I'm sorry to say that we are encountering problems with the medicine blister pack recycling scheme that we set up almost 18 months ago.
I am sure you will have seen how quickly the bin has been filling up. All those who volunteer on the scheme are delighted that the scheme has been so well supported by the village, and we have been praised by many outside the village for this initiative.
HOWEVER, we are very rapidly becoming a victim of our own success and at the moment we are unable to recycle all the packs that are being left in the special bin. There are two main reasons for this:
1. Superdrug, who have small boxes for this at some of their branches with pharmacies (including the two in Cambridge) are making it hard for people to drop off more than a few packets at a time. We hear that some may even have stopped accepting them.
2. Since last year, someone in Royston (we think the Royston Lions) was collecting blister packs for charity and we could drop whole sack-loads off at the Leisure Centre. This has stopped, as we are told that now material can only be accepted at pharmacies (see 1 above).
I hope you can see that, until we get a better solution, the current rate at which packs are arriving in the bin is just unsustainable. We are going to have to lock the bin shut on a temporary basis this week, and it is only fair that I warn everyone of this.
However, there is one thing villagers can do. If you are going to somewhere with a Superdrug pharmacy (e.g. Cambridge, Letchworth, Stevenage) you can try taking your own packs or even some of the backlog we have built up and drop them off there while we try and find a better solution. We'd be very grateful if you could help. Please contact me by replying to this email if you are going near somewhere where some of the backlog can be dropped off.
PLEASE NOTE THE COLLECTION OF CRISP PACKETS IS UNAFFECTED.