Training

Cloughmills Community Action Team

Supporting Jobs and Skills

The development and growth of Circular Economy can deliver jobs across all skills levels and across different sectors from repairing to manufacturing within Northern Ireland. According to a recent report from GAIA — Zero Waste and Economic Recoveryreuse creates 200 times as many jobs as landfill and ‘incinerators’ respectively.

A Government approach is needed to identify the job opportunities including further development of apprenticeships programmes, learning and third level courses as well as funding toward training and capacity building for social entrepreneurs, enterprises and businesses working in or moving toward a more Circular Economy. Realising the economic benefits and job creation will only happen if support structures are in place and there is a skilled workforce with the ability to meet this increasing demand.

Waste Hierarchy with mean job generation figures per ten thousand tonnes of waste processed per year. The diagram below from the Zero Waste and Economic Recovery Report show that waste management approaches that have the best environmental outcomes also generate the most jobs:

Job Creation

NIRN members are already active in supporting individuals and communities to learn how to fix and reuse items.

The Repair Cafe Belfast has regular events in the Belfast area where people come along and get items fixed, and in the process learn new skills so in the future the will be able to repair the item themselves. Find out about upcoming events 

Repair Cafe Belfast

Belfast Tool Library support their members by lending out tools and offering workshops on DIY projects so attendees can learn how to undertake repair jobs themselves.

Belfast Tool Library

Zero Waste and Economic Recovery

The job creation potential of zero waste solutions