The Green Business Network (GBN) is an award-winning Environmental Body approved by ENTRUST, the regulator of the Landfill Communities Fund. As such, the GBN can apply to and receive funding from landfill operators, for community projects.
Communities located near to landfill sites can work in partnership with GBN to fund social and environmental improvements. This has enabled nearly 175 local projects in Calderdale, Kirklees and beyond to get off the ground, securing total funding of £2.5 million during the last six years. The GBN was also one of the first 20 organisations in the country to successfully register a new category DA (biodiversity) project. It is now at the forefront of the latest impetus for youth volunteering.
In June 2007, Biffaward, one of the most respected Landfill Communities Fund schemes wrote that it “is delighted to be able to support GBN in its work to improve the quality of life in the region. The breadth of GBN’s work, the partnerships that it has forged and the positive impacts that its projects have brought for local communities are a real credit to all involved”. In further recognition of this, projects that the GBN has helped through landfill tax funding have won an annual “Biffaward Award”, an RSA accredited environmental award, no less than three times.
Historically landfill tax monies could be used to fund recycling and re-use projects. Through this the GBN funded such projects as The Change Project, a reusable nappy laundering service, an office furniture recycling project with Pennine Magpie, a domestic furniture recycling service with SVP Ozanam, and many of the GBN’s own projects (see Projects page). Under the current landfill tax regulations, there are three main types of project that can be funded, which can be categorised under the following headings: Biodiversity projects, projects to restore or protect Historic Buildings, projects that provide or maintain Public Amenities.
In October 2005 through the GBN’s tenth anniversary celebrations £10,000 funding was offered for the best project in Calderdale, under each of these categories:
More recently we awarded over £30,000 in a competition to find the best projects in the Upper Calder Valley.
