Highland Community Waste Partnership

April 2022

Waste Partnership Project Officers introduced

April newsletters from TBI and Highland Community Waste Partnership introduced Lyn McLardy for TBI . . .

Hi, I'm Lyn and I'm the new project officer for TBI as part of the Highland Community Waste Partnership, a new lottery funded initiative looking at the impacts of waste and consumption on the climate.  I'm from Muir of Ord and most of my spare time at the moment is spent trying to get a straw bale house built (with lots of help!).  My previous work involved being part of the MOO Food team as a project officer where I worked on waste reduction, cooking and growing projects that also focused on building community and resilience.  I set up Let's Go Lentil which was a package free wholefoods business and although sadly the business had to stop due to covid, this new project will hopefully mean that we can work together to set up new and build on existing nitiatives for reducing food and single use waste across the Highlands.

I'm a firm believer in the power of community and supporting each other and would love to hear from you if you've got ideas or want to get involved in any way.  Just get in touch at  lyn@transitionblackisle.org .

. . . and Reina Edmiston for HCWP

Reina: Whilst working within Education, I set about starting a community growing project which will form part of a sustainability hub. Out with this I work on securing funding for community driven initiatives.  I previously worked in the tourism industry in the Far East and want to create a sustainable tourism environment that is built upon a sustainable food system.

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HCWP now has a website and logo

https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/highlandwaste

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March 2022

Project officers appointed

Earlier this month, we concluded our recruitment drive for the Project Officer to support Transition Black Isle’s involvement in the Highland Community Waste Partnership.

We joined forces with fellow partner Highland Good Food Partnership for a joint interview process. This was a move that made sense due to the crossover for both the interview panel (with Trustee Martin Sherring wearing both TBI and HGFP hats) and also applicants expressing interest in both organisations. As an equal opportunities employer, we were keen to be as flexible as possible and be open to the potential for job sharing - and this process worked well.

The project officers appointed are Lyn McLardy for TBI and Reina Edmiston for Highland Good Food Partnership.

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January 2022

Funding announcement and staff recruitment

TBI is one of eight community groups coming together across the Highlands as part of a new climate movement to help reduce consumption and waste and tackle our throwaway culture.  Coordinated by environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful, with funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, 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.  In addition to TBI, the Partnership comprises the following groups:

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

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.

TBI is currently recruiting a project officer to start work in April, leading on food waste (building on work done by MOO Food in recent years and extending that throughout the Black Isle) and also to implement project streams being developed by other groups.

The project has been made possible by a £1,498,568 award, announced by The National Lottery Community Fund. It is one of 21 community-led waste and consumption focused projects across the UK to have received funding from the Climate Action Fund.

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 July 2021

Keep Scotland Beautiful waste project

TBI is one of the partners in a waste reduction project co-ordinated by Keep Scotland Beautiful, which has applied for major funding for the project form the Lottery Community fund / Climate Action Fund.

Our recently launched second round of the Climate Action Fund has a clear focus on waste and sustainable consumption. From repair & re-use to food waste, from tackling a culture of consumerism to deep-dives on individual waste streams, we know that a wide range of community-led approaches are already being implemented across the UK in approaching this issue. We’re looking for exemplar projects which demonstrate how communities can work together to tackle the carbon emissions associated with an increasingly wasteful society.

Read a Lottery Community Fund blog on  'Taking climate action by tackling waste and championing sustainable consumption'.

KSB funding bid outline

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