2 October 2025
This week, 30th September – 03rd October, is Scotland’s Climate Week!
Circular Glasgow, through Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, has a number of initiatives to help support and inform businesses about the opportunities that lie in more sustainable practices. Our flagship project, Step Up To Net Zero, funded by Glasgow City Council via the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, is a fantastic example of how innovation and collaboration can unlock benefits for organisations across the city.
Step Up To Net Zero – background
Step Up to Net Zero, first launched in 2021, has supported more than 90 businesses to reduce their environmental impact and find opportunities to embed sustainability into their operations.
Whether organisations are looking for ways to calculate and reduce their carbon emissions, finding innovative circular opportunities, or ways to eliminate waste out of their business model, the SUTNZ team works closely with businesses to develop a bespoke and practical action plan.
SUTNZ is a unique programme that provides SMEs with a dedicated resource, someone with the time and emerging expertise to carry out the groundwork to work towards their sustainability goals. This is particularly useful as existing employees are often inundated with core responsibilities, with limited time. The initiative also offers those looking to upskill in the sustainability sector, graduates, individuals returning to work or otherwise disengaged from employment, an opportunity to develop their knowledge while practically applying what they learn in a business. For businesses and individuals alike, the placement is a chance to make Glasgow a greener, healthier, and circular city.
The Impact so far
Since the programme began, we’ve seen a diverse range of achievements from organisations across different sectors, with each industry demonstrating innovate ways of working towards a more sustainable future and finding ways to collaborate across the city. Read on for some examples of positive change and success!
Embracing a Circular Economy
Merry-Go-Round, a charity that repurposes children’s clothing and items, embeds circular economy practices by diverting a significant amount of waste from landfill while empowering and educating the local community. Since taking part in SUTNZ, the organisation focuses on creative waste reduction, such as finding ways to repurpose unused mattresses from baby boxes, often left to accumulate once donated. Merry-Go-Round have found imaginative ways to repurpose the unsellable mattresses, using them instead as soundproofing material for local radio stations and other social enterprises in the city.
Read more about Merry-Go-Round here.
Circular Arts Network (CAN), developed by Sculpture Placement Group, is an online platform where individuals and organisations can redistribute a range of art resources, materials, and equipment. In doing so, they demonstrate valuable circular principles by diverting waste to organisations who give it a second life in imaginative ways. Not only are physical resources shared locally, artists and craftspeople can also offer their skills to further circulate resources in their community.
The platform also welcomes involvement from across sectors. Local construction companies have offered site waste usually ending up in landfill, claimed instead by artists to create something new.
Through SUTNZ, the organisation was able to develop a bespoke tool to calculate carbon emissions for specialised materials, generate and share arts specific resources with other organisations, and build on the collaboration they were already cultivating across industries.
Find out more about CAN here.
Reducing Emissions
Agile City, the CIC that oversees Civic House, a former printworks, is part of a wider project to bring new life to a previously neglected corner of Glasgow by creating spaces for cultural, social and green enterprises and events.
The repurposed building is an exemplar for the creative reuse of post-industrial cities’ former factories and warehouses. Once supporting industrial growth and an explosion of carbon emissions, can now support new green industries and a low-carbon future.
Working with Collective Architecture, they designed the retrofit to work with the unique features of Civic House, while carrying out energy-efficiency measures such as solar panels, external insulation cladding systems, triple-glazed airtight windows, a mechanical ventilation and heat recovery system, and an air source heat pump. The building is now a small-scale power plant that generates more energy than it consumes over the course of a year.
Agile City’s time on SUTNZ supported developments of Civic House and its connections with local stakeholders. Now home to a thriving community, Civic House is an events space than hosts talks, film screenings, performance and exhibitions, while providing a social hub for the wider Speirs Lock creative community.
Read more about Agile City’s work here.
Smarter Waste Management
EGG Lighting specialises in a wide range of lighting and electrical solutions, including design, installation, maintenance, and repairs. As a business on the current round of SUTNZ, their participant has identified that packaging waste is costing the company both money and valuable resources.
Used packaging materials such as cardboard, pallets and protective wrapping are often still in good condition. Their participant is therefore identifying ways to reclassify this ‘waste’ material into a resource by collaborating with supply chain partners.
By engaging with them on topics such as circular supply chains, packaging redesign and reduction, and take-back schemes, these early-stage discussions show how practical, low-cost actions can have a significant impact on ensuring environmental goals are met while delivering business benefits.
By developing this initiative, EGG Lighting’s participant has already developed valuable insights and pathways for measurable impacts.
Read more about their work here.
Begin your journey here!
Getting involved in SUTNZ can positively contribute towards meeting the city’s sustainability targets. Reducing your organisation’s environmental impact and potentially reducing your costs is a major incentive for following more sustainable practices.
If you’re tempted by Step Up To Net Zero – join our waiting list here.