The cartridge collector called Supported Community Business “one of a kind” for helping it with its cartridge collections.
SCB staff with their presents from Empties Please
The collector works with Supported Community Business (Special Needs) Ltd. (SCB), based in Crewe, England, with the organisation playing “an important role in helping Empties Please carry out their recycling programme”. SCB allows individuals with learning difficulties and/or special needs to gain “health and safety training, first aid training” and social skills, and is “the only one of its kind” in England.
SCB was established in October 1998, and has grown to cater for 20 service users through being a “strong community-based business with a culture of equal opportunities for all, irrespective of any disability”. As a result of the trainees’ “efficiency and hard work”, Empties Please’s Nina Cruxton visited SCB and gave the trainees “100 boxes of Cadbury’s Mini Eggs” as a “gesture of thanks” for their hard work.
Ian Hopkins, Warehouse Supervisor at SCB, commented: “What we have here is a therapeutic workshop where we are also helping their social development and we also run health and safety programmes. We’re quite fortunate that we have a hard-core of customers such as Empties Please who provide regular work.
“We love companies like Empties Please. They give us plenty of time in order to carry out the work which is important. That means that we can give every trainee a good chance at carrying out the jobs. That’s the great thing we like about our regular customers – the trainees can carry out a number of skills to make a variety of products.
“They (the trainees) take pride in their work. We always get a number of volunteers to carry out the Empties Please work because they enjoy the work. We’re not going to fall by the wayside so long as we have companies like Empties Please working with us. It’s extremely rare that a trainee will go into employment but those that come here are extremely happy.”
Nina Cruxton added: “We’ve worked with SCB for many years now and every time we visit we are made to feel so welcome. The atmosphere in the warehouse is so calm and relaxed, it’s very apparent all the trainees and members of staff really love their jobs and take great pride in the work they do. We look forward to continuing our relationship with them over the coming years, and very much look forward to our next visit!”
The collector offers offers £1 ($1.51/€1.35) for OEM cartridges, and 50 pence ($0.75/€0.67) for remanufactured or compatible cartridges. It reported earlier this year on its work with UK charities Age UK and Leukaemia and Lymphonia Research.