Highland Community Waste Partnership

March 2022

Project officer 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.

We met some brilliant and highly qualified candidates, carried out first and then second interviews, had some really interesting conversations and the final decision was a very difficult one.

We are delighted to announce we have now filled the post. Our employment offer has been formally accepted and we will be introducing the new Project Officer when they start in mid-April. Keep Scotland Beautiful and the eight community partners across the highlands all hope to have their posts in place by the end of April for this very exciting and wide ranging programme, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.

When the new project officer starts, there will be lots of opportunities to get involved - so watch this space!

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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