iccm recycling of metals scheme

DecembertoMay 2021 Recycling round up

December 2021 saw the ICCM/Orthometals recycling of metals scheme complete the final round of nominations and awards for 2021. The effects of COVID-19 were devastating for the funds of charities from all of the United Kingdom as well as vastly increasing demand for their services.

The huge excessive death toll also had a deep effect on cemetery/crematorium staff and the bereaved public. Only by the continued support of all these groups could the scheme have continued to build with such success.

It is, therefore, a delight that by the end of December we had broken more records for donations.

I also think that I’m never again going to sit at the desk and worry, oh dear only a few nominations in, must remind people I’ve only got 50 forms.

134 forms later and maybe we did something right, so that’s the record on donation requests broken again and as everything’s gone out via BACS not cheques, for the first time ever I’m not waiting on cheques being presented, lost or put safe. It’s a nice feeling.

Let’s do the statistics of it all as well, well I like statistics.

2053 separate nominations made since we began the scheme, donating a total of £13,486,000 to good causes. The December round added another £2,010,000 to that total – which is another record-breaking figure, and I don’t think we’ll ever break that one. Maybe we should hope that we won’t as it was a lot of precious metals from the deceased.

However, if we do more pacemakers then we might.

Back to the stats. 584 different charities have been funded by the scheme and 334 causes have only had a single award, often the smaller causes and that is 57% of all the causes nominated. That’s a nice spread of them.

In the December round we had new nominations for big breathAbbie's Fund, Abby's Hero's , Blossom Appeal – Colchester and Ipswich Hospitals Charity, Cradle Charity.org, Croydon Health Services Charitable Fund, Douglas Macmillan Hospice, Eastbourne Area Community Responders, Eastbourne District Hospital ICU Department, Edwards Trust Ltd, Help for Heroes, Home-Star Rochdale, Lakelands Hospice, LGBT Foundation, Miscarriage Information Support Service, MND Association - Yorkshire Dales Branch, My name's Doddie Foundation, North Bedfordshire Hospice Care Ltd, Over and Above - North Devon NHS Trust, Poppy Scotland Ayrshire, Prospect Hospice, Scotland's charity air ambulance, Smile for Joel, STARS Children Bereavement and support Services, The Ayrshire Hospice, The Candice Colley Foundation, The Market Place Leeds, The Norfolk Hospice, The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust Charity, The Swan Song Project, Three Ells Trust, Victim Support, Windmills, Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Charitable Fund and Young lives Vs Cancer.

Some people will know these; if you nominated them, then you should do and for many of us they’ll be new and shows how many good causes there are out there and how many new ones are set up each year to meet a need that hasn’t been identified before. Now the rolling top 10 of biggest funded causes through the scheme now stands as follows

1CRUSE

2Macmillan cancer care

3SANDS

4Marie Curie

5Samaritans

6Mayor's Appeals

7Survivors of Bereavement by suicide

8Alzheimer's society

9Air Ambulance services England

10Shooting Star (CHASE)

Once again from everyone at ICCM – to the staff of all crematoria, Orthometals, charity workers and most importantly the families of the bereaved. Thank you…

Trevor Robson, ICCM Finance and IT Manager