Zero Waste Community Fund 2024-2025

The Zero Waste Community Fund is provided by MRWA and Veolia it is support for the Voluntary, Community, Faith & Social Enterprise sector (VCFSE) to deliver innovative waste prevention, reuse, recycling projects in the Liverpool City Region area.

APPLY button below will take you to the application form. There are links at the top of the sections which you can use if you wish to return to your draft application before submitting your completed submission. Please read your application carefully before pressing submit as you will not be able to return to your application to amend or provide further information once you have submitted.

Waste prevention: includes actions that reduces the amount of waste created by changing people’s behaviour. 

Reuse:  includes repairing or cleaning activities that allow items to be reused for the same purpose as it was originally intended.

Recycling:  is when materials are collected and sent for reprocessing so the material is made into new products. If your project involves recycling, you can provide estimated weights for material that you send to these recycling organisations. There’s a list of standard measurements to use in the supporting information documents.

Your project should address at least one of five key priority household waste materials; Food, Furniture, Plastics, Textiles and WEEE (Waste Electrical, Electronic Equipment)  Successful applicants will have identified how their project focus’ on the prevention, reuse or recycling of at least one of these key priority materials. You will also engage with your community and help them to positively change their behaviour towards waste.

• Food: Food waste can be prevented by providing people with training, skills, and knowledge to improve their food shopping and storage habits and by improving portion control.

• Furniture: Unwanted furniture may be suitable for reuse, repair, or repurposing. These activities can provide opportunities to develop new skills and reduce waste.
• Plastics: projects may reduce dependence on disposal, conserve resources and protect the environment from plastic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

• Textiles: Textiles are sometimes thrown away unnecessarily when they are often suitable for repair and reuse. Sewing skills can help with the reuse of clothing and other textiles.

• Waste Electrical, Electronic Equipment (WEEE): WEEE can be defined as electrical and electronic equipment that are battery or plug operated, that are broken or unwanted. Many of the electrical items that are thrown away can be recycled or repaired, which helps to save natural resources and reduces damage to the environment. 

An A–Z list and the Recycle Right links will help you to identify other household waste materials see www.recycleright.org.uk

To apply for Zero Waste Community Fund, you must not have any overdue monitoring or reporting from a previous funded project.

We fund a variety of legal community structures such as:
• Registered Incorporated Charities, you should provide your Charity Number if applicable.
• Not-for-profit Organisations, this is a registered legal entity that does not make a profit for directors, members, or shareholders.
• Community Associations, Tenants, and Residents groups that has an overarching community purpose that reaches beyond its membership.
• Faith or Political Groups, we support projects from Faith or Political groups that have a community purpose other than the advancement of religion or political activities.
• Environmental, arts and heritage Organisations that have certificate of registration, Memorandum or Articles.
• Co-operatives, social enterprises, and Community Interest Company Ltd by Guarantee, who don’t have shares or shareholders. C.I.C’s must have three unrelated Directors.
• Schools, College or University, your project will benefit your establishment and the wider community, and/or work in partnership with a voluntary or community organisation.

• We can’t fund individuals or projects from profit making businesses.
• Core costs that are not specific for the project.
• We can’t fund research projects,
• Activities that any other organisation has a duty to undertake.
• We can’t support projects which deliver activities that are the responsibility of local authorities.
• Projects that deal with waste from businesses that would not be expected to be collected by local authorities.
• We can’t fund costs for activities already provided by other funders.
• Contribution to endowment fund, payment of deficit funding or repayment of loans
• Recoverable VAT

• We have a total funding pot of £165,000 for projects between £1,000 to £30,000. 
• £1,000 to a maximum of £8,000 is available for an individual district project.
• Up to £30,000 is available for projects delivering across the City Region area. To qualify you must deliver your project in a minimum of 4 districts equally.

We expect the majority of applications will be via the online application form. If you are not able to access this, for whatever reason, please contact us for further information on how we can support you with your application.

Sunday 10^th March 2024 at 11.59pm. We can’t accept applications after this date.

We aim to make decisions by mid April 2024 so we expect project delivery will be between May 2024 to March 2025.

You will first receive an offer by email that will confirm how much funding you will be awarded, please note this may not be the full amount you requested.

As part of our due diligence process, we will need to see documents about organisations. Failure to provide this supporting information may result in your funding offer being withdrawn.

• A copy of your governing document, your Constitution/Memorandum/Articles of Association or set of rules.
• A list of your Trustees/Directors/Management Committee. A minimum of three that are unrelated.
• details of insurance liability cover, lease agreements and consents
• A copy bank statement from the last 3 months. This should be clear and not redacted. It should show the name and address of your organisation, account number and sort code, and the account balance. Our request for a bank statement falls in line with current data protection requirements. If payments have been made to individuals you can redact these.
• Quotes for any capital items over £300

The award of any funding will require you to enter into a Funding Agreement. This covers the terms and conditions for your project. Further conditions to your project may be specified which will be included in your Funding Agreement.

You will receive an email/letter informing you on this occasion that you have not been successful. Where possible we will provide specific feedback on why an application was unsuccessful upon request, but please note that sometimes it can be purely due to oversubscription. 

Your funding will be paid into an organisational bank account that has two independent signatories who are not related or live at the same address. Most grants are paid by electronic transfer (BACS) direct to your bank, which is why we ask for an up-to-date bank statement. If this is not possible, we will send a cheque issued in the organisations name.

The funding will be paid in two or three stage payments. The first payment will be made in advance. Subsequent stage payments will be paid on you providing a monitoring report which shows your project is progressing to the agreed plan.

We ask our projects to complete a short monitoring form twice during the project, providing information on your agreed outputs, together with a short comment on how your project is working well, and what isn’t going to plan and how you will deal with that.

At the end of your project you’re required to provide an End of Project Report (a template is available) no later than the 18^th May 2025.