National Waste Strategy
The next item of business is a debate on motion S3M-4348, in the name of Roseanna Cunningham, on the national waste strategy. As the debate is oversubscribed, members must stick rigidly to or come in under their time limits.
I am pleased to open this debate on our forthcoming national waste management plan. The debate gives the Parliament a say on the plan, although members will have further opportunities to contribute when we carry out the written consultation.
Waste management accounts for around 4 per cent of Scotland's climate change emissions. Of course, provisions in the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill are designed to help Scotland move further on its journey towards zero waste. Although climate change emissions from waste management have fallen and although we put less into and capture more gas from landfill, there is no doubt that we can do far more to reduce landfill even further.
Climate change is the main environmental challenge facing Scotland and the world, and zero waste helps us not just to tackle that problem but to meet renewable energy and heat targets. Moreover, moving to zero waste helps to drive environmental awareness. More than 80 per cent of Scottish households now participate in some form of recycling activity, which is a major advance on the position 10 or 20 years ago. The fact that that has been achieved by making it easier for people to recycle is a valuable lesson that we can learn in seeking to encourage other forms of environmental behaviour.
Delivering on zero waste will also bring economic benefits for Scotland by creating jobs in the collection of material for recycling, in the sorting of material and in the reprocessing of material into new products. Jobs will also be created in waste treatment plants to deal with the waste that cannot be prevented or recycled. Finally, waste reduction can often help with the household expenses. After all, food waste is a high-profile issue at the moment, and reducing such waste means that we have spent less money on food that we have simply thrown away.
Our new zero waste plan will set out how we can achieve high recycling rates. Of course, such a plan is required by the European Union and, as the current plan dates back to 2003, it is time to prepare a new one. We will start consulting in July and finalise the plan by February 2010.
However, in some cases, we want to go further and faster than EU requirements. We are particularly ambitious about waste prevention. In that respect, we have put in place many measures including our love food, hate waste campaign; subsidised home composting bins; work on reducing unwanted mail; advice to business on waste prevention and resource efficiency; and work on eco-schools and packaging. I am sure that many members have visited the eco-schools in their constituencies.
Recent figures suggest that growth in municipal waste has stopped. However, we are calling on all of Scotland to build on that good foundation. The new plan will have a reuse framework, which will emphasise the importance of reusing materials such as furniture, building materials and packaging.
As members will know, to tackle packaging, the Waste and Resources Action Programme, or WRAP, currently has a voluntary agreement with retailers—known as the Courtauld commitment—which has stopped growth in food packaging and reduced food waste. The commitment is being renewed and will go further. Scotland's new plan will encourage more voluntary agreements with industry. WRAP will work with the home improvement and do-it-yourself industry to reduce waste. WRAP has also established a commitment to halve the amount of construction, demolition and excavation waste going to landfill by 2012. We can announce today that the Scottish Government is signing that commitment, so that we can play our full part.
We want to have more influence on how products are designed. We have prepared a report on that, which will appear with the consultation draft of our plan. Clean and sustainable design is at the heart of zero waste, as it is about encouraging products that are longer lasting, capable of being repaired or reused and recyclable at the end of their lives. All of that also means jobs. Influencing design is likely to be best achieved at an EU level, so the Government will press for that.
Good design increases the capacity for recycling. We have gone from a recycling rate for municipal waste of about 5 per cent in 1999 to 33.5 per cent by December 2008. Of the 32 local authorities, 25 have recycling rates of 30 per cent or more and eight have reached 40 per cent or more. Those achievements are the result of hard work by local authorities, the private and community sectors and delivery bodies such as the Waste and Resources Action Programme, Waste Aware Scotland and Remade Scotland. That is all made possible by superb participation from the public.
Our long-term aim is a recycling rate of 70 per cent by 2025, which would make us one of the best performers in the world. However, if we are to achieve that, everyone needs to play their part. That means collecting more materials more of the time, including materials that we have only just begun to tackle, such as food waste and plastics.
I have a question on the future. Has the Government already decided—before its consultation—that local authorities will be excluded from using anaerobic digestion as an option for some elements of mixed waste? If so, is the minister aware that that is of significant concern to Scottish Borders Council, which is currently testing the market with private sector operators, with anaerobic digestion being within the proposal? If that option is excluded, there is a potential for considerable additional cost.
There is currently a consultation taking place on whether that is a possible way forward. I know that there is a specific interest in the issue in the member's area. No final decision has been made on that.
Food waste makes up about 17 per cent of the average household bin, and plastics make up about 8 per cent. Therefore, about 25 per cent of the average household bin is made up of those two materials that we have found it difficult to deal with in the past. One barrier is a lack of treatment sites for both materials. That is why we fund capital grant schemes that are run by WRAP for in-vessel composting plants and anaerobic digestion plants to treat food waste. The Scottish Government is also tackling plastics. WRAP is running a £5 million capital grants project for us, which closes on 26 June. The aim is to provide financial assistance towards a facility, or facilities, that can sort, recycle and reprocess a minimum of 20,000 tonnes of plastic waste a year. Such a facility would put Scotland at the cutting edge of plastics reprocessing.
In respect of education and awareness, Waste Aware Scotland has been working with a number of authorities on a recycling adviser model. The aim is to provide in-depth support to householders to encourage them to do more recycling and to tackle any barriers that they might face. Recycling must become the norm for everybody, at home, at work and in public places. The Government will do more to promote recycling in public places. We want to build on existing work by local authorities and the private sector. We will have a round-table meeting with retailers and others to discuss and agree what more can be done to improve recycling outside the home.
I want to cover the role of residual waste treatment. Although landfill is better regulated and better run than ever before, Scotland must move further away from it. That is not a criticism of those in the private sector and local authorities who have worked hard to get us to where we are. One of the recommendations from our zero waste think tank was to ban more materials from landfill. Through WRAP Scotland, the Scottish Government has commissioned a research project that extends across the whole of the UK to look at the practicalities of landfill bans.
The other main form of residual waste treatment is energy from waste. The issue attracts controversy and I know that there will be a variety of views in the chamber. Many people argue that there should be a larger role for energy from waste while others want it to be reduced. The issues were debated at the Government's waste summit in 2007 and the Government's position was outlined on 24 January 2008: no more than 25 per cent of municipal waste should be disposed of in that way. All energy from waste plants should have high levels of efficiency and our eventual aim is that such plants should capture heat as well as energy. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has published thermal treatment guidelines to encourage higher efficiency plants and to keep them to tight requirements.
The national waste management plan will reflect Scotland's opportunity to view waste as a valuable resource to be exploited rather than a problem to be solved. The move to treat waste as a resource has major benefits for climate change, the environment and the economy. The plan will also need to cover in detail how the work will be delivered. The original national waste strategy was published in 1999; the current plan dates from 2003 and the new one will be finalised in 2010. Over the years, we have learned more about what needs to be done.
Now we must concentrate on delivery. That means more recycling collections, more composting plants and plastic reprocessing facilities. We all need to deliver the vision. The Government is providing leadership and we need to continue to build on existing work, do more and do it faster. I look forward to Scotland becoming a zero waste society.
I move,
That the Parliament notes Scotland's achievement of its share of the 2010 landfill diversion target 18 months early; encourages the Scottish Government to continue working with stakeholders to further improve recycling rates, increase reuse and do more on waste prevention, and looks forward to the forthcoming consultation on the new National Waste Management Plan, which will help Scotland further along the path to becoming a zero waste society.
The national waste management plan regulations that require ministers to have a waste management plan and enable them to modify it were passed on 22 March 2007. On 25 January 2008, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment made a statement to Parliament in which he announced a review of the national waste strategy of 2003. That resulted in a consultation paper on potential legislative measures to implement zero waste that was issued in July last year. Some of those measures appear in the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill, which was considered at stage 2 this week.
Some 18 months later, we have another consultation. Why has it taken so long—from 25 January 2008 until now—to get to this stage? Why could the consultation on the waste plan not have been launched shortly after the ministerial statement at the beginning of last year and why do we have to wait until February 2010 to see the new national waste management plan?
The member might recall that the previous Administration also took a few years to get its first national waste plan into place. It is quite a task and a lot of partnership working throughout Scotland is required to get the consultation document in place.
Indeed, but the Government already had in place a fairly good national waste plan to build on, so I do not know why it has taken so long this time.
