ACE Recycling to Collect Glass from 100,000 Households : Charity Secures £500,000 Glass Recycling Contract in Scotland
Clackmannanshire, Scotland based charitable organisation, Alloa Community Enterprises (ACE) has been awarded a contract worth £500,000 pounds to step up household collection services and improve resource management for North Lanarkshire Council.
ACE Recycling Group explained that it has been appointed by the council to collect glass bottles and jars from approximately 100,000 households across the region over the next 18 months.
According to ACE the contract will create at least 10 new jobs and up to 12 trainee placements, while diverting an extra 10,000 tonnes of glass from landfill per year. The charity also claimed that it could save the Council upwards of £500,000 per annum in landfill tax charges.
The new initiative comes in the wake of a pilot project in which ACE was tasked with collecting glass from an initial 26,000 North Lanarkshire homes as part of a separate glass recycling service.
ACE said that the success of the trial has now led to thousands more householders in North Lanarkshire getting new blue wheeled bins with green lids specifically for glass bottles and jars, to be collected once every four weeks.
The organisation explained that glass recycling provides Scotland with a great opportunity to create jobs in the circular economy, by supplying recycled glass back into packaging for the Scotch whisky industry and many other innovative sectors. Glass has properties that make it an ideal focus for high-quality recycling as it can be indefinitely recycled without significant loss of quality.
“Proper waste management not only saves money but creates new jobs and helps grow Scotland’s recycling and reprocessing industry,” commented said Malcolm McArdle, managing director of Alloa Community Enterprises (ACE) Limited.
“We have shared the Government's vision of a Zero Waste Scotland for many years,” he continued. “We helped shape the development of the Zero Waste philosophy in the early 2000's at the same time as we helped Clackmannanshire Council roll out Scotland's first major Source Separated Kerbside Recycling service.
In addition to glass collections ACE also provides other recycling services in Clackmannanshire, Stirling, Falkirk, Lanarkshire, West Lothian, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, and works with a network of strategic partners across the country.
“We have have significant Public Sector experience and understand the strategies and priorities of our Local Authority partners. We ensure that our reporting and performance data is robust, on time and relevant,” said McArdle.
“As a charity we are keen to make financial returns to the communities within which we work. This is a core part of ACE's overall strategy and we also know this is something which Local Authorities value, differentiating us from many of our private sector competitors,” concluded Clackmannanshire.
“We also ensure that we provide supported employment opportunities within our communities and engage with local delivery partners also, to add value to their social objectives and activities.”
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