4-6th November, 28 representatives of European and American social enterprises active in the field of re-use, repair and recycling gathered in Edinburgh for the final RREUSE meeting and General Assembly of 2015, kindly hosted by the Community Resources Network Scotland (CRNS)
Highlights included:
- Presentation by Zero Waste Scotland on the development and implementation of the Revolve standard, a quality standard for accredited re-use centres in Scotland.
- Discussions on the role of re-use within the concept of a circular economy
- Site visits to the Edinburgh Furniture Initiative
- Discussions concerning retail take-back schemes and cooperation with the third sector
The group also had a chance to participate in a very successful and well-attended annual conference of CRNS in the Scottish Parliament focussing on investing strength of the re-use sector. A summary can be found here
Finally RREUSE also welcomed a new member to its network, the Dutch network bKN. The organisation has 63 members representing some 11600 people with a consolidated turnover of 90 million EUR. In 2014 they collected 120,000 tonnes of material and had 11 million paying customers.