I am a little disappointed that we are debating the subject without the consultation document, because we do not know what questions it asks. All that I have been able to determine about the present consultation is from a remark on the Scottish Government website, something like six layers down, which says:
"The consultation will consider amongst other things, delivery options and ask what support local authorities, organisations, businesses and householders require to deliver practical actions to meet the Zero Waste vision."
I wonder whether it might have been more useful to have this debate after we had the results of the consultation so that we could know what stakeholders are saying.
I give an assurance to the chamber that we will bring the debate back to Parliament after the consultation has closed. However, the purpose of today's debate is to hear views from across Parliament as to what should be in the consultation document.
I thank the cabinet secretary for his reassurance that we will return to the debate.
The Labour amendment notes the launch of the consultation on the waste plan, but I do not feel that I have enough information about it at the moment to welcome it. Our amendment also proposes to leave out of the Government motion that the waste management plan
"will help Scotland further along the path to becoming a zero waste society".
Although I certainly hope that it will do that, until we see more of the content it is difficult to make that judgment.
The Labour amendment refers to the revised EU waste framework, which requires to be transposed into law by 12 December next year. That must be taken into account in the new waste plan. Indeed, the minister referred in her statement to the waste hierarchy, which is crucial to the waste strategy. The waste hierarchy starts with prevention, which is followed by reuse, recycling, recovery and disposal. Prevention is the most desirable strategy and disposal—such as landfill or inefficient mass-burn incineration—is the least desirable strategy. The existing national waste plan of 2003 recognises that hierarchy, which will be essential to the new plan.
Any strategy that describes itself as zero waste—that is of course an aspiration—must deliver a significant absolute reduction in the waste that is generated. As waste prevention is the most desirable outcome, the strategy must demonstrate success in reducing the volumes of waste that are generated. What thoughts have ministers had about targets and timescales for waste reduction? Will views on that be included in the other issues for the consultation?
On Tuesday, I proposed stage 2 amendments to the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill on the basis of the situation in Flanders, which has been extremely successful in achieving a recycling level of 70 per cent—that is even better than the best Scottish councils' rates. Measures such as selective bans on incineration and landfill and waste reduction schemes have been introduced in Flanders. On Tuesday, the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change assured me that the Government has the necessary statutory powers to implement selective landfill and incineration bans. Will ministers consult on how they might use those powers?
My colleague Marlyn Glen tells me that Austria, which took early action to reduce waste to landfill and to encourage the recovery of value from waste, has developed innovative methods of waste recycling and recovery. My colleague Lewis Macdonald will elaborate on examples of international good practice in his speech.
Under the headline of waste reduction, several local authorities have introduced measures that have been extremely unpopular with householders. That is often because householders suspect—perhaps rightly—that the principal motivation is reducing costs rather than waste. For example, South Ayrshire Council has introduced charges for special uplifts, as has Dumfries and Galloway Council, which refuses to empty wheelie bins whose lids are open and which removes additional refuse only if it is in special bags that have been purchased at considerable cost from the council. I believe that Fife Council proposes to have monthly bin collections. Given that people perceive bin collection as one of the most basic services for which their council tax pays and that they tend to resist penalties for using the service, another option might be to introduce rebates for people who produce less waste.
Energy from waste sometimes has a bad press, partly because it is confused with mass-burn incineration. The revised EU directive makes the distinction clear. In January last year, the Government capped the generation of energy from domestic waste at 25 per cent of waste. However, the new waste plan needs to make the distinction between waste that could have a viable use other than as a fuel and waste that is at the end of its life cycle and would otherwise end up in landfill. Of course, the waste hierarchy prefers prevention. It would be most undesirable if energy recovery, recycling or reuse became an excuse for not controlling and reducing the amount of waste that is produced in the first place. As the hierarchy places reuse and recycling above recovery, waste materials that are capable of being reused or recycled should not be used for energy recovery if at all possible.
The minister mentioned anaerobic digestion of food and farm waste, which is one example of energy from waste that attracts widespread interest and support. Earlier this week, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs made some £10 million available for five projects that are to be built by March 2011 to demonstrate how such technology can be developed. Wasting food should be discouraged, but when food or agricultural waste is unavoidable, we can use anaerobic digestion to derive energy from the greenhouse gas, methane. Anaerobic digestion also has the benefit of being more energy efficient than mass-burn incineration. The emphasis should therefore be not on a blanket ban on energy from waste, but on applying the waste hierarchy and on using and developing technologies that capture the maximum amount of the heat that is generated.
As the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee heard when taking evidence during stage 1 consideration of the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill, waste recycling and reuse infrastructure urgently needs to be improved if we are to fulfil our obligations and if we are to ensure that commercial and industrial waste is included in the waste plan and does not simply end up in landfill.
The Audit Scotland report "Sustainable waste management", which was published in September 2007, noted the previous Administration's estimate that the former strategic waste fund would have to increase from £89 million per annum in 2005-06 to £289 million in 2019-20 to meet the landfill directive targets. It also noted that the cost of supporting residual waste treatment would have to grow to about £79 million per annum over the same period.
I will comment briefly on the other amendments. I agree with much of the content of the Conservative amendment, but I am concerned that recovery is not included in the list and that it includes the word "disposal", an option that is at the bottom of the hierarchy along with landfill and incineration. I look forward to hearing more from the Conservatives on the interpretation of their amendment.
In their amendment, the Liberal Democrats talk a lot about the issues in the Audit Scotland report. I will listen carefully to what Liberal Democrat members say about their concerns about recycling and funding.
In January last year, the cabinet secretary stated that he was introducing
"a new direction for waste policy in Scotland."
I am disappointed that we are still only at the consultation stage. That said, I am hopeful that the delay does not reflect the lack of priority that the Government gives to this important matter. I will be very interested in the results of the consultation. I was pleased to hear the cabinet secretary say that he intends to bring back the matter to the chamber. I look forward to the development of the strategy.
I move amendment S3M-4348.3, to leave out from ", and looks forward" to end and insert:
"; recognises however that the provisions of the EU-revised Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC) are required to be transposed into Scots law by 12 December 2010; notes the forthcoming consultation on the new National Waste Management Plan, and believes that the new plan must fully address the waste hierarchy of prevention, reuse, recycling, recovery and disposal, as described in the National Waste Plan 2003 and the revised EU framework directive."
I welcome the debate on the forthcoming consultation on the new national waste plan, and I too congratulate local authorities on reaching the landfill diversion target 18 months early. I commend to members the efforts of South Ayrshire Council and East Ayrshire Council in recycling and composting well in excess of 40 per cent of their municipal solid waste. Both councils are well on the way to achieving the Government target of 70 per cent by 2025.
I am aware that the early progress that has been made is equivalent to picking the low-hanging fruit and that it will be harder in future to drive the figures upwards. Scottish Conservatives believe that it is vital that we change mindsets and end our reliance on landfill. Indeed, we need to design waste out of the system and the product wherever possible, preferably at the drawing-board stage.
In thinking of the consultation, we have to look beyond municipal waste disposal and start to deal with the elephant in the room: commercial and industrial waste. We all support efforts to achieve a zero waste society, but the immediate barrier to achieving that is a lack of infrastructure. Several witnesses highlighted that fact in evidence to the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee, most notably Dirk Hazell of the Scottish Environmental Services Association, who said:
"There is nowhere near enough waste infrastructure anywhere in the United Kingdom to comply with existing European obligations … we need to accelerate our transition from a disposal to a recycling society, but to do so requires more infrastructure."—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Environment Committee, 28 January 2009; c 1361.]
I say to Elaine Murray that I identify myself with those sentiments. It will not only be a financial challenge, as John Ferguson of SEPA noted, but a challenge to our planning system. There is an urgent need for Government to encourage the public and private sectors to create more of the infrastructure that is needed if we are to reduce the amount of commercial and industrial waste that is sent to landfill. There is a real opportunity for the private sector to deliver such needed infrastructure.
I turn to another opportunity: the need for temporary storage and stockpiling of recyclates, particularly plastics, until such time as markets—the Chinese market in particular—return for those products. It makes little difference whether the storage of recyclable products is carried out by local authorities or the private sector—the indisputable fact is that many of those products represent future resources. They must not be consigned to landfill simply because of a temporary lack of demand due to the recession.
I turn to food and farm waste, which is another area in which waste products can be turned into an asset—in this case, energy. The methane that is produced by anaerobic digestion could and must be used to supplement our dwindling natural gas reserves and lessen our dependency on imports from Russia. Jeremy Purvis referred to that.
In addition, heat and energy must also be derived from other types of waste product. Why should energy from municipal waste be capped at 25 per cent? If it is a good idea and there is the safe technology to do it—I accept that such technology did not exist in the past—why pluck an arbitrary figure of 25 per cent from the air? Perhaps the cabinet secretary will explain in his summing up—or now—how the figure was arrived at, particularly given the shortage of landfill and lack of markets for recyclates.
I thank the member for the opportunity to clarify the point in an intervention. We consulted the Sustainable Development Commission and SEPA, and we held a waste summit involving Scotland's local authorities and other agencies. It was felt that the target for energy from waste was at an appropriate level. Otherwise, there is a danger that everyone in Scotland will take their eye off the ball as regards the waste hierarchy, which Elaine Murray referred to.
I thank the cabinet secretary for that explanation.
Self-evidently, a number of different types of waste processing facilities need to be created to deal with different types of waste. Given the complexities of the planning system, the sooner the process is started, the better. Using up precious landfill is no longer a sustainable or morally acceptable option. Given the strictures of the EU landfill directive, we are running out of both time and landfill capacity.
If I heard the minister correctly, I believe that she intends to reduce the volume of construction waste to landfill by 50 per cent by 2012, which would of course be welcome. Perhaps she could clarify that—I did not catch what she said.
Scottish Conservatives will support the Government motion, and I urge members also to support our amendment. I reassure Elaine Murray that Conservatives are as enthusiastic about recycling as she is—the lack of the word "recycling" in our amendment was merely an oversight, and I thank her for pointing that out.
I move amendment S3M-4348.2, to insert at end:
", and notes that, in order to meet medium and long-term targets, the issue of developing further waste infrastructure must be tackled, as a priority, to better address the management, reduction, recycling and disposal of commercial and industrial waste in Scotland."
Liberal Democrats, too, welcome the debate. It is disappointing that, 18 months since the cabinet secretary's announcement on the zero waste society, we are still awaiting publication of the new draft national waste management plan. However, I accept the cabinet secretary's comments that the debate can help to inform the shape of that plan. I hope that ministers will now ensure that the new draft is published as early as possible, and I look forward to future debates on the matter.
I was struck by the uncharacteristically downbeat tone of the Government's motion. Scotland achieving a target ahead of schedule, in this case one on landfill diversion, would normally be the cue for a triumphant welcome. On past form, one might reasonably have expected the full weight of the First Minister and his press office to be unleashed in celebration of the sheer historic significance of it all—yet we are asked simply to note the achievement. That perhaps reflects the fact that it flows from the actions that were taken under the national waste plan that was launched in 2003, following the efforts of my colleague Ross Finnie, who was then the minister responsible.
In 2001, Scotland's recycling rate stood at an anaemic 7 per cent. By 2005, it had already risen to 25 per cent and, since then, it has continued to climb steadily to more than 30 per cent. Although that rate of progress and the change in public attitudes are impressive, the Government's sombre mood might still be entirely justified in the context of international comparison, where Scotland still lags too far behind what many other countries are achieving in the reduction and management of all forms of waste, and as a reflection of the scale of the job that is still ahead of us.
All the more sobering is the fact that meeting successive future targets will become progressively more costly. For that reason, I question the wisdom of the Government's decision not only to abolish the strategic waste fund but to reduce the overall level of funds that are available to local authorities and the zero waste budget by £26 million. I acknowledge that the shortfall has since been reduced to just over £12 million, but the reduction in funding still seems a retrograde step, particularly given Audit Scotland's concerns about the achievability of the more challenging longer-term waste management targets and the scale of the investment that will be needed to meet them, which was alluded to by Elaine Murray.
It is not just me saying that; the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee, then chaired by the current Minister for Environment, expressed similar concerns in its 2007 report. The committee also drew attention to changes in the distribution of funding, which it felt could penalise certain councils, often those most in need of support. That said, I agree with the cabinet secretary's decision to suspend fines associated with the landfill allowance scheme. That stick might need to be kept in reserve, but at this stage a more supportive approach is needed—although the figures for Glasgow City Council are of particular concern.
I will touch on some of the issues relating to waste that arose during the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee's consideration of the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill, as referred to by Elaine Murray and John Scott. Considering the waste hierarchy, the need for the Government's new plan to address the requirements of the waste framework directive is clear, as Elaine Murray's amendment says. Concerns were raised by the Scottish Environmental Services Association in its evidence to the committee, not just about the wide-ranging nature of the enabling powers that are sought by ministers but about the bill's level of consistency—or lack of it—regarding EU law and definitions of recycling and recovery.
A number of witnesses stressed the importance of having better baseline data before embarking on decisions about targets and infrastructure investment. SESA pointed out that
"significantly better capture of data from waste producers and from sites exempted from waste management licences"
is needed, possibly under regulations, consistently across the United Kingdom.
Likewise, I echo the sentiments that were expressed by John Scott and which are reflected in his amendment. Commercial and industrial waste was identified to the committee as an area on which a great deal more could be done, but investment in infrastructure is key.
It is worth noting the concerns that the waste industry and local authorities raised about decisions taken on, for example, deposit-and-return schemes that could skew existing waste streams and undermine existing investment. One highlighted risk was that setting up infrastructure for a range of different waste management processes may not be the best means of tackling waste, achieving our targets and deploying inevitably scarcer public resources over the coming years.
The final amendment this afternoon, in Robin Harper's name, presents me with a little difficulty. Along with Elaine Murray—I associate myself with her comments on the distinction between the different types of waste—I agree that reduction, reuse and recycling are the optimal routes for us to follow in dealing with waste, but entirely ruling out the option of large-scale waste-to-energy plants seems impractical. In my constituency, much of our waste is still shipped north to Shetland for incineration at no little cost, and the case for building a waste-to-energy plant is increasingly gathering momentum.
I agree with Friends of the Earth and others who argue for waste-to-energy plants to be subject to tough standards on the use of the best available technology. I also welcome Friends of the Earth's calls for a greater focus to be placed on efficient technologies, such as anaerobic digestion, to which Jeremy Purvis and John Scott referred. Having seen for myself the benefits of such a process—albeit on a small scale—in Westray in my constituency, I believe that it can play more of a role in helping us to achieve our waste and emissions reduction targets. Earlier today, I joined colleagues from various political parties at a briefing from Arup, at which we heard of the role that algae can play in carbon capture. In effect, they eat carbon as emissions are passed through pipes, after which the algae are anaerobically digested, turned into fertiliser and returned to the ground.
Much of what the cabinet secretary set out in his zero waste announcement last year was welcome. The plan and, most importantly, the programme for its delivery is now needed as a matter of urgency. The Liberal Democrats welcome the debate. We are proud of our record on the issue in government. We are also proud of Mike Pringle's and Jim Hume's efforts to reduce plastic bag use and excess packaging. We look forward to engaging in future debates on the measures that are important not only for the environment but for green-collar jobs.
I move amendment S3M-4348.4, to insert after "early":
", made possible by the success of the first National Waste Plan; recognises that meeting each subsequent target will become progressively more challenging and that Audit Scotland has raised serious concerns over the ability of local authorities to meet their obligations under the 2013 landfill directive; notes with concern the decision to cut the budget for recycling and the removal of incentives for local authorities to collaborate over waste management plans".
I draw Liam McArthur's and Elaine Murray's attention to the amendment that I lodged. It reads that we believe
"that, given the good progress being made so far, there should be no necessity for any large-scale waste-to-energy plants to be built in Scotland and that reuse, reducing waste creation and recycling are the best way forward."
I am inviting the Parliament to acknowledge that if, some time in the future, we have made enough progress through recycling, reducing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and redesigning—and we may well do—we will be able to say that we will not create any more waste-to-energy plants. That, indeed, is the track that we should follow. The amendment does not call for a blanket ban, which was the frightening—to some people at least—prospect that Elaine Murray raised. Of course we would like there to be a blanket ban at some time in the future, but I invite the Parliament to take a view right now.
Here are some of the reasons. Coal and oil are both fossil fuels; we want to reduce their use, ideally to zero. Plastic is oil derived and, because of its major calorific value, would still be the major component of the fuel for any waste-to-energy plant. It is fundamentally impossible to have waste-to-energy facilities and a zero waste policy, but zero waste is an objective that the Government says it shares. My amendment simply acknowledges that steps have been taken along the path of achieving that aim—successful steps, which should negate the need to build any more large-scale incinerators in the country.
In January last year, when announcing the zero waste plans, Richard Lochhead made clear his Government's opposition to large inefficient energy-from-waste plants by stating
"Such plants could easily become white elephants"—
which John Scott mentioned. I thank John Scott for explaining what his motion means, and I assure him that I shall vote against it.
Richard Lochhead continued:
"They require excessive transportation of waste and could also crowd out recycling and waste prevention." [Official Report, 24 January 2008; c 5494.]
Excessive transportation is one aspect of large-scale incinerators and energy-from-waste plants that is fundamentally anti climate-change mitigation. However, planning applications for enormous incineration projects continue to be lodged and granted by councils throughout Scotland. I fear that the Government's perception of what constitutes large-scale incineration might differ somewhat from ours.
East Lothian Council is considering a planning application for an incinerator to deal with 300,000 tonnes of waste every year. Last month, North Lanarkshire Council granted planning permission for a plant that will incinerate a further 300,000 tonnes of waste every year. I wonder what the Government's response would be to the residents of Perth, who, while still fighting the development at Binn Farm, now face the threat of another incinerator being granted permission in the area.
Be in no doubt: energy from burning waste is not renewable energy and the Green position is that incineration has no place in a zero waste society. Continued reliance on that technology, even if capped at 25 per cent—which in our opinion is still too high—will discourage the advancement of other cleaner, greener and more efficient technologies. Incinerators on the scale that the Scottish National Party appears to support tie local authorities into providing a guaranteed waste stream for the long term—up to 25 years—which puts pressure on them not to reduce waste in their area by other means.
Incineration of waste is a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, short-term approach—in effect, it is landfill in the sky. It is a cop-out, and we all know that we can do better.
The fact is that, given the progress that we are already making in waste prevention, reuse and recycling, there should be no need for any of the wholly unwelcome incinerators that are currently proposed by many local authorities. Waste is not the hardest environmental issue to resolve. To allow us to burn up to a quarter of it, as the SNP seems to suggest, is a failure of the imagination.
I shall reserve the rest of my remarks for my summing-up speech.
I move amendment S3M-4348.1, to insert at end:
", and believes that, given the good progress being made so far, there should be no necessity for any large-scale waste-to-energy plants to be built in Scotland and that reuse, reducing waste creation and recycling are the best way forward."
Before we move to the open debate, I remind members that speeches should be a tight four minutes long.
I want to home in on the issues surrounding how each local authority area reduces the amount that we put out as waste and how they deal with each part of that.
In the case of Highland Council, I have to question whether there is any kind of strategy in place for the council to do that job. It is of long-standing concern to me that officers in councils like to find big solutions to solve problems. One incinerator can deal with an awful lot of problems, but it creates large problems, too. Unfortunately, we are completely unclear what the strategy of the Liberal-led Highland Council is.
To illuminate that further, I will provide an example. Since 2000, the Golspie Recycling and Environmental Action Network has ensured that it has had the highest level of collection and recycling of waste from kerbsides of anywhere in Scotland. That has been supported by several tranches of the council. The network offers recycling to 75 per cent of east and central Sutherland residents and has achieved an 82 per cent participation rate. It provides 17 full-time jobs and two part-time jobs, some of which have gone to people who would find it hard to get employment otherwise. It brings in £400,000 to the local economy every year, which, for 2,500 people, is very important. It extends its work so that the range of items that it recycles is greater than the range of items that the council collects at present. It can offer a similar collection service for businesses.
We must ask whether, if the proposed incinerator at Invergordon, some 20 miles from Golspie, is built, Highland Council will immediately cancel its arrangement with GREAN, because a stream of waste will be needed to fill the incinerator. We must ensure that councils, including the one in whose area I live, do not replace best practice with a far worse option. Councils need to consider what voluntary bodies and social enterprises can do that councils have not been able to achieve. Such thinking is fundamental to our ability to take forward a low or zero waste strategy.
If 25 per cent of waste in Scotland is to be dealt with in modern incinerators—the idea has the support in principle of the Sustainable Development Commission Scotland—where should those incinerators be? There are proposals to build incinerators in Peterhead, Invergordon, Dunbar, Irvine, Glenfarg, Elgin and Dumfries. What is the strategy behind the proposals? Have those towns gone for the idea because it seems to be a commercial possibility?
As the consultation on the national waste management plan is developed during the summer, we must ask questions that enable us to ensure that recycling and reuse groups such as GREAN, and not incinerators, are the top priority.
It is gratifying that Scotland has achieved its 2010 landfill diversion target 18 months early. I represented the ward in Glasgow that receives the bulk of Glasgow's waste for recycling, and I was very aware of the impact of extensive landfill on my constituents. We do not want such an approach to continue elsewhere in Scotland, and we have a strong vested interest in making more progress.
There is an unresolved issue to do with finance. Exhibit 10 in the Audit Scotland report, "Sustainable Waste Management", showed clearly that levels of public participation in recycling vary by council area. The variations do not seem to be reducing. That is partly to do with socioeconomic circumstances—participation levels are lower in Dundee, Glasgow and West Dunbartonshire—but it is also to do with housing types. In areas that have tenement and shared housing, there are fewer kerbside collections and it is more difficult for authorities to improve recycling rates than it is in areas where the houses have front and back doors.
The problem is that, under the previous national waste strategy, funding was handed to the authorities that were most willing to pledge to make significant improvements. The authorities that got resources were the ones that could make the most rapid progress—the areas that have houses with front and back doors and that do not face the problems that Dundee, Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire and Inverclyde face.
The shift in funding arrangements from a targeted, application-based system to a formula-based system has left the authorities that face the biggest problems in a difficult position. They did not have funding to take the necessary steps in the first place, and now they are stuck with a formula that does not meet their requirements. I have raised the issue a number of times with the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, but I am not sure that he understands the mechanism that has left authorities in the adverse situation that I described.
The issue is not just the authorities' problem; it is Scotland's problem. Authorities cannot choose to put more money into waste because that would deprive of money other vital services, such as education and social work, which also face problems. We need the Scottish Government to realise that authorities have different starting points and different problems and to put in place financial arrangements that can address the situation.
Does the member at least recognise that the formula for funding through the local government block grant and the zero waste fund that is allocated to local authorities was agreed with local authorities? Surely those authorities that felt that it was a huge problem would not have agreed to that method of allocation.
The minister will find that all authorities are dissatisfied with aspects of the funding formula. My point relates to its practical application.
The Audit Scotland report highlighted that there was significant low-hanging fruit—things that could be done relatively quickly—but that increased resources would have to be invested in order to achieve the targets. It is not a question of keeping the funding at the same level: increased funding needs to be put in. Among the measures to achieve zero waste that were identified in the responses to the consultation document, the Government seems to have taken action on those that have the potential to deliver the least and to be unwilling to take action on those that have the potential to deliver the most. Ministers must look again at what they do and establish whether they can address some of the real problems that exist.
I have a couple of comments before I come to the main content of my speech. First, I am sure that all of us who visit schools have been heartened by the enthusiasm and interest that primary and secondary pupils display for this hugely important topic. They are way ahead of where our generation was at that age, which is great cause for hope for the future.
Secondly, it occurred to me during the minister's speech that encouraging composting—it is right and proper that we should do that—goes hand in hand with gardening and the provision of allotments. It is a notion that perhaps cuts across departments. Will the minister consider co-ordinating with those departments that take an interest in horticulture and allotments?
I echo what Rob Gibson said about Golspie Recycling and Environmental Action Network. Like Rob Gibson, and indeed Robin Harper, I have visited GREAN many times. We know what goes on there. Rob Gibson quoted some of the statistics. Here is another one, which, when we think about it, is quite extraordinary. GREAN recycles 0.02 per cent—that is one fiftieth of 1 per cent—of all the plastic that is recycled in the United Kingdom. That is a staggering amount. Further, GREAN provides 17 full-time jobs and two part-time jobs. It has enormous support in the community. Fergus Morrison, the manager of GREAN, told me that it is becoming something of a tourist attraction. That may be rather a strange thought, but it is true that people come to Golspie and take a genuine interest in what is being delivered by Fergus Morrison and his dedicated team.
Fergus Morrison asked me to mention two points that he felt were pertinent to the operation of GREAN. I mention them because what is happening at the sharp end, with real people, really recycling, is important. First, he found that the reduction in ring fencing of council money—whatever the rights and wrongs of it—had made difficulties come GREAN's way. GREAN has had to get into a much more tortuous negotiation with Highland Council. Negotiations have spanned the previous and present administrations of Highland Council. At the same time, Fergus Morrison asked me to give the councillors of Highland Council a pat on the back for what is being achieved. I hope that the minister finds the time in her diary to come up north to my constituency to visit GREAN, because she would be very heartened by what is happening there. There is a model there that could be replicated—I might say, to tempt the minister, that that could be done at fairly minimal cost because it cleverly assures additionality. The minister would be more than welcome.
The debate about waste to power is important. It is a real shame that Dave Thompson is not here, because before he was an MSP he was a director of protective services at Highland Council. When I was a Highland councillor, I can remember going to presentations—of which Dave Thompson was a part—about why waste to power was a good idea. It is right and proper that we have a debate—perhaps at the Government's hand—about the issue. It is important; as Rob Gibson has pointed out, it divides communities.
Does the member agree that an incinerator is not a good idea for the Invergordon area?
I am saying that waste to power was being sold to Highland Council by highly qualified officials, such as Dave Thompson, more than 10 years ago. There were strong arguments in favour of it. I think that it is time to revisit those arguments, and I think that Dave Thompson's contribution would be crucial. I hope that he will join us the next time that we have a debate of this nature.
The cabinet secretary will recall that, on 7 May, I asked him how much of a role energy from waste would play in reducing the amount of waste that is sent to landfill. He said, as Roseanna Cunningham repeated today, that he would cap that contribution at 25 per cent of municipal solid waste. However, he also agreed to consider support for district heating schemes as part of any future proposals for energy from waste. I welcome that as a step in the right direction, although I was concerned that Roseanna Cunningham left any mention of energy to the very end of her opening remarks.
My question to Richard Lochhead was prompted by my visit to Denmark and Sweden as a member of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee as part of our inquiry into Scotland's energy future. While we were there, we visited a number of different generating stations—biofuel and coal-burning facilities, offshore wind farms and an energy-from-waste plant at Nordforbrændingen, near Copenhagen. The important point about that plant is that it combusts large quantities of waste as the fuel supply for the local district heating system. It serves one of the most prosperous and articulate communities in the country, it is located at the heart of that community and it appears to be entirely accepted by local residents in a country in which environmental impacts have been taken seriously for many years. It is not an incinerator in the traditional sense of a plant that burns municipal solid waste in order to dispose of it, nor is it a power station in the traditional sense of a plant that is designed simply to produce electricity and in which more energy escapes to the atmosphere than is put to good use. Instead, it produces combined heat and power, making use of 90 per cent or more of the available energy. In doing so, it reduces inefficiency, limits carbon emissions and saves the customer money.
The Danish experience requires us to be extremely careful about ruling out waste that is a potential source of energy in the future, as does the experience of countries such as Austria, whose innovations in waste management were showcased in Edinburgh yesterday and presented to today's meeting of the cross-party group on waste management. Austria, with a population of 8 million, has more energy-from-waste plants than not only Scotland but the whole of the UK. Denmark has a network of 29 plants that serve all the major centres of population as part of a nationwide network of district heating schemes that supply the majority of Danish homes. It is those models that should inform the debate about waste in the context of climate change in Scotland and elsewhere.
Closer to home, there is a good example of combined heat and power generation in the Aberdeen CHP schemes that serve high-rise housing at Seaton and Stockethill in my constituency. In this week's meeting of the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee, which was considering the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill at stage 2, I argued for the business rates burden on CHPs to be reduced so that other parts of Scotland could follow Aberdeen's good example. If Scotland does indeed choose to develop district heating and CHPs, we need ministers to send out positive signals in support of such schemes by strengthening rather than diminishing the profile of energy-from-waste schemes in the waste hierarchy and by joining up waste policy with policies on energy and climate change.
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers produced a report on the subject last year, in which it argued that waste needs to be seen as a resource to be used, not just as a problem to be solved. It is, of course, both those things and, for many waste products, reuse or recycling offers clearly the best opportunities for using them as a resource.
For waste streams that do not offer those options, recovery of energy should be recognised as a far better outcome than disposal to landfill. That recovery may be by anaerobic digestion, gasification, pyrolysis or combustion, as long as it meets the highest air quality standards, and makes the most efficient use of the energy recovered. The waste hierarchy makes that approach explicit. There is broad support for that, and for low-carbon generation of electricity. The challenge is to join up those policy areas and to miss no opportunities for a low-carbon future for succeeding generations.
Forty-five years ago at the University of Edinburgh, I took as a special subject urban life and growth in Victorian Britain—otherwise known as "Geoffrey Best's drains"—so there is little about waste that I do not know, and the fouler, the better.
Untreated waste kills. Glasgow had a good sewage system because the city is inland, and if inland cities did not look to their sewage, it got mixed up in the water supply and people died in various unpleasant ways. Of course, Glasgow has used various abusive terms to refer to Edinburgh, and at the time of the Edinburgh festival in 1947, a Glaswegian voice was heard to declare, "What Edinburgh spends on powdering her nose, she saves by not wiping her bottom." Even in 1966, Edinburgh was still pumping her stuff right out into the Forth. The notion of being killed in a fortnight has a marvellously concentrating effect on people's decisions.
We now face the carbon bill for our own future. Longannet power station produces 15.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, and we only burn 5 million tonnes of coal a year there and at Cockenzie. Longannet is only 36 per cent efficient. That is just one of the burdens that the younger generation will face. From time to time, that makes me moan and say, "At least I won't be around when they have to face it." That is a rather depressing position in which to start.
The situation is partly our own fault. My local town, Galashiels, is a typical enough post-industrial town. It used to weave tweed and knit sweaters, which meant fulfilled sheep, happy farmers, skilled workers, a rich local culture, and crates of sweaters waiting to leave Gala station bound for aa the airts. Now, we have Tesco, Asda, and Marks and Sparks at one end of the town and, on the site of various tweed mills at the other end, a charnel house of scrapped cars piled in rows three or four high. They are unlikely to move from there because there is no longer a Scottish steel industry to recycle them.
Numerical targets will bring results. The SNP Government has certainly been more proactive than its predecessor was in tightening and meeting waste reduction targets and reducing the amount of biodegradable waste that goes to landfill. That is useful, but we must start with individuals, families and communities. I will give some examples.
First, we should eat what we need and no more. Joanna Blythman of the Sunday Herald, in that great book "Shopped", reckons that we throw away 45 per cent of the food that we buy. There are too many two-for-the-price-of-one offers, which are part of a strategy to extort the maximum spend from the car-borne shopper, and too many just-in-time foods, which are too boring to eat. Bottled water, which was unknown 20 years ago, is now a huge, presumably profitable and utterly useless industry.
When the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee visited Denmark's ministries and power stations—Lewis Macdonald was there—I was struck that we were never invited to use the lifts in the buildings. We were instructed by powerfully built, energetic young scientists who would leap up the stairs two at a time.
My second point is that we should avoid polluting technology. We dispose of batteries all over the place without any notion of where they are going. On the continent, batteries are usually classified as dangerous rubbish and destroyed in special ways.
Thirdly, we have massive amounts of giveaway literature, from the forgettable Metro to all the gorgeous brochures from libraries and universities that drop into our wastebaskets. Waste that is not created does not need to be recycled.
I end with another Scottish city joke, which comes from a German diary. A notice in an Aberdeen hotel bedroom stated: "If there is anything missing, please phone the proprietor and he will show you how you can do without it."
Thank you and good day.
In a truly green economy, waste should be designed out of the system. Products should be made to be easily reused and recycled and resources should be used as efficiently as possible. In a green economy, community recycling and reuse projects would be expanded, which would create local jobs in recycling and refurbishing projects and give communities better access to resources that would otherwise be wasted.
I, too, express my admiration for GREAN, which Rob Gibson and Jamie Stone mentioned; I also express my admiration for the similar project in Campbeltown and others throughout the country. They deserve the Government's full support, as do little companies such as Hopscotch Theatre Company, which tours schools in Scotland, particularly eco-schools, to talk about rubbish. I was invited to talk rubbish with it on Monday at Dean Park primary school.
In a green economy, reuse should be given the prominence that it deserves, for in a zero waste society reuse is far more important than recycling. Reuse cannot be easily measured and it is often not valued as highly as it should be. When I was a student, we reused milk bottles and got tuppence deposit when we took our beer bottles back. We did that for 20 years after 1945. We have done it before, so we can do it again.
Reuse is vital in the development of community businesses, as it encourages refurbishing skills and creates jobs. I am delighted that the attempts by the Conservatives to remove from the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill provisions on regulations relating to deposit and return schemes and those by Labour to remove provisions on regulations dealing with charges for carrier bags failed in committee last Tuesday. Will the minister confirm that the Government will use those provisions to introduce regulations? Can she, for example, give me a timescale in which that will happen? How does the Government envisage that the relevant sections, and the others that deal with waste, will work with the new national waste management plan?
The Green party believes that those measures will have an important role to play in helping Scotland to achieve its zero waste ambition. Let me be absolutely clear: my amendment welcomes the work that the Government has done on recycling and waste reduction, but it is not an endorsement of its policy on incinerators; instead, it is designed to allow the Parliament to press the Government to think extremely carefully about the policy on incinerators in the waste management plan as it is redeveloped.
I turn to points that other members have made. Instead of using the term "waste to energy", we should say, "resources to energy". We should start to think of what we call waste as resources. We should consider rolling out not a waste management plan, but a resource action plan. We need to change the language. The more we talk about waste, the more we are prepared—on certain occasions, at least—simply to waste what we are talking about. If we use the term "resource" all the time, we will think about the issue differently.
Does Robin Harper accept that we need to be careful, because the plant in Fife that burns chicken dung is generally thought to be a good thing—as is the plant in Wick that burns wood to create power for houses for people in the poverty trap—but waste to power is not? We must be tidy in our logic.
That is precisely the point that I was going to wind up with. The content of waste that goes to energy-from-waste plants will have a large proportion of plastic in it. Plastic is not a renewable. It is oil derived and it is an extremely valuable resource. More than four years ago, it was worked out that if we were to take a tonne of average municipal waste and burn off the fraction that can be burned—I used these figures in a speech that I made to the Royal Society in November 2004—that would give us £26-worth of electricity. It would probably provide us with about £70-worth of heat, if we tapped into that, but that is not being done in Scotland and, as far as I know, there are no plans to do it in any of the plants that are being rolled out. There is no case for waste-to-energy plants that simply create electricity, because £600-worth of recycled goods could be created from that tonne of waste instead of £26-worth of electricity.
The Liberal Democrats have long been associated with very good green credentials and my colleague Liam McArthur was quite right to highlight that Scotland improved its recycling rate from 7 to 25 per cent between 2001 and 2006, under the stewardship of a Liberal Democrat minister. By anyone's standards, that was a good basis for progress. I am pleased that we are progressing with the landfill diversion targets, which have been mentioned during the debate, but I am not complacent.
The importance of waste management cannot be overestimated. It is clear that we need to reuse, reduce and recycle, and I believe that our culture is making strides towards that. However, there is no room for complacency.
Exactly to the day, a year has passed since my members' debate on excess packaging. The Government fully supported the motion. Indeed, in his summing up, the now removed Minister for Environment, Mike Russell, said that:
"We must take action",
and he added:
"Binding packaging reduction targets could be a way forward."——[Official Report, 11 June 2008; c 9586.]
Twelve months on, we have yet to see such reductions.
However, excess packaging is not the only issue that we still have to address. When he sums up, I hope that the cabinet secretary will confirm that, by 2020, growth in municipal waste will be at, or below, 0 per cent. That was the claim made by the cabinet secretary in a statement in January 2008, which Elaine Murray mentioned. Will the cabinet secretary also shed light on what his department is doing to create business and enterprise from recycling? Having tangible evidence of what is being done to create green jobs, particularly in the current recession, would be a good indicator of the Government's focus and its commitment to the issue.
Des McNulty mentioned a Labour-led council that is the worst local authority in Scotland for its recycling of municipal waste. However, I am sure that the council will be addressing that point as I speak.
The Liberal Democrat amendment highlights key areas and timings that should concern this Government. I sat on the Audit Committee when Audit Scotland's report on sustainable waste management was published. There is a serious risk, if we do not meet our 2013 targets, that we will suffer EU fines. The Audit Scotland report highlighted clearly that the risk was high and that the 2013 target would be the most difficult to meet. That view was shared by three quarters of our councils. Of course, there is ambiguity over who would pay the fines—the United Kingdom Government, the Scottish Government, or local government—but I fear that the buck will be passed down the chain. Local authorities will end up paying, and therefore local people will end up paying.
The Government has been well warned that it must stay focused on the target; it must not keep on taking sums like £26 million out of its own waste budget while advocating a zero waste Scotland.
Elaine Murray and Lewis Macdonald mentioned the Austrian delegation and yesterday's working lunch, which was organised by Marlyn Glen. Robin Harper and I were there, too. We can, of course, learn from other EU member states that are far in advance of where we are.
Audit Scotland reckoned that we would need to treble our spending on recycling in the lead-up to 2020. Increased recycling rates lead to increased costs per tonne on waste. John Scott said that the low-hanging fruit was the easiest to fetch, and Audit Scotland put some figures on such ideas. It reckoned that there would be a cost of £120 per tonne to recycle at a rate of 30 per cent, but £217 per tonne for a rate of 40 per cent. The previous Liberal Democrat Administration recognised that the strategic waste fund budget would have to treble between 2007 and 2020. That is a serious matter and I fear that the Government may not be allocating enough resources to it.
Audit Scotland also thought that it was difficult to see how the Government could meet its own targets and the EU legislation targets if we did not invest more. I hope that the Government is content that local authorities will have the resources to meet the impending targets in 2013 for landfill reduction and recycling. If ministers want recycling rates to be increased and waste levels to be reduced, it is vital that local authorities have adequate funding to do that.
The Liberal Democrats, of course, have very good green credentials. As I said, we quadrupled recycling rates in five years in government. We also introduced bills on carrier bags, and there was my motion on excess packaging, which Liam McArthur mentioned. We remain committed to a Scotland that is economically sustainable; tackling economic growth without ensuring sustainability would lead to that growth declining. The two ideas go hand in hand.
The debate has highlighted concerns over the incineration of waste. Dunbar in East Lothian, in my own patch, has been mentioned by many members. We must consider the opportunities that anaerobic digestion can offer.
I was a little disappointed to hear Christopher Harvie criticising Galashiels and pointing out the negative parts of it. We must remember that Borders College leads the world in textiles expertise. I will not mention the hypocrisy of Christopher Harvie criticising bottled water when he had a bottle of water right in front of him.
I welcome any advance in Scotland's green credentials, but as I said, we cannot be complacent. The Government has real challenges to face if we are to meet our 2013 European targets, which have been set under the landfill directive. I therefore welcome our Liberal Democrat amendment, which highlights the challenges that we face and should send a clear message to the Government to stop cutting budgets to address waste management.
This has been a useful debate that should have given the Government some pointers to inform the consultation on its new national waste management plan. We look forward to debating the outcome of that in due course.
As councils have struggled to cope with growing mountains of waste in our throwaway society and landfill sites have become increasingly scarce, Government has, over a number of years, had to face up to the need for a national strategy to reduce waste by reducing the unnecessary use of raw materials; by reusing products when possible; and by recovering value from products at the end of their usefulness through recycling, composting or energy recovery.
Our concern is that the Conservative amendment talks only about recycling, reduction and disposal and does not refer to reuse and recovery, which seem to be left out of the intention of an otherwise agreeable amendment.
As John Scott said, that is an inadvertent omission. In fact, we include all those things implicitly.
Scotland has done well to achieve its share of the 2010 landfill diversion target 18 months early, which should be acknowledged. However, there are still some councils that are nowhere near recycling or composting 40 per cent of their municipal waste. The figure for Aberdeen City Council and Shetland Islands Council is around 23 per cent, and the figure for Glasgow City Council is even less than that. Efforts must be stepped up if the worthy aspiration of Scotland becoming a zero waste society is to be achieved in the long term and if we are to reach the targets of recycling and composting 70 per cent of household waste and reducing to 5 per cent by 2025 the amount of household waste that is sent to landfill.
The issue has been brought into sharp focus during consideration of the waste measures that are proposed in the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill, which aim to reduce waste and improve recycling as part of the action that is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. As we have heard, witnesses who gave evidence during the stage 1 consideration of the bill highlighted two key areas of concern that must be tackled. The first is the lack of infrastructure that would allow a more rapid transition from disposal to recycling. The second is the urgent need to focus on reducing the amount of commercial and industrial waste that goes to landfill.
It is particularly concerning that, in the two years between 2004 and 2006, construction and demolition waste increased by 61 per cent according to surveys that were carried out by SEPA. I was pleased to hear the minister say this afternoon that there is a determination to reduce that waste significantly by 2012. I wonder whether more encouragement should be given to social enterprises such as Wood Recyclability in Aberdeenshire, which is well known to some members, and the Wood Works in Edinburgh, which does an excellent job of reusing and recycling waste wood from demolished buildings and the like.
In recent years, most of the focus has been on household waste, and relatively little has been done by councils to encourage businesses to divert their waste from landfill. However, the current infrastructure is insufficient even for municipal waste, and council officials in various parts of the country consider the long-term recycling targets that have been set to be unrealistic and impossible to achieve without thermal treatment of waste. Therefore, although we will support Robin Harper's amendment—we hope that he is right in his assertion that there may be no need for large incineration plants in the future—I think it right to flag up the concerns that are being expressed.
The Government's recently announced proposals to reduce the amount of packaging that is produced are welcome. It is clear from the briefing that was sent to us by the Scottish Retail Consortium that there is a commitment from the retail sector to co-operate with the Government to find ways of reducing packaging, encouraging recycling and educating consumers to understand food date labelling in an effort to reduce food waste, which is currently a massive problem, as Christopher Harvie described. The SRC makes the point that facilities are needed that are capable of handling mixed plastics and that functioning markets need to be established to drive an increase in recycling rates. Therefore, John Scott's suggestion that temporary storage should be sought for recyclates—especially plastic—until the market for that product returns is a good one, which I feel should be followed up.
Does Nanette Milne recognise that her comments about the Conservatives' support for Robin Harper's amendment appear to contradict the positive comments that John Scott made about the recovery of energy from waste and add to Labour members' concerns about the meaning and content of the Conservative amendment?
I do not understand my remarks to mean what the member interprets them to mean.
I have a bee in my bonnet about the packaging of children's toys. Not only does it seem to use an inordinate amount of plastic material, it often requires ingenuity and brute force to get into it. That takes away from children the excitement that my generation derived from opening presents, because nowadays adult assistance is usually required. I hope that pressure will be put on toy manufacturers to simplify the packaging of their products, and I look forward to the day when they do that.
We look forward to the forthcoming consultation on the new national waste management plan, and we welcome the Government's intention to work with stakeholders in pursuit of a zero waste strategy. However, we feel strongly that a clear focus on commercial and industrial waste management is needed, as it is currently not given enough attention, and that the fundamental issue of infrastructure must be tackled if any of the targets are to be achieved in the medium to long term. To that end, I hope that our amendment will be supported at decision time; we will support the Labour amendment.
Elaine Murray was right to say that we were hoping that the Government would have made further progress along the tracks, given the statement that was made in January 2008, but we have had a good discussion on the issue today. If we go through the discipline of thinking through the waste hierarchy, a good pointer for the consultation is that every level of the hierarchy needs to be fleshed out in detail through the questions that are asked on the strategy when it is produced by the Government.
It is clear, from listening to colleagues on all sides of the chamber, that there are some fundamental choices to be made and questions to be asked, regardless of how the vote goes tonight. I have the sense that it will be one of our scrappier votes, in which members—although they might agree with other members' speeches—try to work out what is meant by the wording of each amendment. We should not regard today's vote as the final point of the debate, because the nature of the issue means that the words are important when we are considering the waste issue.
Roseanna Cunningham made some good points about the importance of waste prevention. Although prevention will not soak up the most money, changing attitudes and culture and how we view waste and resources must be a fundamental part of any national waste strategy. Her comments about providing advice to businesses and the importance of home composting were crucial.
Chris Harvie made some fundamental points about food waste. In a time of recession, we must communicate those ideas to people in a way that does not put them off but which rewards them and makes them think that they are doing the right thing by not throwing food away and not buying too much food in the first place. There are lessons for some of the retailers in relation to buy-one-get-one-free offers; they are great for tinned food, but not so useful for strawberries, because unless you have a big family or are having a party, they will not all be eaten and will go in the bin. A dialogue needs to take place on that issue, but it is not the most expensive part of the equation—it is about how we think it through.
Many members mentioned eco-schools, with which I absolutely agree. I was at High School Yards nursery's green flag celebration this week, but getting from the nursery level right through to the senior years in secondary school will involve changing our whole culture. We need to give political support and leadership to that initiative. Prevention must come first.
I am disappointed that there has been little talk today about reuse, which is the second level of the hierarchy. It is a difficult issue because, as Nanette Milne said, many small local groups that are involved with it have lost out through the change in funding arrangements for local authorities. When the money was ring fenced, local authorities had a degree of certainty and they felt that they could give some of their money to somebody else. Now that the money is buried in the big budgets and not ring fenced, it is much harder to see where it will come from. Local authorities always fund their own projects first, particularly when they do not have enough money in the first place. There are some real problems. I would like reuse to be given much greater prominence when the report is put out for consultation.
Many colleagues have talked about recycling and the key funding problems. Elaine Murray made the point, which was repeated by Des McNulty, that the Audit Scotland report stated that funding for recycling needed to rise from £89 million to £289 million. That is a huge gap, which needs to be addressed.
I also suggest to the minister that the strategic approach that was taken during the eight years of the previous Executive had its benefits. After all, not every local authority can do exactly the same thing and the strategic waste fund was designed to allow authorities not only to do what suited them best but to negotiate and work with one another. Moving from a strategic to a local approach without ring fencing any money is almost the worst of both worlds for local authorities, which do not have enough money and find it difficult to co-operate with one another. Moreover, waste is not at the top of every authority's priority list; schools and transport have much more importance and, without ring fencing, local authorities will find it hard to do anything about the issue.
In an intelligent speech, Liam McArthur focused on funding, and I would like the cabinet secretary to address that issue in his winding-up speech. Hardly anyone in the chamber thinks that the funding system is working in local authorities; indeed, it is the number 1 issue for authorities at the moment. If, as we all think, they have done only the easy bit with recycling, they will need funding to tackle the hard bit.
Quite a few members mentioned new ways of tackling the waste that it is difficult to deal with. In that respect, we need to rethink what we do with that waste and, although we agree with the sentiment behind Robin Harper's opening and closing speeches, we have a fundamental problem with the comment in his motion that
"there should be no necessity for any large-scale waste-to-energy plants".
What would that mean in practice? The issue certainly needs to be considered when the Government's next strategy is published. We do not want to rule out the potential of waste-to-energy plants and in any case what constitutes a large waste-to-energy plant is surely a moot point. In what communities would it be appropriate or indeed totally inappropriate to build such a plant? We need to find the best available environmental option, which not only is a matter of funding but involves the consideration of issues such as supply chains, traffic on the roads and the provision of heat to local communities. Such factors cannot be ruled out by that part of Mr Harper's motion.
Will the member give way?
No—I have only about four seconds left.
Des McNulty's comments about ring fencing and the funding problems that are faced by local authorities are crucial and, as I have said, I hope that the cabinet secretary will focus on such issues in his closing speech. However, not only is there a lack of funding, there is also uncertainty. People simply do not understand what the cabinet secretary really meant in the statement that he made last year.
The debate has been good in flushing out what some of us think about this issue and in highlighting areas where there might be political consensus. Although it would be good for us to reach some consensus, the wording and detail of the consultation will be crucial. We all have to sharpen up our act, think through the measures that we will support and use the consultation to frame our views on this matter.
In summary, we want the cabinet secretary to say more about waste-to-energy plants and funding in his winding-up speech. If we do not think through those two crucial elements of the equation and get them right, we will not solve the zero waste problem which, after all, is about trying to reduce the waste going into the system and using what is left much more intelligently.
Finally, one issue that has not been mentioned this afternoon and which must be covered in the consultation is procurement which, for example, covers the product design issues that Roseanna Cunningham rightly highlighted in her speech. Developers need to think more intelligently about the design of products and their packaging; indeed, this week, Hilary Benn made an important announcement about packaging in the UK.
Procurement also comes into service design. For example, it might mean ensuring that more recycled material is used in any roads that are procured and that certain buildings are recycled and reused properly instead of simply being knocked down. The issue of procurement design is fundamental, but no member has mentioned it.
The debate has been a good run round the houses, but it is absolutely not the last word on this subject. Like other colleagues, I am very much looking forward to the consultation, and it would be good if the minister could publish it next month.
I, too, agree that the debate has been constructive and that some helpful speeches have been made, with not too many recycled or reused ones, at least not from my party's members. As I outlined in an intervention during the opening speech from the Labour Party, the reason for having the debate was to listen to the Parliament. In a few weeks, we will publish the consultation on the next national waste plan. Before we do so, we will genuinely take on board many of the comments that we have heard today. I give an assurance to Parliament that, when the consultation closes, we will bring the issue back to the Parliament for debate before we publish the final plan. One question that has been asked is why now. Labour members have talked about a delay in producing the plan. The Labour amendment, which we will support, refers to the European waste framework directive, which came into force only in December 2008. We had to wait to find out what that was about before we could produce our consultation document, to ensure that it takes into account the EU perspective.
We should congratulate the Parliament on the fact that, since its establishment in 1999, it has taken recycling in Scotland from about 5 per cent to about 33.5 per cent today. That is a massive increase and a vindication of the setting up of the Scottish Parliament, which has allowed us to look after our environment. The EU has also played a role. It is not good at everything, but it is good at working with member states and with Scotland on environmental policy. We hope that it will work with us to take Scotland down the road towards being a zero waste society.
Most members have acknowledged that we have made good progress. We have reached the 2010 landfill target 18 months early and waste growth in Scotland is now stabilising, which is a massive step forward, given that we all believe that the key is prevention and not producing waste in the first place. We are making progress on recycling, too. [Interruption.]
I know that members want to go home, but it would be nice to listen to the minister—at least it would be polite.
I agree, Presiding Officer.
There have been many firsts in the past two years. The capital grants scheme for recycling plastics in Scotland is under way. None of us wants our plastics to go to recycling centres and then to be shipped to China; we want to keep it in Scotland and deal with it on our doorstep. We have made progress on carrier bags. More people in Scotland are using bags for life than ever before and we have engaged retailers on that, too. Many members have referred to the waste provisions in the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill and the relationship between waste in Scotland and reducing Scotland's emissions. Liam McArthur and others referred to the need for better data. One provision in that bill will ensure that we get better data from the commercial sector.
In the past few months, the first reverse vending machines have been put in place in supermarkets in Scotland. We also have the love food, hate waste campaign, which reminds us that 17 per cent of the average household bin is made up of food waste. About 0.5 million tonnes of food goes in the bin each year, which costs each household on average £400. We also have the food grants, which help companies, particularly in the food and drink sector, to reduce food waste. There are a range of other activities.
We agree with Lewis Macdonald that we must build our zero waste concept into all our policies. We are doing that across the board, from our policies on climate change to those on energy and food. [Interruption.]
Order. Could members who have just come into the chamber please be quiet?
Thank you, Presiding Officer.
All members agree that the only way in which we will make progress is through partnership between the Scottish Government, local government, individual households, the private and public sectors and others. The Scottish Government is showing leadership. The consultation on "Making the most of packaging: A strategy for a low-carbon economy", which was launched this week, is not only the responsibility of Hilary Benn, as it is a joint consultation by the Scottish and UK Governments. We recognise that 800,000 tonnes of waste in the waste stream in Scotland comes from packaging. This week, the Scottish Government has signed a commitment to halve the amount of construction waste that goes to landfill from Scottish Government projects by 2012.
We need the public's support, and they are showing an appetite for making progress on the agenda. There is a range of evidence of that, including the figures on participation by households in recycling. As many members have said, community organisations are important, too. I tell Jamie Stone that I have visited GREAN in Golspie and that I was impressed by its good work. The community sector in Scotland has a big role. The Scottish Government has a funding stream to support community organisations. There is increased funding of £7.5 million, over £5 million of which has already been committed to community organisations the length and breadth of Scotland. Rob Gibson, too, highlighted the importance of the community sector.
On the private sector, Scotland's retailers are on board through their waste policies. That is important, particularly in relation to issues such as packaging. Last week, I visited the Coca-Cola Enterprises factory in East Kilbride for the launch of its new waste strategy, through which it aims to stop sending waste to landfill by the end of 2011. A recycling rate for factory waste of 93 per cent has already been achieved.
On the same day, I attended the launch at Our Dynamic Earth of the Scotch whisky industry's environmental strategy. As one of Scotland's biggest economic sectors, the industry has agreed to match the Scottish Government's climate change target of reducing its emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. In addition, the industry aims significantly to reduce the average weight of packaging and to eliminate the sending of waste from packaging operations to landfill sites.
Order. I again ask members who have just entered the chamber—and, indeed, those who have been here for a while—to be quiet, please.
The private sector, like the household sector, now recognises that tackling waste is a good way of cutting costs. It makes good business sense as well as environmental sense.
Of course, we need the support of our local authorities, which many members congratulated on making so much progress. Eight local authorities in Scotland have already broken the 40 per cent target for recycling. Those authorities are leading the way and are showing the rest of our councils that headway can be made. Local authorities are engaged in many new initiatives, including all sorts of kerbside trials and fortnightly collections. Some authorities are talking about moving to monthly collections and some, such as Glasgow City Council, are setting up recycling zones in our high streets. Of course, the Government is committed to ensuring that recycling zones are available for the public when they are out and about. The provision of such zones in every high street in every town and city in Scotland is an issue that we are about to start discussing with local authorities and private sector companies. Just last week, I met council leaders in Glasgow to press home the message that we need to move forward to a zero waste society. We need everyone in Scotland to work together towards that aim.
However, as many have mentioned, some significant challenges lie ahead. For instance, we need to turn more attention to commercial and industrial waste. In the past, a lot of emphasis has been put on household waste, on which we are making good progress. The consultation will put a lot more emphasis on commercial and industrial waste, which, after all, makes up 70 to 80 per cent of the waste stream in Scotland.
The debate on energy from waste will no doubt continue to be contentious in the Parliament and elsewhere. We welcome Robin Harper's amendment. We might differ on the definition of "large-scale" in terms of the size of energy-from-waste facilities, but we certainly agree that we need to look at the waste hierarchy. Energy from waste might have a role to play, but we must not take our eye off the other ways in which we deal with waste reduction.
Finally, funding was highlighted by many members, particularly those on the Labour benches. I find it bizarre that, on the one hand, Labour members support massive funding cuts for the Scottish block from Westminster while, on the other, they keep calling on us to give more and more money to many causes in Scotland. They cannot have it both ways. They should stand up with the Scottish Government so that we can keep the funding here to help us to achieve our environmental and other aims in Scotland.
Funding will continue to be an issue, but it is not right to say, as the Lib Dem amendment claims, that funding has been cut. Funding has not been cut, although it might now be delivered to local authorities in a different way. Through the zero waste fund—which is worth £154 million over three years—and the block grant, local authorities are receiving record funding. We all need to work together to ensure that local authorities treat waste as a priority.
Let me conclude. Jamie Stone mentioned the enthusiastic way in which our schoolchildren back recycling and other environmental initiatives. That reminds us that this is all about culture change. Moving towards a zero waste society is about recognising that waste is not simply waste but a valuable resource that we need to protect for future generations. The debate is about saving our planet, saving costs and creating new jobs. It is about creating a greener Scotland as we move towards a zero waste society and make Scotland a greener nation.
I ask Parliament to support the motion as well as all the amendments, apart from the Liberal Democrat one.