Rhondda Cynon Taf Council is celebrating its schools’ recycling efforts this recycling week (22-29 September)!
The theme of national recycling week this year is ‘Rescue Me, Recycle’ and the Wales Recycle campaign is centred around food waste and the need to ‘BE MIGHTY, RECYCLE’ for RCT!
Schools across Rhondda Cynon Taf have been rescuing items by recycling for over a DECADE, thanks to Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s recycling competitions!
The national campaign looks at the items that we sometimes overlook or forget that we can recycle – from aerosol cans to shampoo bottles. These items often wrongly end up in our black bag waste! It also focuses on the need to re-use as many items as possible – by re-using school uniform or using re-fillable water bottles.
Three Rhondda Cynon Taf schools in particular have consistently risen to the GREEN challenge and showed off their super-eco skills, by never failing to enter the Council’s recycling competitions!
The competitions that are run annually were established in 2015 in a bid to raise awareness within schools and the wider community, about the importance of recycling and re-use.
In previous years competitions have included a school re-uniform challenge, football boot re-use scheme, battery recycling and lots more.
BUT the two consistent competitions that have run every single year are:
- The Easter Egg Recycling Challenge and
- The Christmas Card Recycling Challenge.
Since the very beginning, Ton Pentre Junior School, SS Gabriel and Raphael R.C Primary School, and YGG Tonyrefail have been Eco Superheroes, and have always been ready to fight the green fight powered by their supportive communities.
Since the school challenges launched, these schools have consistently participated in both the Easter Egg Packaging and Christmas Card Challenge each year!
The Visit Bryn Pica team have visited the THREE schools on Thursday, September 25, to thank them for all their support.
The schools were also presented with their choice of either a gardening or litter picking environmental kit to enhance their school environment and help to ensure that they keep up their amazing efforts for many, many more years to come!
Over the past 10 years:
- Ton Pentre Junior School has collected a staggering 177,739 grams of Easter packaging and 511,415 grams of used Christmas cards for recycling!
- SS Gabriel and Raphael R.C Primary has collected an impressive 102,789 grams of Easter packaging and 531,577 grams of used Christmas cards for recycling!
- YGG Tonyrefail has collected a humongous 303, 997 grams of Easter packaging and 465,565 grams of used Christmas cards for recycling!
All this combined means that these THREE schools have successfully recycled well over TWO TONNES of waste – all while helping their school and local community!
Councillor Ann Crimmings, Cabinet Member for Environmental Services, said: “Recycle week is a week to celebrate all the amazing efforts in our communities and also to raise awareness that we all need to keep up the fight against waste.I’d like to thank all the schools and their communities for taking part in our competitions over the last decade, and it’s great to see that they have firmly become part of the academic calendar – with so many schools taking part year after year.
“Special thanks to Ton Pentre Junior School, SS Gabriel and Raphael R.C Primary School, and YGG Tonyrefail, for their extraordinary support – we really appreciate your commitment to recycling and we hope that the bonus recycling kits will help you to keep up the amazing work!
“We recognise your tremendous effort in Rhondda Cynon Taf to recycle, and we would like to say thank you once again for not missing a single Easter or Christmas Challenge in the past decade!”
Recycling in Rhondda Cynon Taf is EASY, with weekly CLEAR bag kerbside collections along with weekly food waste, weekly spring green waste and nappy collections.
Not sure what you can or can't recycle? You can now check online via the searchable A-Z guide at www.rctcbc.gov.uk/recyclingsearch.
Fancy checking your recycling knowledge? You can play the fun online recycling game online at www.rctcbc.gov.uk/RecyclingGameOn.
For more information on recycling or to register for green waste and nappy/incontinence collections please visit www.rctcbc.gov.uk/recycling.
Posted on 26/09/2025