Sharing BESST Practice in Telford

Sharing BESST Practice in Telford

Partners: International Synergies, NISP and Business Environmental Support Scheme for Telford (BESST)

Funders: European Regional Development Fund and WRAP

Period:   December 2009 – ongoing.

 

Summary

The Business Environmental Support Scheme for Telford (BESST) is a partnership between local private and public sector businesses. BESST works with local partners, agencies and stakeholders in an innovative way to raise awareness of the benefits of environmental initiatives.

International Synergies’ NISP team in the West Midlands worked closely with BESST to run a series of unique resource capturing workshop in each of the three primary industrial sites in Telford; Halesfield, Stafford Park and Hortonwood.   The mini workshops took place in October 2010, December 2010 and January 2011.  
The workshops provided businesses from Telford’s main industrial sites with an introduction to ways to reduce its waste streams, increase reuse opportunities and ultimately reduce the volume of waste sent to landfill.  The project finale took place during May 2011.  It was a well attended event with 70 delegates who were joined by International Synergies team from Brussels and representatives from the Belgian Waste Authority.  The event generated over 840 potential matches for exchange of materials, ideas and opportunities. 
 
NISP continues to support BESST at numerous events and by mutual benefit the NISP West Midlands’ Programme Advisory Group Chair is from Telford based Ricoh Manufacturing, who also sits on steering group for BESST.  This maintains relationships between all organisations.


Impact

The work undertaken with BESST and the businesses from Telford's primary industrial sites has:

  • Diverted over 2000 tonnes of material from landfill
  • Created 8 jobs 
  • Reduced CO2 emissions by over 25,000 tonnes.