WINNING a Streets Ahead award kick-started a busy year for Glasgow’s best ‘eco-prise’.

Fergus Moore, one of the founders of coffee recycling company Revive Eco, says the prestigious prize was a fantastic boost.

“Getting the support of your local city is amazing,” he explains. “We were very fortunate in our first year to get some recognition around the world but to be recognised in the community we started in meant a great deal.

“The prestige associated with an award supported by the Evening Times and Glasgow City Council and partners really helped to boost our credibility.”

He adds: “It was also fantastic to be part of the event itself – it was a great night and we were proud to be there.”

Revive Eco won the Green Glasgow Business Award, after impressing judges with their commitment to recycling and reducing waste.

The company started up in May 2015 as a business project at Strathclyde University for students Fergus Moore, Scott Kennedy and Rebecca Richardson.

While working part-time in local coffee shops, they were appalled by the amount of food waste produced on a daily basis and so decided to work together to do something about it. The trio set up a ‘waste rejuvenation eco-prise’ specialising in recycling used coffee grounds and transforming them into bio-fertiliser and biomass pellets.

Within a few months, they had won prestigious awards at the Values and Ventures Competition in Texas and the Young Innovators Challenge closer to home , and Tinderbox stores and Dear Green coffee roasters were selling their products.

Fergus says: “It was a small-scale community enterprise to begin with and while we realised the massive environmental impact Revive Eco could have, I don’t really think any of us expected it to happen so quickly.”

Following the company’s triumph at last year’s Streets Ahead awards, Revive Eco went on to win even more accolades including the St. Enoch Centre Glasgow Business Award for Green Champion at the Glasgow Business Awards. Fergus was also shortlisted in the Shell Livewire Young Entrepreneur of the Year contest.

“There has been so much happening this year, it’s been fantastic,” he says. “We are continuing to develop our business and in particular, a new focus on creating oils for the cosmetic industry which will be a big growth area for us. We have a concrete plan in place for the next 12 months and will be working with partners and other organisations across Europe. It’s really exciting.”

Do you know of a ‘green business’ like Revive Eco who deserves to win a Streets Ahead award?

Send us your stories and your photographs, and as much information as possible about your project, in time for the closing date of May 3.

To nominate yourself or someone else, visit the dedicated awards website at www.eveningtimesevents.com/streetsahead You can also email lyndsay.wilson@heraldandtimes.co.uk or call 0141 302 7407.

We will be awarding eight prizes, including an overall winner to be announced at the event on Thursday, June 15.

There will be trophies for the best garden, best clean-up campaign, best environmental initiative, best community garden, best community initiative and best business initiative, plus a schools award.

The best garden prize will be presented to the best residential garden. We are looking for gardens which are attractive and well-kept, which improve the appearance of the local area while the clean-up campaign category celebrates the best clean-up initiatives taking place across the city.

The best environmental initiative award will be presented to city’s best ‘green’ project, whether it’s a recycling scheme, a road safety initiative or something completely different, while for the best community garden category, we will be looking for gardens which are used by the whole community.

The winner of the best community initiative category will be an exceptional example of a project which encourages people to work together, which has gone the extra mile to make a real difference to people’s lives.

The Green Glasgow Business Award will be presented to the company, large or small, which has played its part in keeping Glasgow clean and green and the schools award will be presented to a nursery, primary, second or assisted support for learning school which can demonstrate what contribution it has made to its local community.