The Establishment of a Community Recycling Network for
Scotland
The grant in 2001-02 to the Recycling Advisory
Group Scotland (RAGS) was for setting up the Community
Recycling Network for Scotland (CRNS) as a formal
network for community organisations involved in
recycling, re-use and waste reduction activities in
Scotland, and providing the community sector with a
one-stop-shop facility for information on funding, best
practice, training, local and national markets,
business planning, education and promotional tools, and
local contacts.
A focus for community representation was desirable
for the delivery of the National Waste Strategy for Scotland as well as to help the sector raise its profile
generally. The network would also assist the development of
the sector in line with emerging local strategies for
community involvement in recycling, reuse and waste
reduction activities.
Targets for the first year of the network included
employment of a part-time information officer, organisation
of events, distribution of four newsletters, establishment
a specific web space on the RAGS site and recruitment of at
least 40 members to the network. Some of the
project work continued into 2002-03.
Project action
The Information Officer provided a focus for the
community sector, as a single point of contact and
signposting groups towards further information and
contacts.
Over 300 people attended three events held.
The first Scottish community recycling conference was held
in
Glasgow at the Trades Hall. Attended by over 140 delegates it
launched the network and had presentations on successful
projects from across Scotland . There was discussion of issues of concern and ideas
for the network's future activities. This led to a draft
action plan for the sector. A second event in Perth focused
on furniture re-use initiatives, and a third event in
Dundee looked at the current markets for collected
materials and what help the principal material
organisations could offer the community sector.
After a special edition RAGS newsletter at the start
of 2002 focusing on the launch of the CRNS project and the
need to involve the community sector, the network launched
its own newsletter entitled 'Towards Zero' to provide a
showcase for the variety of community-led projects from
across the country. The newsletter was distributed
to over 1500 organisations including all the community
councils in Scotland. The newsletter is also available at
www.towardszero.com.
The RAGS website was developed after additional
sponsorship from United Glass and the community pages were
restructured at the same time. The community site
acted as a gazetteer of projects in
Scotland , a discussion platform, an events guide and pages of
information on starting up a project as well as seeking
funding and business advice.
A membership leaflet was issued to invite
interested groups to join the network. Those who have
registered are shown on the website.
Outcomes
The interest in the network and the participation at
the three events showed a definite need for the CRNS.
Closer links between organisations are important as well as
links to the developing waste strategy for Scotland . The sector has also identified the need for a
support infrastructure to assist in the future spend of
monies through funding programmes such as the landfill tax
credits scheme and the New Opportunities Fund.
Whilst it is imperative that the CRNS grows as a
network and develops a more local role to assist
individual groups participate in the implementation of
the area waste plans, there will always be a need to
have a well resourced and relevant central source of
information and advice as well as the mechanism for
organising strategic events to get groups
together.
Indeed RAGS sees the CRNS having two distinct
roles to play in the development of the sector. One is
the central pivot for information dissemination and
sector representation and the other is the hands-on
development work with specific projects involving
assessing needs and capacity building.
It is desirable to track the sector as it develops
over time. It will become even more important as the local
area waste strategies roll out to be able to identify and
record the input from the community sector in terms of
material diverted. A focus of the Scottish network will be
to work with the sister network based in Bristol to help groups quantify and report their activity so
they can be included in the data management for each
council area. The continual tracking of the sector is also
important in terms of linking with other national
strategies particularly those associated with job creation
and local economic development. The role of the social
economy in its entirety is now being nationally recognised
and embraced by not only Scottish Enterprise but the
individual local enterprise networks. An important facet of
the Community Recycling Network for Scotland will be to raise the profile and demonstrate the
capacity of community recyclers as part of this social
economy.
A further focus of the network will be on the
role of furniture re-use projects in helping local
authorities deliver on their individual homelessness
strategies. The development of existing and new re-use
projects has been identified as a key output of the
Scottish Executive's own homelessness strategy and so
it will be important that the network is maintained to
facilitate support and advice to furniture projects
both directly and as a liaison with the furniture
recycling network based in Bristol.
Contact
Recycling Advisory Group Scotland
45 Moray Place
Edinburgh
EH3 6BQ
Telephone: 0131 226 6666
E-mail:
ragsdesk@rags.org.uk
www.rags.org.uk