The Highland Community Waste Partnership ran between April 2022 – March 2025. Funded by the National Lottery Climate Action Fund and coordinated by Keep Scotland Beautiful, this project brought together eight community groups in the Highlands to reduce waste and promote more sustainable consumption.
To learn more about the project visit: www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/highlandcommunitywaste

We were one of eight community groups to come together across the Highlands as part of a climate movement, coordinated by environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful, to help reduce consumption and waste and tackle our throwaway culture.

Funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, the Highland Community Waste Partnership began to raise awareness of how unsustainable consumption contributes to climate change, working over three years to address the issues through a programme of collaborative grassroots activity. It focused on key issues such as reducing food waste; tackling single use items; and increasing the use of pre-loved, repaired and shared goods.

The partnership built 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 2025.

The Partnership comprised of 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
• Transition Black Isle
• The Highland Good Food Partnership (Highland-wide)
• Velocity Café and Bicycle Workshop (Inverness)

The project began in early 2022 with an aim to complete in 2025.

During this time, the Lairg & District Learning Centre have put on well over 100+ workshops and events to audiences across Sutherland; our classes have all been based on a reduce, re-use, recycle premise, hoping to raise awareness in our area and help people to ‘do their bit’ for the environment.
Our classes have consisted of Sewing, Knitting, Wool Weaving, Willow Weaving, Litter Picks, Zero Waste Food Workshops, Films and ‘Cook-offs’, Clothing Repairs, Woodworking, Tetra Pak Printing, Crafts for all ages from recycled materials, Foraging, Composting and Gardening, Talks, and many more.

Between 2022-25, LDLC tutors have diverted over 2000kg of waste from going to landfill:
Food waste – 253kg 
Textiles – 56kg 
Wood – 700kg 
Garden waste – 100kg 
Other craft materials – 34kg 
Through our Composting and Food Waste workshops from 2022-25, we have managed to put about 980kg of waste into composters and will have generated around 200kg of compost from people putting what they’ve learnt into action.
Maker’s Space (not all items recorded) and other workshops, the amount of items we have repaired has been around 65 pieces, and 228 items have been re-used. 

As the project comes to a close in March 2025, we aim to keep some resources available for interested parties to view at their leisure.
The Highland Repair Directory will also still be available to access here.

We also have plenty of  Resources available for people interested in online learning – including woodworking, sewing, composting and others.