Article from Josh Turner, Community Life Officer:

This year we are working to communicate with our students early to ensure when they leave their privately rented homes, they have as little negative impact on the local community as possible.

We are working with local charitable partners including British Heart Foundation, to encourage our students to donate and avoid unnecessary waste.

Furthermore, Kent Union provide fantastic services including Freecycle and Student Food Bank, supporting the current and future students studying at Kent.

Canterbury City Council is also running a two week Bin Amnesty, where additional black bags of general waste will be collected with the usual collections. To communicate this we will be holding two Neighbourhood Days where we door-knock in areas which are highly populated by students to ensure students and residents are ready, as well as communicating through blogs and social media.

We appreciate that when moving out, extra rubbish can be generated but we want to work to reduce any impact on the local community.

Working in partnerships, we are helping making it easy to get rid of unwanted items through:

• Bin Amnesty: In central Canterbury, thanks to the Canterbury City Council and Canenco, there will be a bin amnesty from Monday the 20 June to Friday 1 July where all rubbish left out in key areas will be picked up as part of a weekly collection.
• We are teaming up with the British Heart Foundation to make it easy for students to donate unwanted possessions to this fantastic cause.
• Promoting the central donation services provided by Kent Union, including the Foodbank and Freecycle service.
• Promoting local removal and disposal services in Kent.
• Planning local litter picking volunteering opportunities for students on Monday 6 June and Monday 13 June.

If you have any concerns throughout this busy move-out period, you can get in touch with our Community Life Officer for support.

For more information email Josh on communityliaison@kent.ac.uk