Environmental

A large amount of our projects have been based around the environment. We have ran recycle, re-use projects looking at cutting our own waste down and becoming a greener youth organisation. We believe never turn anything down, we don't believe in waste, everything is multi-use and every last ounce of use is squeezed out of everything we have.

Re-use: The best example we have of re-using materials for different projects is the Skate Ramp project. We were given £500 funding to buy wood to build a 20 foot skate ramp, the skate ramp had to be able to flip round into a stage (see innovations for more). Sadly the full skate ramp was un-insurable so was only used in small sections for skating, it was primarily as a stage and speaker stack. As staging it travelled to 3 music and arts festivals and a number of events across Derbyshire. The bulky structure was getting in the way and difficult to keep moving, so we took park of the ramp apart and re-used the wood to build our DiBar in 2012. The other half-pipe section was auctioned off, and the remaining smaller sections were also taken apart and reconstructed as a stage back drop, props, and our creative 'Doodle Drum' (trash drumming illustration mix) project. The very last section of the original wood has been striped right down and re-use to build our monstrous 'DJ Drop Zone' in 2013. The wood we brought for £500 in 2009 lasted 4 years and was used on at least 3 projects, 2 major re-development / refurbishment works, and also served a great multipurpose asset used as staging to extreme sports.

Over the last 10 years we have done a series of clean up our community projects. We have cleaned the Skate park a few times, the biggest skate park clean up was when we took our graffiti removal kit supplied by Safer Neighbourhoods and removed some offensive graffiti for which we received a police commendation.

We regularly clean Derwent Street, we have also participated in large litter picks, one all around Belper ready for the Britain in Bloom. Other street clean up operations have also happened in specific areas of the town and surrounding residential estates. Our Young people have also participated in a number of Coppice Brook clean ups, where they waded through miles of the brook picking out all the dumped rubbish.