Perth & Kinross Council has signed up to a Scottish Government-backed commitment to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and other businesses to reduce waste and recycle more.
Scotland’s Resource Sector Commitment is designed to set consistent standards for business waste collections and to help deliver the country’s zero waste targets. It has been developed by Zero Waste Scotland in collaboration with resource management industry and small business representatives.
By signing up to the commitment the Council agrees to:
Provide customers with high quality recycling services
Give advice on preventing waste and using resources efficiently
Have user-friendly contracts and charging structures
Enable customers to give feedback
In signing up, organisations also commit to ensuring that customers are compliant with the new Waste (Scotland) Regulations, which came into play in January 2014. The new regulations mean that it is now compulsory for all businesses to separate materials for recycling.
The Council’s Environment Convener, Councillor Alan Grant commented: “Perth & Kinross Council has achieved great success in delivering recycling services to householders. By signing up to the Resource Sector Commitment, our Commercial Waste Team will extend these services to provide businesses and organisations the best possible access to recycling. The Commercial Waste Team is also committed to providing advice to businesses to ensure they are compliant with the new Waste Regulations.”
Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead said: “We have set ambitious national recycling targets and want to make it easier for businesses, especially SMEs, to play their part in delivering a zero waste society.
Scotland’s Resource Sector Commitment is an opportunity for councils, the private sector and community sector to demonstrate real support for zero waste as well as committing to provide high quality and consistent services to their customers.
I am grateful that the resource management sector’s main representative bodies and many organisations are already giving their support to the commitment.”
Iain Gulland, Director of Zero Waste Scotland, said: “Achieving zero waste will bring real environmental and economic benefits for Scotland and we all have a part to play.
The new regulations are helping transform how Scotland manages its resources, moving away from the idea of waste as a cost and a burden, instead seeing waste management companies as resource providers to a sustainable economy.
This commitment will help drive that transformation. Importantly it will mean businesses, especially SMEs, can benefit from high quality recycling services as well as extra help to reduce waste, for example by taking advantage of support from our new Resource Efficient Scotland programme.
It’s great to see so many organisations continuing to sign up to the commitment, and I hope to see these numbers increase even further in the future.”
Perth & Kinross Council operates a long-established Commercial Waste and Recycling Service, with dedicated staff available to offer support and advice to local businesses. For further information on the services the Commercial Waste Team can offer, or to arrange your free, no obligation, Zero Waste Compliance visit, please call 01738 476476, email recycle@pkc.gov.uk, or visit www.pkc.gov.uk/commercial
