‘INCREASE III Fund offers £88,049 to two Argyll GRAB Trust community waste projects

The INCREASE III Fund, alongside the Climate Challenge Fund, exists to enable communities to make environmental changes at local level. Today it has announced that two projects in Argyll and Bute have been offered a total of £88,049 to deal with waste at community level. With these awards, the fund has supported successful applications to a total of £4.7 million.

The two  GRAB Trust projects which have been offered this support are a furniture reuse project in Lorn and Oban and the promotion of the use of real nappies in the Argyll and Bute area.

Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead says: ‘The latest round of successful projects shows that the community sector is continuing to play a significant role in dealing with waste in a sensible and imaginative way.

‘A number of today’s successful applications epitomise the spirit which we want to see from Scotland’s communities in making this country a cleaner, greener place. Everyone must play their part in reducing waste, and only by all working together in this way will we be able to achieve a Zero Waste Scotland’.

The INCREASE III Fund has a total of £7.2 million to spend over three years. With today’s announcement taking its spend to date to £4.7 milion, this leaves it with £2.8 million. Its support for community recycling has four strands: grants for waste prevention; enterprise (recycling); small grants (under £5000) and capacity building.

‘INCREASE III’ (Investment in Community Recycling and Social Enterprise) funding is distributed through the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) Scotland. This is funded by the Scottish Government to undertake a range of programmes to help individuals, businesses and local authorities reduce waste and recycle more, making better use of resources and helping to tackle climate change.

A commitment to recycle is one of the Scottish Government’s 10 Greener pledges and its key targets on municipal waste are:

• to stop the growth in municipal waste by 2010
• to achieve 40 per cent recycling/composting of municipal waste by 2010; 50 per cent by 2013; 60 per cent by 2020 and 70 per cent by 2025
• no more than 25 per cent should be treated by energy from waste by 2025
• no more than 5 per cent should be landfilled by 2025

It’s good to see Argyll’s work in this field recognsied and supported as it has been today.