Students across the Bath area who are heading home after completing their academic year are being urged to recycle or donate their unwanted items as they leave.
Ghika Savva (SCP Manager) and Councillor Paul May | Photo © B&NES Council
University and student volunteers, officers from Bath & North East Somerset Council, and the Student Community Partnership team (SCP) have been knocking on around 3,000 doors in residential areas of the city to give advice to students on handling their waste and recycling.
The drive is part of the annual Student Moving Out Campaign, an initiative led by SCP, that encourages students who are leaving their homes at the end of the academic year to recycle any good quality unwanted items correctly.
The campaign is run in conjunction with the British Heart Foundation’s (BHF) annual Pack for Good Campaign and as in previous years, 15 red donation banks have been installed at temporary sites around the city, enabling students and other residents to donate unwanted items to the charity.
Any donated clothes, books, utensils, electronic equipment, DVDs, CDs and bric-a-brac will provide stock for the British Heart Foundation network of shops and are resold to help fund life-saving research into heart and circulatory diseases and to cut down the amount of waste going to landfill.
Councillor Tim Ball, cabinet member for neighbourhood services, said: “Last year the campaign was a huge success.
“The items left in the temporary donation banks raised £61,230 to support the work of the British Heart Foundation providing defibrillators and CPR training for local organisations.
“This also supports the Council’s drive to ensure more unwanted items are reused and not needlessly wasted as set out in our waste strategy.”
The SCP is a partnership of the University of Bath, Bath Spa University, Bath College and their students’ unions and with Norland College and Bath & North East Somerset Council.
Ghika Savva, SCP Manager, said: “We were delighted to hear that we are running the most productive campaign in the South West – thanks to all our students and local residents for supporting this initiative.
“Last year the items left in the temporary donation banks captured 32.7 tonnes of items. In 2024 the total Bath Campaign, which also included donations from purpose-built student accommodation, raised over £95,250 for BHF, diverting 50.9 tonnes of material for reuse and recycling.”
Tim Reeves, University Account Executive at BHF said “As a charity, The British Heart Foundation is proud to work side by side with Bath Student Community Partnership and Bath & North East Somerset Council.
“Donations given by both students and staff have done so much to help us fight the challenge of Heart and circulatory diseases through life-changing research.”
Because of the success of last year’s campaign which saw a 73% increase in collections, British Heart Foundation have allowed the SCP to allocate an additional five sites.
The locations are:
- Claude Avenue / Bridge Road, Southdown (BA2 1AA by the small outbuilding, not by the bus stop)
- The Sandpits on Monksdale Road, Moorlands (BA2 2JB)
- Oldfield Lane, Oldfield Park (BA2 3LY by the school sign)
- Third Avenue, Oldfield Park (BA2 3NZ outside The Moorfields Pub)
- Shaftesbury Road, Oldfield Park (BA2 3LH outside the Co-op)
- Canterbury Road, Oldfield Park (BA2 3LG outside Shaftesbury Road Memorial Gardens’ fence)
- Junction Road, Oldfield Park (BA2 3LE)
- Victoria Road, Westmoreland (BA2 3QY on the grass corner of Victoria Road and Brougham Hayes)
- West Avenue, Westmoreland (BA2 3QE against the low wall by the street sign just before the bridge to Brook Road)
- Lorne Road, Westmoreland (BA2 3BY)
- High Street, Twerton (BA2 1BY tucked in against the low hedge near to 158)
- Innox Road, Twerton (BA2 1ED)
- Holloway, Widcombe & Lyncombe (BA2 4PS against the wall facing as you come down from Calton Walk)
- Beechen Cliff Villas, Widcombe & Lyncombe (BA2 4QL tucked in by the railings)
- Claverton Street, Widcombe & Lyncombe (BA2 4LE)
British Heart Foundation do not take donations of electrical items, kitchen equipment, furniture, duvets and pillows. The donation banks will remain in place until the end of July.
