Lairg and District Learning Centre part of Highland-wide lottery backed climate change initiative
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A SUTHERLAND organisation has linked forces with seven other groups across the Highlands to help lead a new National Lottery backed initiative to address climate change.
Lairg and District Learning Centre has formed the Highland Community Waste Partnership along with other groups from Fort William, Skye, Ullapool, Thurso, Inverness, the Black Isle and Highland.
The partnership is being coordinated by environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful with £1,498,555 funding from the National Lottery Community Fund. It will officially get under way in April and will run for three years across Highland region.
Managers say that the aims of the project are to raise awareness of how the choices people make can impact our climate, increase the use of used, repaired and shared goods, support people and businesses to reduce food waste, and reduce single-use items and packaging.
A range of activities is planned from climate cafés, film nights and waste reduction workshops to trialling innovative reuse and recycling solutions.
Lairg and District Learning Centre, which is celebrating its 20th year as a registered charity, has for the last two years been running a Seasons of Change project, funded by the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund. The project supports communities to reduce waste and increase levels of local food growing and cooking.
Centre manager Rhionna Mackay said: “This (the partnership) is a fantastic opportunity to bring together groups leading on climate change actions across Highland and continue to embed climate change learning and action in our communities.
“We are able to work at the cutting edge of Scotland’s circular economy ambitions whilst also serving our local community to create solutions for living more sustainable, building on the climate change work we have been doing for the last five years.
“We look forward to meeting with and learning from the brilliant groups in the partnership.”
Keep Scotland Beautiful chief executive 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."
The Highland Community Waste Partnership is one of 21 community-led waste and consumption focused projects across the UK to have received funding from the Climate Action Fund.
The other groups involved in the partnership are the Lochaber Environment Group; Broadford and Strath Community Company; Ullapool Community Trust; Thurso Community Development Trust; Transition Black Isle; Velocity, Inverness, and the Highland Good Food Partnership.
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