Significant contract won by Alloa social firm to recycle glass
Alloa Community Enterprises (Ace) has been awarded a contract worth £500,000 to step up household collection services and improve resource management for North Lanarkshire Council.
It means Ace Recycling Group will collect glass bottles and jars from approximately 100,000 households across the region over the next 18 months.
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 at least £500,000 a year in landfill tax charges.
The new initiative comes on the back 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.
As a charity we are keen to make financial returns to the communities within which we work
Glass has properties that make it an ideal focus for high-quality recycling as it can be indefinitely recycled without significant loss of quality, said the group.
“Proper waste management not only saves money but creates new jobs and helps grow Scotland’s recycling and reprocessing industry,” said Malcolm McArdle, managing director of Ace.
“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.
He added: “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.”
