Zeroing in on waste @Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival

The 2015 Belladrum Tartan Heart festival, in partnership with Pat Munro Waste Services and The Highland Council’s Carbon CLEVER initiative has recently confirmed it achieved its goal of zero waste to landfill. As far as it is aware it is the only festival of its size in Scotland to have done this.

All three organisations worked tirelessly before during and after the festival, that took place between 4th and 6th August, to ensure that history was made.

Pat Munro Waste Services, a Scottish company specialising in waste collection, disposal and recycling services made sure that the levels of waste were kept to a minimum during the festival, using 100 industrial bins and 26 skips! 

As the final festival goers left the site over 81.13 tonnes of waste was left, and the hard work began. The clear up process took 7 full days, with solid litter picking completed by over 40 dedicated picking staff.

Bulky items including over 60 tents, 90 sleeping bags and mats and 85 camping chairs were sorted, cleaned and sold on by Muir of Ord Scouts with over £500 being raised.  The Indigo Project-Gambia Charity also took away 15 tents to recycle and sell on, with the remainder being donated to the local collection currently taking place for the refugees at Calais.

All the cardboard, paper, plastic and metals (ferrous and non ferrous) were extracted through sorting lines and recovered for recycling at Pat Munro’s state of the art facility in Alness. All other non-recyclable waste, including food, clothes and poor grade/contaminated plastic packaging was sent to Pat Munro’s waste partners, Binn Eco Park in Perth and was subject to their Energy from Waste Process.

Veronica Symonds, Pat Munro Waste Manager, commented “We hope that the achievements of Belladrum 2015 can soon be replicated at all Scottish festivals. We look forward to continuing work with progressive organisations such as Belladrum and Carbon CLEVER, making changes happen and highlighting what can be achieved if we are more environmentally conscious”.