hope that we will start many conversations during this event which will hopefully help the waste reduction movement in our borough develop and grow.

We anticipate that the event will be successful and if so we may consider making it a regular annual event.