Students help Leave Leeds Tidy

This year’s recycling initiative run by Leeds University Union, in partnership with Hyde Park Picture House and Leeds City Council, almost quadrupled last year’s total.

In the tidy up’s seven-year history departing students have helped spirit away 110 tonnes of unwanted items from landfill.

This year volunteers visited more than 2,000 student residencies across Leeds to inform them of their local waste collection points and to encourage students to recycle their unwanted items to reduce the amount of waste taken to landfill.

Jamie Ali, Leeds University Union’s Community Officer said: “The Leave Leeds Tidy campaign has grown year on year and I am happy to see the response from students this year has been ever better than ever.

“Each year we like to work with charities that are tackling current issues that affect the local and global community.”

The tidy up project was funded by Leeds City Council’s Wellbeing Fund.

Students across Leeds donated unwanted clothes, kitchenware, furniture, dry food, bedding and bric-a- brac to the three campaign charities.

The chosen beneficiaries were St Vincent De Paul, which provides free furniture and household goods to disadvantaged families and individuals, homeless charity Emmaus and new partner the Take My Hand Foundation, which helps refugees with the much needed items.

It was co-founded by University of Leeds student Dee 
Kaur.

The foundation is currently working on creating schools and a kitchen within a refugee camp in Greece.