In a new initiative, Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust have joined forces to place clothes recycling bins at some of the region’s ambulance stations to generate income to help fund YAA operation and provide defibrillators in local communities.
Since launching its recycling scheme 10 years ago, with partner the BIU Group, Yorkshire Air Ambulance has received a staggering £2.5 million from donations of unwanted clothes, shoes and household textiles.
The rapid response emergency charity has over 250 recycling textile banks at household waste sites, supermarkets and car parks across Yorkshire.
It has now teamed up with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust’s Charitable Fund to share the proceeds from a further 19 textile banks located at ambulance stations across the county.
Yorkshire Air Ambulance Partnerships Manager Katie Collinson said: “We have a brilliant relationship with our recycling partners Bag It Up, who give us a percentage of all the recycled material we collect which is worth around £200,000 as a donation each year!
“We are looking forward to developing our partnership with the charitable arm of Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust with these additional textile banks and generating a further, valuable income stream.”
Yorkshire Air Ambulance, which provides a rapid response emergency service to 5 million people, needs to raise £12,000 every single day to keep its two helicopters flying.
The rapid response emergency service attends more than 1,000 incidents a year and has so far airlifted more than 6,200 people to hospital.
Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust’s Charitable Fund receives donations and legacies from grateful patients, members of the public and fundraising initiatives throughout Yorkshire.
Erfana Mahmood, Non-Executive Director at Yorkshire Ambulance Service Trust and Chair of the Trust’s Charitable Fund Committee, said: “As operational partners we take every opportunity to work together with colleagues at YAA.
“This joint initiative is an extension of YAA’s already successful scheme and we are looking forward to being able to use the income from the clothes banks based at some of our ambulance stations to fund more community Public Access Defibrillators (cPADs) across Yorkshire and the Humber and help to save more lives.”
The 19 new sites are located at ambulance stations from Bainbridge in North Yorkshire to Wath upon Dearne in the South, from Hornsea in the East to Huddersfield in West Yorkshire.
You can find out where your nearest bank is by either going to the YAA website (www.yaa.org.uk) or by calling 01422 237900.