The Business Scheme Bringing Multi-Million Pound Benefits To The Community

21 July 2016 by CSG

Bringing together the worlds of commerce and the community – especially in situations in which environmental protection is an issue – is now an established part of UK corporate life and a significant management concern for most companies.

Companies these days are expected to take an interest in the wider world outside their own commercial ‘bubble’. It’s called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). But what does that mean in practice? One definition by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development is: “CSR is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families, as well as of the local community and society at large.”This is especially true when it comes to caring for the environment, and particularly so for the waste management industry whose activities are now so closely linked to environmental sustainability. 

CSG has long accepted that it has a role to play in the business community’s responsibility to act as a good neighbour and willingly provides support for environmental and community projects both at home and overseas.

One of the many ways in which it does this is as an enthusiastic contributor to the Landfill Communities Fund (LCF) – a scheme which allows landfill operators such as CSG to contribute an amount from their landfill tax liability to community and environmental organisations as a way of offsetting any negative impacts of living in the vicinity of a landfill site. 

CSG operates only one site at the moment – at Pound Bottom some eight miles from Salisbury – but it has been responsible for others in the past including Wyrley Grove in Staffordshire and Rushton in Northamptonshire.

Working through the Fund, CSG has supported no fewer than 150 good causes and environmental projects benefiting scores of communities in the area of these sites. These projects range from funding repairs to scout huts to providing new facilities at local museums; from refurbishing village halls to church restoration; from providing improved access for the disabled to sponsoring much needed facilities at visitor attractions. To date, some £1.36 million has been donated to fund projects in the ‘catchment area’ of CSG’s Pound Bottom site.

They include three £50,000 sponsorships which have provided a new sports facility for the New Forest village of Nomansland, sponsorship of a food recycling charity working in the Southampton area, and promoting public access to the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Langford Lakes nature reserve, including a sensory trail for those in wheelchairs and mobility devices. At Wyrley Grove, which is now closed and has been spectacularly landscaped to return the site to open countryside, CSG contributed a further £1 million-plus to good causes. Another £70,000 was donated to sponsor projects in the vicinity of the Rushton site.