How does your organisation support the circular economy?
CSA runs residential and day services for children and young people with additional support needs. These services are delivered from three different sites located in an area covering from Bieldside to Peterculter. At our sites we deliver meaningful opportunities for integration and work experience, while we strive to address environmental need by:
- Our supply chain is organised to minimise carbon footprint and only on sustainable options. This means we order by bulk, from local providers, and organise the distribution of goods for 10 residential large units and 13 workshops. This is an operation that caters for circa 250 people, accounting for young people, staff and volunteers.
- We eat seasonal foods.
- Waste is managed by:
- supporting recycling schemes (Terracycle)
- producing ecobricks (for local inclusive projects)
- local composting (to support our walled gardens in growing our own)
- supporting other charity partners (E.g. Stella’s Voice, Cyrenians)
- Delivering a large number of refilling schemes across a large range of wholefoods and cleaning products (in two years this has prevented about 1000kg of plastic going to landfill)
- For our deliveries we use electricity assisted trolleys or good old-fashioned cargo bicycles.
- Use our craft workshops to upcycle, repurpose or create new items out of recycled materials.
- Use sustainable options at our residential units across their household range.
- Promote sustainable practice for everyone at CSA to engage with.
- Deliver a bicycle repair workshop that supports the circular economy ethos by repurposing or reutilising as much as is safe to do so.
How is you approach innovative?
It isn’t!! We just have organised ourselves to pursue a common goal from every corner of the company. It wasn’t easy but once the first experiences were out there, the word of mouth did the rest.
What are your key challenges?
Keeping the balance between our social care front and social enterprising/circular economy development. This means, it isn’t always the easiest to juggle in the same project two main interests but being detailed and able to grow initiatives gradually helped us gather the right evidence and knowledge to incrementally deliver our initiatives, supporting both fronts and threading for them to serve each other.
Where do you see the organisation in five years’ time?
As a satellite/multiplier/promoter for circular economy in the west locality of Aberdeen City.
What message would you give to other organisations to encourage them to work on the circular economy?
Not to look too far to do something to help address this situation, rather look introspectively to find those simple things that the company can do to change its practices. Once a couple of possible changes have been identified and action taken it will all snowball from there. Finding an advocate or someone who takes ownership over this will make a difference.
Always aim to make a lasting difference!