£1.8 million to help reduce waste and tackle throwaway culture in Scottish communities

Projects encouraging Scots to reduce their waste and consumption habits to help tackle the climate emergency are today sharing in almost £1.8 million from The National Lottery Community Fund.

The funding, which is made possible thanks to National Lottery players, goes to three new climate action projects in the Highlands, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Receiving the largest of today’s National Lottery awards is a Highland-wide climate movement, led by environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful, which will bring together grassroots community groups to reduce consumption and waste and help tackle our throwaway culture. With its £1,498,568 award, The Highland Community Waste Partnership hopes to increase public awareness of how unsustainable consumption contributes to climate change and create solutions for addressing this.

Barry Fisher, CEO of Keep Scotland Beautiful explains more: “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.

“Kicking off in April, the project will bring focus to how unsustainable consumption contributes to climate change working across four key objectives to: increase understanding of how the choices we make can impact our climate; increase the use of pre-loved, repaired and shared goods; support people and businesses to reduce food waste and reduce single-use items and packaging.”

In Edinburgh, Communities’ Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, a partnership between Edinburgh and Lothians Regional Equality Council Limited (ELREC) and Networking Key Services (NKS), receives £150,000 to work with local ethnic minority communities helping them change their waste and consumption habits.

In a joint statement, Jean-Matthieu Gaunand (ELREC) & Naina Minhas (NKS), said: “We are delighted to have received National Lottery funding from the Climate Action Fund. We hope to encourage and support ethnic minority communities in Edinburgh to reduce waste, increasing reusing and repairing and shift to more sustainable consumption. Our two organisations will work together with local ethnic minority communities and deliver a range of activities including clothing repairs and alterations sessions, sewing classes, swap shop events, fashion shows, delivery of rescued food parcel to vulnerable families, leftover cookery sessions, upcycling and composting workshops, educational visits and more!”

Meanwhile, Fuse Youth Cafe Glasgow receives £136,819 for The Shettleston 100 project which will explore how best to engage local communities in climate action, with a particular focus on reducing the demand for unnecessary products and reducing waste. Working in partnership with Glasgow Kelvin College, local schools and Shettleston Housing Association, it will recruit 100 Shettleston residents to complete purchase, consumption and waste diaries.

Gerry Baldwin CEO of Fuse Youth Café said: “We are thrilled to be one of the Climate Action Fund projects across the UK. The innovative ideas across all these projects will give Fuse and the community of Shettleston an opportunity not just to develop and learn from our own, but to learn from others.

“This is an opportunity to use the knowledge we gather to develop long term strategies with and for our community.”

National Lottery Community Fund’s Scotland Chair, Kate Still, said: “A huge congratulations to each one of the groups who will play their own unique part in delivering these new climate action projects. With a particular focus on tackling waste and consumption, they will test new approaches that will help to tackle our throwaway culture and change behaviours at as early a stage as possible.

“These projects will not only help us get to net zero but will also help people and communities thrive.”

This new community funding comes as recent National Lottery research* found four in five Scottish adults (82%) think local communities are responsible for acting on climate change. Meanwhile, more than half (56%) are worried about the impact of climate on their local community.

Thanks to National Lottery players, 21 community-led waste and consumption focused projects across the UK are today receiving funding from the Climate Action Fund - 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.

Since 2016, we have awarded £397 million through more than 6,000 grants which involve environmental action, including action on waste and consumption, energy, transport, food and the natural environment. National Lottery players raise £30 million each week across the UK for good causes.

To find out more visit www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk