Environment and Rural Development Committee, 08 Oct 2003

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 8, 2003

Official Report 240KB pdf

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National Waste Plan Inquiry

The final agenda item is the national waste plan inquiry. This is the last of four evidence-taking sessions for the inquiry, and the key objective of this session is to raise with the minister issues that have come to our attention during our scrutiny of written and oral evidence in the inquiry.

I welcome the Minister for Environment and Rural Development, Ross Finnie, and Executive officials Simon Stockwell, Kevin Philpott and David Rogers. I invite the minister to say a few words and I encourage him to keep to the five-minute time limit, so that we have time for a good exchange of ideas.

Thank you, convener. You kindly passed on that injunction to me last night, and with consistency you have repeated it this morning.

As members are well aware, the national waste plan and the area waste plans were created as the result of a partnership between the Executive, the local authorities, SEPA, the private sector and the community and voluntary sectors. We are aware that a number of the bodies involved had different objectives at the outset. However, we all want waste to be reduced, reused and recycled and, in the end, all the bodies came together positively to produce the area waste plans and the national waste plan. We value the high degree of buy-in that we achieved in that process.

The focus now is on implementation. We have committed substantial resources, principally through the strategic waste fund. So far, we have awarded £70 million to 14 of the 32 local authorities. We are analysing other bids and we expect bids from four local authorities to arrive shortly. From our analysis of the bids so far, we estimate that we have commitments that will meet some 90 per cent of the tonnage required to meet our short-term target of composting or recycling 25 per cent of municipal solid waste by 2006. We will not be complacent about those commitments, but we are making good progress. The roll-out of the strategic waste fund will involve considerable dialogue between us and the local authorities.

I have read the Official Reports of the committee's previous meetings with interest, noting the discussions of the targets—in particular, the 25 per cent target. I agree that that is a challenging target; we started from a base of 7 per cent. However, Scottish Environment LINK has said that other countries have already managed to achieve such a target. From consideration of where we have got to, and of the roll-out of funds, we still regard 25 per cent as a realistic target. By setting targets and committing ring-fenced money, we are ensuring that the rhetoric is matched with funding. We are collaborating with those who supply the infrastructure.

A change of attitude among the public is required. We must make far more members of the public aware that we think of waste as a potential resource. Energy efficiency, water conservation and sustainable development are important, but the concepts of reduce, reuse and recycle are slightly alien to our culture because of the way in which municipal waste has been dealt with in the past.

I pay particular tribute to the way in which the community and voluntary sectors have led in these matters. They continue to play an important role. Many bodies in those sectors have been concerned about their funding since the United Kingdom Government announced changes to the landfill tax credit scheme. The committee may be interested to know that I am announcing today continued funding for community waste projects. That funding will be £2.5 million in 2004-05 and a further £2.5 million in 2005-06. I hope that that will reassure the community sector of the Scottish Executive's commitment to its continuing role. Following the changes that were announced, the interim scheme built on the work of the community sector. I hope that the new funding will reinforce the community element.

We are conscious of the work of the Scottish waste awareness group, which has thought carefully about how to increase public awareness. Last week, SWAG outlined to the committee how it works in partnership with local authorities and the community sector so that advertising campaigns on recycling go ahead at the same time as the infrastructure. That harmonisation is very important. Public awareness should be increased at the same time as the physical infrastructure is put in place.

The market for recycled products is a key issue. There is not much point in producing more recycled material if there is no market for it. We fund the Waste and Resources Action Programme and Remade Scotland. They are both doing good work in developing markets and the enterprise networks are increasingly supportive. Our analysis suggests that there are existing markets and good potential for future markets in most of the key components of municipal solid waste streams—glass, paper and green waste. Increasingly, local authorities are setting up long-term contracts in those areas. Working together, we can increase the tonnage that is available to the purchasers and give the authorities better bargaining power.

I appreciate that we have been rather focused on trying to change the mindset of the public on recycling. I would not want the committee or anybody else to think that we have lost sight of the essential need to complete the three legs of the stool; reducing and reusing remain hugely important elements of the strategy. Where we are trying to change attitudes and perceptions, though, we have to be careful not to confuse and dilute the message. We have been very strong in trying to push the recycling message but, as that becomes more embedded, we will want to put much more emphasis on the need to reduce and reuse—not that we have ever lost sight of that. Those are all key components of the strategy.

The evidence that the committee has received seems to be very positive about the existence of the plan, and about the possibilities and prospects for its delivery. There are elements that will require hard work. Given that we start from a 7 per cent recycling base, we cannot be anything other than conscious that there is a lot of hard work to be done to deliver the objectives of the national waste strategy.

I echo your comments about the wave of positive enthusiasm towards the objectives that you have set out. However, as you would expect, we also have a number of questions.

You talked about the allocation of funding. Would you agree that there is quite a lot of concern among councils about the fact that it is challenge funding? They have to bid for it, and some of them feel that they might lose out. Can you assure them that the money will be available to implement the area waste plans in each area?

I understand that some councils are concerned, but I would be more concerned at the rather slow pace of applications. The money is there and it is allocated; it has the specific purpose of funding the infrastructure that is so desperately needed. In some local authorities, there is almost no infrastructure, save for the wheelie bins, the wheelie-bin collectors, the transfer stations and the large lorries to take the waste to landfill.

The only challenging element for local authorities is that they must be seen to be meeting—or be going to meet—what is set out in the area waste plan. That should not be very challenging. I appreciate that councils are saying that what they do has to be measured, but the key measurement is whether X, Y or Z local authority's application for funding meets, or will help to meet, the targets that were established in the national waste plan.

Just to be clear, if a local authority meets those targets, it will get the funding, even if it has been a bit slow in getting its bid in, for whatever reason.

It will be paid. The only people who will be queried are those who, at a rather late stage, seek to change the nature of delivery, or those who are simply not going to meet the requirements of the plan.

That is quite helpful clarification. Is there a time scale for the process of approving applications?

ASAP. To be honest, we are desperate to get the applications. The longer local authorities take to start off, the more difficult it is to get to the end product. The fact that everybody worked helpfully and collaboratively in putting together the area waste plans can only encourage local authorities to get cracking.

I have tried in the past to get the minister to comment on issues that fall slightly outside his area of responsibility and that of the committee, but something that has been raised time and again during this investigation is the impact of planning decisions on the industry. We have dealt with a couple of petitions on landfill sites, but a number of people who have given evidence have said that the same problems exist in getting planning permission for many of the infrastructure items that are required in order to move on from landfill. The letter to Sarah Boyack from the Scottish Environmental Services Association states:

"Currently, the planning process inhibits rather than facilitates the delivery of greater sustainability. The process is typically beset by delay and, in our experience, is not delivering predictable decisions. In addition, particularly in areas where there are annual elections, decisions are not always taken on the strategic basis needed to provide sustainable waste management infrastructure."

Are the aims of the waste management plan achievable without changes in the planning structure to allow us to make progress at a reasonable pace?

The aims are achievable, but we must all take a number of important steps. There are two separate issues with landfill. First, there are particular problems. Seeing Karen reminds me of the problem in her constituency of a concentration—

I think that you mean Karen Whitefield.

My apologies. A concentration of landfill sites raises immediate problems—it is difficult for the local population and planning officers not to want to change the situation dramatically. However, when we address new landfill site applications in the context of the national plan, we must take a wider view. We must consider the issue of reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill, but we must also consider the radical changes that have taken place in the way in which landfill sites are managed. The new procedures are certainly not evident in sites that were designed some 10 years ago.

Given that an application meets other planning conditions, we must ask whether, for a local authority area as a whole, it is better to reduce the amount of landfill and to facilitate the much improved use and disposal of the waste stream, or to frustrate that and end up with a far worse environmental problem. That is a difficult issue, but politicians who subscribe to or buy into the objectives of the plan, which has been put together by a diverse range of people, must have the courage to stand up to the criticisms about the reduced level of landfill streaming.

A lot of help has been sent out through the planning advice notes, particularly those that were issued in February 2002, which tried to give planning authority officers much greater guidance and advice on integrated waste management and on how to put the criteria that they use into a wider perspective. There is a challenge, but local democracy is local democracy. We should not stop it; instead, we must elevate the debate.

I understand your point about the difficulty of decisions on landfill, but the evidence that we took from many industry groups was that they have no intention of moving away from the sites that they use currently to use new developments. One question that must be asked is how we can protect communities that have been ravaged by landfill or in which there are large holes in the ground because unscrupulous opencast operators did not replace what they had taken out. The communities in which such holes exist are the same ones that have landfill sites at present. The minister seems to be saying that those communities should continue to have such problems because of the local geology and because we need landfill, although I will give him the opportunity to say that that is not what he means. That view raises serious problems for me, given that I represent a former mining constituency.

I do not suggest that communities must put up with the same problems. The planning regulations and the regulations that cover the registration of such sites and the licensing and registration of operators are sufficient. The powers that are available to local authorities and other bodies are quite wide. We need to come down like a tonne of bricks on those who are clearly causing environmental misery to communities by managing sites inappropriately or by allowing unacceptable practices that fall outwith the licensing regime to continue.

We also have to be careful about what we do on planning grounds. I am not sure that people would necessarily get away with certain things now. I would be interested to hear about Karen Gillon's example, but the current national planning policy guidelines do not favour the extended use of opencast sites for landfill, even if that was more in favour in the past.

Under the new landfill regulations, it will not matter so much whether an area used to be full of opencast quarries and the like. The regulations will require fulfilment of environmental conditions such as lining standards and barrier standards for the area between the landfill and the groundwater, for example. You passed new landfill regulations this year, and the fact that somewhere is an existing quarry or landfill site will not have any real impact on the planners. First, the technical conditions in the regulations will have to be met. Among the regulations are requirements to protect human health, which specify the required distance of the site from habitation or other human activities.

I understand that. However, when industry representatives were here and were pressed on those issues, they could not come up with alternative approaches. That will remain an issue, not just for the committee but for communities that have experienced problems in this area for several years. Industry representatives are simply saying that holes in the ground exist and should be filled in, because of the geology and so on. You might not be able to deal with this today and this does not entirely fall within your remit, minister, but there is an issue for us if landfill is to be pressed ahead with, especially given the fact that the industry gave us no indication that it was considering using more innovative methods for disposing of waste or places other than the sites that have been used in the past.

I would not want to comment on the evidence given by industry representatives, as I have not read it in detail, but there is an inherent conflict if the industry is suggesting to the committee that it will carry on as before, ignoring the changes under the regulations that the Parliament has passed.

I am not suggesting that that is the case.

The industry cannot have it both ways. Its representatives cannot tell the committee that it will carry on as before when the regulations have been fundamentally changed. The industry is required to meet new standards in relation to its ability to deal with the geology of the site in such a way that contamination is not permitted to continue.

I appreciate the fact that there are huge issues of environmental justice surrounding landfill sites. The irony is that, although we cannot eliminate the material going to landfill, the proposals under the new regulations intend to bring about a radical reduction in the amount of that material, which has to be of benefit to communities. Nevertheless, I take what you are saying on board. Your comments are well made and we will keep them in mind.

On both Alex Johnstone's and Karen Gillon's questions, I would say, having read through the submissions, that there is an issue from both sides. There is an issue on the local authority side about the time that is taken to get facilities set up on the ground once the industry has come to a decision and has applied for money from the strategic waste fund. That applies not only to landfill facilities but to new recycling facilities and other infrastructure, and concerns the proximity principle. Those issues have come through during our last three evidence-taking sessions.

I am concerned about how we can improve the national waste strategy in people's minds by referring to ways in which work can be created out of waste. We have had evidence from a number of sources, such as Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Scottish Enterprise network, which seems to be a good deal less than proactive. A problem is raised by the fact that the Scottish Enterprise network's submission states:

"Municipal waste per se is not a priority for the Network however, our activities will help to reduce business waste, encourage reuse and recycling, and help to identify and support new business opportunities that contribute to the aims of the NWP."

We have a responsibility to try to make people see that recycling can lead to a better, more developed economy. I have examples from the Highlands, where people have exploited cars, household goods, tyres and wood waste more through their own efforts than through the proactive efforts of the enterprise network. Will you comment on the potential in that area, given that we are trying to improve the take-up and the effectiveness of the programme?

I am disappointed by the tone and tenor of those responses, because Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise were both part of the steering group that developed the national waste strategy. Although I admit that a large part of the group's initial sessions was all about implementing the plan on the ground, we devoted a number of sessions to the opportunities that would present themselves. It was recognised that, by increasing the amount of recycled and compost material, we would create market and job opportunities. We had specific sessions that were directed at, and involved contributions from, the enterprise network, the Confederation of British Industry and others.

I share Rob Gibson's slight disappointment that, in spite of the huge opportunities to use such resources, no one seems to be grasping the nettle. I am genuinely surprised that there seems to be a reluctance to accept those opportunities; the figures show that other European countries are way ahead of us in their use of that material. As I said in my opening remarks, it might be a question of trying to change the mindset, so that people think about recycling a resource, rather than a pile of waste. I think that we agree that there is an attitude problem and that we have some work to do.

As the committee knows, the Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department—as opposed to the enterprise network—is seeking to get some dialogue going on green jobs. The Environment and Rural Affairs Department will input into that process. Our intention will be to elevate the significance of the amount of resource that will become available through the national waste plan and the job opportunities that the development of that plan will provide. I hope that we will not get a negative response from the enterprise network or from the private sector as a whole to what I think is a huge job opportunity.

We will take that further forward in the future.

That is definitely an issue that has come up before. You talked about the new job creation that comes from recycling and reuse. In our evidence session last week, we discussed making companies that do not deal with green issues more viable and more competitive by taking on board some of the challenges to do with how they use waste and how they could avoid creating more of it. That issue has been raised in quite a few of the submissions.

We will move on to a different area.

I have a quickie on targets. The way in which the national waste plan is written and the targets that local authorities have been given seem to have led to some strange distortions. For example, in some areas, the composting target has led councils to institute rural collections of green waste, which they were not doing before. As a result, their waste arisings have risen, because the composting target is easy to meet. They take away green waste for central composting. In a rural environment, it is clear that home composting or community composting are better environmental options. That situation has resulted from those councils working towards a percentage target for composting. Would anyone like to comment on that? In retrospect, could the targets have been phrased slightly differently?

Having the benefit of hindsight is wonderful—I wish that we could have it when we write plans. It would be jolly good if someone invented a system whereby I could have the benefit of hindsight when I finalise plans.

We are a bit surprised by some developments. I am always concerned that such things will become long-term features and that we will distort the essential provision of home composting and the use of materials and arisings. We must make refinements, but that does not detract from the essential thrust of what we seek to do. Some authorities might not be doing things properly, but their belief that they can be part of a composting programme is quite an advance. Matters should be put into perspective. Previously, one would have had to explain what composting was to some authorities, but the fact that they are now engaging with us must be regarded as success to some extent. However, it is clear that there must be refinements. We must not introduce factors that are unintended consequences of the plan, but that is a matter of refinement rather than of attacking the central thrust of making people much more aware that resources ought to be better used.

That is helpful. The issue arose in quite a few submissions.

I want to stick with targets. Waste reduction is another issue that has arisen in submissions. It has been said that if more waste continues to be created, segregated and collected, the challenges will become tougher over time, and that we are dealing with a moving target. Submissions have suggested that, when we next consider targets, waste-reduction targets should be a key principle of the approach so that we try to drive down the amount of waste that is created in the first place. What are your views about that suggestion?

There was a difficult decision to take. On recycling, biodegradable municipal waste was collected every week by every local authority. We had the worst record by any national or European comparison and therefore it was not difficult to suggest that we could do something dramatically different in that area and try to change mindsets.

I wholly agree with you, convener, but am bound to say that we are talking about a difficult area. There are packaging directives that ought to impose a hidden tax, in effect, on those who generate packaging material. However, from casual observation, I must express huge disappointment about the number of goods that seem to have wholly unnecessary packaging. We must try to get around that.

As I said earlier, much of the thrust of our work has been about getting recycling and the municipal waste stream as a focus of attention, but we are trying to turn a little more of our resources to the reducing and reusing elements, as they are equally important. It is not a matter of there being genuine differences, but of the utilisation of resources. Packaging is a major issue. There is huge resistance. I do not know what is being absorbed from the business community. Fairly recently, I have had discussions on the matter and the plaintive response—that what is being done is what the consumer wants—did not appeal to me. Big issues are involved. We might have to feed into the analysis at the United Kingdom level about the impact that the packaging directives are having and whether they are biting in the intended way. I suspect that they are not.

I would like to say something about the generic issue of waste production. The national waste plan set a target of reducing growth to zero by 2010, which is quite a long way off; nonetheless, the target recognised that there is a big problem. I should also stress that the assessment of councils' proposals to implement area waste plans does not focus only on recycling. We are considering funding waste-reduction measures such as home composting and education initiatives.

From the representations that we have received, it is certainly our impression that people have focused on recycling rather than on reductions. Perhaps that issue should be highlighted in our report.

Roseanna Cunningham wanted to say something about packaging.

At previous meetings, we have had exchanges on the packaging issue. Some witnesses said that trading standards officers had considerable powers but the evidence suggested that those powers were not being used. I appreciate that trading standards officers are probably outwith your direct control, but are you monitoring whether, through the local authorities, they are enforcing measures that would reduce the amount of waste produced?

After the comments that were made in the committee, one of the tasks on our desks is to have a word with the body that looks after trading standards officers in Scotland to see what is happening with enforcement.

Reading through papers, I have noted that parts of the Executive have targets for reducing energy use. Would it be appropriate to have resource use targets as well, to concentrate people's minds? I have a practical example of that. When I came back to my office after the election, somebody had changed the settings on the printers. Instead of automatically printing out on one side of the paper, they now automatically print out on both sides. At a stroke, I have halved the amount of paper that goes through the office. We have to concentrate people's minds on the value of resources and the problems that arise when we do not use them effectively. Is there scope for such ideas to be used in the Executive and in executive agencies and the public sector? In procurement issues, we should try to push industry in the right direction.

It was an Executive initiative to change printer settings, and everybody's printer has been changed. However, I had the misfortune, when going down a corridor, of hearing a parliamentary assistant—whom I will not name—shouting at the machine, "Why will this not print page 2?" She had been pressing buttons on her computer assiduously and the printer had kept printing—but on both sides, so she was disappointed not to receive page 2. There can be small technical difficulties with attempts to minimise waste.

Within the Executive, we produce separate reports on our endeavours to reduce energy use, paper use and all such things. We are committed to those reductions. I agree with what you suggest, convener. Questions arise as to what the base standard should be and how things should be measured. We did not set the municipal waste targets until we had done a lot of analysis. We were pressed to set targets quite some time ago, but I was reluctant to do so until we had a better handle on the preparation of the national waste plan, so that we could be more certain about arisings and the infrastructure that would be needed to achieve reductions. When one sets targets, one has to be clear about what one is measuring, how one will measure it, and how one will achieve a successful reduction. I support what you say: that is the direction that we have to take.

A few people have spoken about markets. It has been suggested that public organisations should consider their procurement policies and ask whether they could incentivise and create markets. How could the Executive assist in that process?

We have policy targets on paper purchasing and other procurement. The issue is whether we can spread our policies to associated bodies.

We have been speaking to the Waste and Resources Action Programme about making certain that the message goes out to other public bodies. I have had discussions with, for example, the local government group within the Executive, to try to ensure that when local authorities draw up building maintenance contracts, or whatever, they think about laying down certain levels for recycled materials.

We plan to go round the Executive more broadly to speak to bodies that are sponsored by various parts of the Executive to say to them that they should think about recycled products when they procure goods and that they should check with WRAP what standard contract specifications there might be on the use of recycled material.

