Meet our recycling heroes and heroines!

The free event at the Park Inn Palace Hotel, Southend was attended by 60 keen delegates, including Recycling Champions, students, and others bidding to boost recycling in the borough.

They learnt more about how household recycling is processed, how to encourage people to recycle more and how they can become more involved in the Recycling Champions scheme.

The conference, organised by Southend-on-Sea Borough Council in partnership with Cory Environmental, also featured inspiring debates with residents, showing industry professionals that they really do know their stuff about recycling.

It was officially opened by the Council's Executive Councillor for Public Protection, Waste and Transport, Councillor Tony Cox, who said "We're delighted that the event has been so popular - demonstrating that people are thoroughly committed to recycling, and are genuinely interested in what happens to their waste.

"This will help to continue to propel us towards achieving our tough target of 60 per cent recycling by 2015."

Jane Dolphin, Contracts and Projects Support Manager from Cory Environmental said: "This conference paves the way for expanding the team of Southend Recycling Champions volunteers to inform, educate and energise even more people to recycle."

At the end of the event all delegates were presented with bronze level certificates, as part of the launch of the new Recycling Champion reward scheme.

Among them was Alex Moore from Leigh who said "Recycling really isn't a load of rubbish.  We all really should be doing it and I'm hoping that I can encourage others to do the right thing."

There are more than 200 Recycling Champions across Southend - volunteers who enthusiastically encourage recycling within the borough

For more information on Recycling Champions or recycling in general, please visit: www.southend.gov.uk/recyclingchampions.