Last week Matt Lewis and I attended a Zero Waste Scotland workshop to promote its new Volunteer and Community Advocate programme which replaces the previous volunteer programme.  An extra dimension is the Advocate element, which calls for either a local individual or group to take forward the zero waste message using existing spheres of influence. This should firmly root the zero waste message in the community, but there’s an element of ambiguity which might prove a challenge in practice. 

CRNS members were strongly represented at an event at the Scottish Parliament last Friday.  Entitled The Future is Local, the event focused on Scotland’s community sector. CNRS Chair Paul Johnston chaired the workshop which asked if communities can run public services. The answer was of course in the affirmative, supported by strong evidence from James Dunbar of New Start Highland.  Genius idea of the organisers to keep Lesley Riddoch for the plenary session – sometimes the dullest part of a conference – which she enlivened by her impassioned and controversial interjections. 

Today nine CRNS members were presented with their Revolve certificates by Zero Waste Scotland’s Iain Gulland at a celebratory accreditation event.  It was chatty and informal, and a great excuse to get everyone together to exchange experiences and information about the achievement of Scotland's re-use standard.

There was a good supporting piece in Sunday's Herald promoting re-use and Revolve and featuring Recyke-a-bike and Edinburgh Furniture Initiative.

The Glasgow Forum met just before the Easter break. The Glasgow Bike Station hosted the meeting in their very impressive new West End premises – lots of room to process bikes for re-use and for sales display.

Welfare Reform and how the changes impacted on Glasgow based furniture projects was a major issue on the agenda.

This week CRNS held two membership forum meetings – one in Aberdeen, kindly hosted by Aberdeen Forward, and the other was the Argyll and Bute group - both very well attended. In Aberdeen Lucy Haughey of the Plan B Partnership spoke about how welfare reform might impact on members’ employees, and in Argyll Tony Edwards gave an update on Zero Waste Scotland activities.

Matt Lewis chaired the Fife and Edinburgh membership forum hosted by Furniture Plus in Dysart.  This is the first of several regional meetings to be held over the next month and was well attended.  Our strategy is to add value by inviting people from outside CRNS who might have a specialism or new perspective to share with our members.

I was disappointed this week to miss the Revolve training on visual merchandising.  I have sat in on this session before and can vouch for its high quality – but it also means that I will never look at a shop the same way again; it can be fun spotting the tricks of the trade.