One of the great buzz phrases of the past few years has been that the polluter should pay. Certain examples from other parts of the world have proven that direct charging for municipal waste disposal can reduce dramatically the amount of waste that is created—although where the waste goes is a different matter. Direct charging also creates a funding stream and a greater public appetite, so to speak, for the whole notion of waste sorting, home composting and other activities. Have you considered the idea of direct charging for municipal waste disposal?

Yes, we did so briefly. I am aware that the Scandinavian countries, in particular, use a different approach. They have a bit of a carrot-and-stick approach. I was struck that in their educational programmes, their sense of awareness about environmental matters and their environmental education they were at a very different stage of development to ourselves. Given our appalling record, it did not seem to me that to start taxing people for doing something that they had been doing for the past 50 years would necessarily have the desired effect of changing the way that people think. We gave the option some thought, but to be honest we took the view that we were so far behind that it was not appropriate.

I will concentrate briefly, although I know that it is not the way that the committee wants to go, on the issue of dealing with and recycling municipal waste. We had a hurdle to overcome as the infrastructure had to be replaced. It had been removed—Alex Johnstone might want to ponder which Government removed it, but I will not pursue that point here—on the basis of cost rather than because of environmental considerations.

As we make progress, improve the level of environmental education in our schools and become more environmentally aware, a different approach could perhaps be adopted in the fullness of time. However, the need for us now is to have the strategic waste fund to bring about the sea change in how we deal with the matter. If, as a consequence, people tend to regard their municipal waste not as waste but as a resource, we will make a huge change in the attitudes that people adopt to other forms of waste. Municipal waste is the tip of the iceberg; it is a small proportion of the total amount of waste that we have to handle and manage in this country.

I certainly think that the national waste plan provides an opportunity for us to make a significant change in people's attitudes. Those same people may recognise that they have to apply the same principles to all the other wastes, be they industrial or commercial wastes or whatever. That is the change of attitude that is needed. If we do not achieve that change, our attempts to improve the Scottish nation's ability to manage and handle the waste issue will be fruitless.

I will correct a misapprehension that may have crept into the discussion. The committee is not uninterested in or unimpressed—

The committee wants a better balance. I apologise.

We are banking the 25 per cent recycling target and saying that that is really good, but we are looking at the issues round that and examining how we can address them.

I do not disagree with that. My only problem is that I think that we also have to address the capacity of the public to get bedded into those changes.

I am conscious of the time. Could you provide us—perhaps later—with data about bids to the strategic waste fund for funding segregated waste collection systems? That would be a carrot for getting rid of the waste rather than a stick, to which you referred earlier.

I am certainly happy to provide the information that we have. Can we do that, Simon?

Yes.

I am conscious of the time, but I will allow a final question if it is brief.

Am I allowed to ask a question on public-private partnerships?

As long as the question is brief and the minister's answer is brief. If the minister wants to give a fuller answer in writing, that will be encouraged.

The minister mentioned the legacy of previous Governments. Some authorities expressed a concern that they felt somewhat compelled to go down the road of public-private partnerships for waste management even though they were not suitable. They felt that such arrangements might tie them into producing a certain amount of waste over 25 years to fulfil the contract and that there would be few potential bidders. Do you have any comments on that?

Best value applies in any such deal; it does not matter which finance stream is involved. One of the advantages of the strategy is that it is long term, so it is not a question of authorities' having to produce waste. I agree that there would be an issue if a contract were predicated on certain volumes being produced. There would be issues if we were successful in reducing the amount of waste. Only about four area waste plans have in place, or are putting in place, private finance initiative contracts. I am not aware of others that are going down that road, so that is not a cross-Scotland situation. It might be important to seek in the contracts flexibility about what the capital structure could be used for across other waste streams. That is an intelligent approach to a 25 or 30-year view of managing waste.

I thank the minister and his officials for coming. In order to plan our next meeting effectively, I seek the committee's agreement that we consider our draft report on the waste inquiry in private before we finalise our views. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Meeting closed at 13:27.