Cash from local trash

A trip to the tip has made some local people celebrity ‘stars.’

Items due to be dumped by residents at Keynsham’s Pixash Recycling Centre are given a new lease of life on BBC One’s ‘Money for Nothing’ programme next month.

Production company Friel Kean Films spent two weeks filming at Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Recycling Centre last summer.

Sarah Moore

Entrepreneur Sarah Moore saved several items from being tipped and, together with a team of talented artisans, transformed them into stylish and valuable pieces making money for residents who had no idea there was cash to be made from their trash.

Councillor David Wood, cabinet member for Neighbourhood Services, said: “This is a fantastic example of how items deemed as junk can be saved and reused and shows how with a little bit of imagination there are many ingenious ways to upcycle or repurpose them. Dumping at a recycling centre should always be a last resort and we’d encouraged people to offer unwanted items first on freecycling networks – who knows your junk could be someone else’s treasure!”

Over the past nine series of ‘Money for Nothing’ more than 650 unwanted items have been saved from being thrown in the skip, given a new lease of life and sold on, with over £55,000 of profits returned to members of the public for their old objects. The largest single profit produced stands at a staggering £1,363 for an antique sewing table, which was scrubbed up and photographed to create printed tea towels.

You can watch what happens to the saved items from Keynsham in ‘Money for Nothing’ on BBC One at 3.45pm on Wednesday 5 May and Monday 10 May.

For more information on recycling across Bath and North East Somerset, including details of the council’s plans for a new state of the art recycling and reuse centre at Keynsham visit: https://beta.bathnes.gov.uk/recycling