On a grey damp day in February, our spirits were lifted by an amusing and informative talk from Chris about the beginnings of the Cone Exchange and its role in recycling for good use.
From an imaginative request from a young student at Springwater School, while on a visit to Taylors Tea factory, for a disused cone to make an angel, this grew through word of mouth, college, school and playgroup contacts to become a thriving community project. An “adopt an angel” scheme, that first Christmas, funded the project further and provided bedding plants next to Starbeck’s war memorial in an angel shape. It has now become a thriving business, recycling business waste throughout the Harrogate area. Cones have become angels, rockets and volcanoes, reels have made “the wheels on a bus”. All that is needed is the imagination.
Involving children through speaking as Pirate ‘Captain Rummage’ at school assemblies, Chris challenged children to look for unwanted items ( ‘pirate treasure’) to exchange for cones. And so, the name was born.
As the idea took hold, waste pallet tops became trugs and garden furniture, benefitting Horticap students and others. Using the sacks in which tea comes to the factory, annual creative challenges with input from Brownies, Guides and Scouts, (including a Jamboree of 8,000 Guides at Harewood house) developed the idea of sustainable bags from which the company “Charity Bags” has grown.
Chris showed us a lovely large poppy made from a sweet jar lid and offcuts from a bouncy castle manufacturer, and mirror frames made from cast off vape tubes. Wool has been provided to Care homes to be knitted into soft toys, jumpers for Africa, hats and gloves for Harrogate Homeless Project.
Chris has been given the Queen’s Award for Sustainable Development and the OBE for his work over the past 20 years. He has inspired many of us to find the shop (open Tuesdays & Thursdays in term time) near the Forest Moor / Hookstone Park branch of Morrisons, (HG2 7DB) and also to hunt for our own “pirate treasure” to recycle.
He was thanked by Nicola Harding, and all of us with much applause.