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Conscious consumption brought to Belladrum festival

29 July 2024

A team of Highland Community Waste Partnership (HCWP) officers were at Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival last week, talking to revellers about our work and offering a range of activities to get involved with.

The three-day festival, held near Inverness between 25-27 July, combined music, arts and culture and, last year, welcomed around 25,000 attendees.

Located in the walled garden, the HCWP tent highlighted our work across our three key themes:

  • Single use items & packaging waste - we chatted to people about single-use cups and packaging, some of the issues and challenges that these present and what we're doing to address them, including opportunities for both individuals and businesses to get involved.

    34% of people were aware that single-use cups need to be recycled separately to other waste streams (see our Cup Box project for more) and we also had lots of interesting conversations around the prevalence of compostables in the region (which also need collected and processed separately).
  • Food waste & composting - people were encouraged to take the Zero Waste Food Challenge and were given LoveFoodHateWaste resources to help them reduce the amount of food they throw away.

  • Share & repair - we raised awareness around local repair cafes and sharing initiatives that we've set up and also took sign ups for the Highland Repair Directory, that we are in the process of setting up.

    45 items of pre-loved clothes were re-homed from our clothing rack.

    In addition, people had the opportunity to try out our felting workshops, making their very own felt slippers, from wool that has been rescued from landfill or incineration - highlighting an important issue for local farmers and wasted local resources. 11 pairs of upcycled felt slippers were made and taken home.

All of the above activity is part of our efforts to reduce waste and promote more conscious consumption in the Highlands.

It is highlighted as part of our Conscious Consumption campaign, which encourages everyone to think about the way that we consume, the choices available to us, and what we can all do to reduce the amount of resources that we use and waste, though our daily habits. We have recently turned this into a touring museum exhibition, that formed the backdrop to our stall and activity at the festival.

As part of this, 45 people made a Conscious Consumption pledge, to make a change to make a change and play their part in reducing waste and helping to address the climate emergency.

We also chatted to food and drinks vendors round the site about some of our initiatives for businesses, including our cup recycling, and returnable packaging pilots and the Food Waste Reduction Toolkit.

To learn more about the Highland Community Waste Partnership, visit our web page, here.

To find events and workshops near you in the Highlands, visit the HCWP events page, here.

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