Caithness businesses take part in £1m single-use initiative
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Caithness businesses are among those leading the charge in Scotland to cut down on single-use disposable items.
The local firms are among more than a dozen organisations across Scotland which are to take part in the £1 million pilot project run by Zero Waste Scotland. It aims to deliver a total of 14 projects over the next 12 months to tackle a range of single-use items, from coffee cups to water bottles and food packaging.
As part of the Ditching Disposables scheme, a range of independent cafés and hospitality businesses in Thurso and Wick will be supported to pilot a deposit return coffee cup scheme alongside a charge on disposable cups.
A Caithness employer of 100 staff will also be supported to pilot ways to reduce single-use items in the workplace, while the Mey Games and Taste North will receive support to reduce their use of single-use items such as cups, bottles, stirrers and sachets.
The project is supported by the Scottish Government and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
The deposit return scheme for cups will see customers pay a small deposit when purchasing their drink that will be refunded when they return their reusable cup, so it can be washed and used again. It is believed to be the first time anywhere in the world that a deposit return scheme for reusable cups and separate charging for disposable cups have been run in tandem.
Zero Waste Scotland chief executive Iain Gulland said: “We know single-use items are blighting communities across Scotland and it is something we are determined to tackle. Some of these are only used for a matter of minutes, yet can hang around our environment for years. We are working with communities to see what can be done to solve issues they have identified.
“Four-fifths of our carbon footprint as a nation comes from the products and materials we consume. That’s a huge proportion, and single-use items are an entirely unnecessary part of that.
“Curbing our consumption habit is vital if we want to have a real impact on the climate emergency, so it’s fantastic to have so many organisations right across Scotland on board to look at what we can change to pioneer an alternative approach.”
The projects follow an initial closed pilot between Zero Waste Scotland and NHS Ayrshire and Arran, under which reusable coffee cups and a 10p charge for disposable cups were introduced in the canteen at University Hospital Crosshouse near Kilmarnock.
These changes, along with improvements to recycling provision and signage, saw the reuse rate for coffee cups increase from one per cent to nearly half of all hot drink sales. Meanwhile, the volume of disposable cups consumed dropped by 157 per day – an estimated 57,000 a year.
