| As part of a widespread campaign to encourage members of the public to reduce, re-use and recycle, the local authority is aiming to show how effective the three Rs can be.
A new system of furniture management, piloted over the past two years, has seen the council’s environment services reduce its purchasing costs by over 70%, while at the same time diverting old office furniture from landfill.
Environment committee convener, Councillor Mike Barnacle, explained, “With the assistance of specialist sustainability advisors, Ogilvie Ross, we have developed a furniture re-use programme that reconditions used furniture and puts it back into useful service.
“This has included the refurbishment of an open plan office area for 110 people that utilised old furniture and improved the amount of floor space available, while sending virtually no waste for landfill disposal.”
Vice convener, Councillor Ken Lyall, added, “Changes in design and technology have resulted in new regulations governing the size and structure of furniture and as older furniture tends to be far larger than is now needed, much of it used to be disposed of by sending it to landfill.
“We have been working with Ogilvie Ross to develop a new approach to furniture management and that includes several new processes to convert older furniture to meet new requirements.
“Working in partnership with a small local business the council has shown what can be done and, as well as stopping a lot of waste going to landfill, we have also saved taxpayers’ money.”
John Ross, senior partner of Ogilvie Ross said, “To demonstrate our commitment to ethical and sustainable development and to give assurance to the council that the work we were carrying out was being done in strict accordance with our environmental policy, we used the new processes and procedures developed during the trials to assist in our accreditation to the international environmental management standard.”
The pioneering work carried out during the partnership has also been recognised by COSLA, which is hosting a special seminar in October to introduce these new ideas to the other councils across Scotland.
If adopted across Scotland’s 32 local authorities the practices could see substantial cost savings and the diversion of 100,000 tonnes of waste furniture every year. |
