£1.5 million for Highland waste reduction initiative

Keep Scotland Beautiful has been successful in securing funding from The National Lottery Community Fund for an exciting community-led programme to address consumption and waste in the Highlands.

Thanks to National Lottery players, The Highland Community Waste Partnership will raise awareness of how the way that we consume contributes to climate change, working over three years to create solutions for addressing this.

It will do this through a programme of collaborative grassroots activity, working on key issues identified by partners, including reducing food waste; tackling single use items; and increasing the use of pre-loved, repaired and shared goods, instead of new purchases.

Coordinated by Keep Scotland Beautiful, the Partnership comprises the following groups:

• Thurso Community Development Trust
• Lairg & District Learning Centre
• Broadford & Strath Community Company (Isle of Skye)
• Ullapool Community Trust
• Transition Black Isle
• Velocity Café and Bicycle Workshop (Inverness)
• Lochaber Environmental Group (Fort William)
• Highland Good Food Partnership (Highland-wide)

By working together and sharing resources and learning, the partnership will build a movement for more sustainable consumption, supporting communities to reduce their carbon footprints and contributing towards Scotland’s ambitions to create a more circular economy and become a Net Zero nation by 2045.

The programme is due to launch in April 2022.

Welcoming the funding, Keep Scotland Beautiful CEO Barry Fisher said, “We’re thrilled that the Highland Community Waste Partnership project is to receive National Lottery funding over three years from the Climate Action Fund. This exciting new project will enable us to work in partnership with eight community groups across the Highlands to reduce consumption and waste, helping them to connect with each other and scale up activities that we know work whilst also piloting new ones.

“We are very much looking forward to collaborating and learning with the project partners, supporting a range of activities from Climate Cafés, film nights, and waste reduction workshops, to trialling innovative reuse and recycling solutions while promoting sustainable tourism and growing and connecting knowledge, skills and resources across the region.” 

The project is one of 21 community-led waste and consumption focused projects across the UK to have received funding from the Climate Action Fund announced today by The National Lottery Community Fund. This is a £100 million fund that aims to reduce the carbon footprint of communities and support community-led movements that demonstrate what is possible when people take the lead in tackling climate change.

National Lottery Community Fund’s Scotland Chair, Kate Still, said: “A huge congratulations to Keep Scotland Beautiful and all of its partner organisations who will each bring to bear their own skills and experience to deliver this new Highland-wide climate action project.

“With a particular focus on tackling waste, it will help to communities to take collective action and make the the connections between climate change and unsustainable consumption. This will not only help us get to net zero but will also help people and communities across the Highlands to thrive.”