Highland Community Waste Partnership
80% of Scotland's carbon footprint comes from the things that we make, buy, use and throw away, often after one use.
In order to address the climate emergency, we need to change the way that we consume and move towards a more circular economy, where we both use and waste less.
Everyone has a part to play, and every little counts!
Between April 2022 – March 2025, the Highland Community Waste Partnership, funded by The National Lottery Climate Action Fund and coordinated by Keep Scotland Beautiful, brought together eight community groups across the Highlands to reduce waste and promote more sustainable consumption.
We worked from the ground up, looking at how individuals, communities and businesses can take action locally to practice and support more sustainable consumption.
This means using things better, for longer, reducing the impact of waste on our places and working together to make the most of what we’ve got.
The results are far-reaching - cutting costs, growing local initiatives and transforming the way we live to reduce our environmental impact.
On this page:
Case studies & resources | Legacy report & webinars | Legacy video
What we did: case studies & resources
The Highland Community Waste Partnership worked on the three key issues below. Click on each box to learn more about what we did, what we learned and signposts to ongoing work and handy resources.
From working with young people through our Youth Climate Advocates project, to our programme of events and workshops, education and engagement was at the heart of the Highland Community Waste Partnership, helping to build the knowledge, understanding, skills and opportunities to reduce waste and consumption at home and in the communmity.
Learn more about our activity and impact in this area by clicking on the button below.
Impact & learning
Our legacy preport provides an overview of our activity and impact across the three key strands of work and with regards to working together as a prtnership.
It also links off to case studies on specific activities and projects (also available in the sections above).
As the Highland Community Waste Partnership came to an end, we were keen to ensure that the legacy of the project lives on and that all the learning generated is shared as widely as possible, for others to build on.
The recordings from our webinar series offer a chance to hear directly from partners, about their work, insights and learning with regards to delivering waste reduction and working together to achieve this.
As part of the Highland Community Waste Partnership, we carried out public polling in the Highlands to generate insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and habits in relation to waste and consumption.
These are summarised in the infographics below:
Legacy video
Our legacy video provides a snapshot, in the Partners’ own words, of what we worked on and what we achieved as part of the Highland Community Waste Partnership.
Published in June 2023, our Year One reportreport provided an overview of development, learning and achievements to date, as well as next steps one year into the project.
