Waste Strategy
The debate is on motion S2M-3585, in the name of Ross Finnie, on the waste strategy.
The national waste plan was launched in February 2003. Its aim was to turn round decades of neglect and underfunding and to transform Scotland's waste record. It had specific and measurable targets to improve our recycling and composting rate and to divert waste from landfill. We backed the plan by providing major funding to local authorities through the strategic waste fund.
I will outline the progress that has been made since we launched the national plan. As always, I acknowledge that in making progress, there are always areas that we need to and are determined to develop further.
Our initial focus has been on improving recycling facilities, to make recycling easier for the public. To help to achieve that, we have allocated, to 2007-08, a total of £329 million to all 32 local authorities through the strategic waste fund. That has led to new kerbside recycling schemes and new and improved recycling centres and points throughout Scotland.
We monitor the impact of the resources that we provide. Today, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency is publishing the latest quarterly statistics on waste. They show that our rolling-year recycling and composting rate for the 12 months to June 2005 was about 19 per cent. The recycling and composting rate for the quarter from April to June was about 24 per cent, which compares with a rate of about 17 per cent for the same quarter in 2004.
Those achievements were made possible particularly by householders who participated in recycling schemes. I am glad to see co-operation between local householders, local authorities and us. Local authorities are saying a big thank you to householders and I add my thanks to people throughout Scotland for the way in which they are embracing the change that is needed to deal with waste.
Our target is to achieve a recycling and composting rate of 25 per cent by 2006. The latest figures suggest that we are on track to do that. However, we acknowledge that more needs to be done. Some authorities face particular challenges, such as remote, rural areas or large amounts of tenemental housing, for which it can be difficult to run kerbside collection schemes. We are therefore running a pilot project on how best to promote recycling in tenemental properties, given the practical and logistical issues that can arise.
Our targets relate to recycling and to the diversion of biodegradable municipal waste from landfill. Under the landfill directive, Scotland will be able to landfill a maximum of 1.32 million tonnes of biodegradable municipal waste in 2010 and 880,000 tonnes in 2013, reducing to 620,000 tonnes in 2020. The current SEPA figures suggest that we are landfilling around 1.7 million tonnes a year, so we face a challenge. To help us to meet the targets, we have established the landfill allowances scheme to impose limits on the amounts of biodegradable waste that local authorities can landfill. That will help to ensure that local authorities know what they should be aiming at to help us to meet our EU obligations.
We have asked local authorities to work together and to provide strategic outline cases to the Executive by the end of January 2006 on proposals for more major waste treatment infrastructure to complement their current recycling efforts. Our aims are to maximise the levels of recycling and composting and to treat as much as possible of the remaining biodegradable residual waste, so that it no longer has to be disposed of in landfill. Once we have authorities' strategic outline cases, we can consider what funding to allocate to all local authorities through the strategic waste fund. I discussed the matter just the other day with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, which expressed concern that there were rumours to the effect that some of the central belt authorities might run away with all the available cash. That is not the case. We will treat cases on their merits and allocate funds across the whole of Scotland.
Having authorities work together will produce a number of advantages: sufficiently large contracts to attract interest from the waste management industry and to ensure competition in bidding for contracts; economies of scale; and sharing of expertise in areas such as procurement. It will ensure that we avoid unnecessary duplication.
Recycling is fine for diverting waste, but we must also ensure that we continue our efforts to encourage reuse. For example, through the investment in community recycling and social enterprise—INCREASE—fund, we have funded a number of community sector projects that refurbish white goods and furniture so that they can be reused, often by people on low incomes, but all at local level. We must continue our efforts to promote reuse.
I move on to waste prevention and reduction. We are funding the waste and resources action programme to work with retailers to cut waste from products and packaging. There is growing interest in Scotland in WRAP's innovation fund, which aims to support projects that will reduce waste from products and packaging. WRAP will hold an event in Edinburgh at the end of January on best practice around the world on minimising packaging and on systems that reuse it. As part of its waste minimisation work, WRAP is also running initiatives to promote real nappies and home composting. More than 50,000 households in Scotland have now received home composting bins through WRAP.
To increase the focus on waste prevention and reduction, we, along with SEPA, have prepared a detailed consultation paper on domestic waste prevention. The consultation, which we will issue shortly, will look at the design and manufacture of products and the role of retailers, consumer behaviour, communities—including the community recycling sector—and local authorities.
Will the strategy consider the introduction of statutory levies for items such as plastic bags?
We will not come to conclusions until after the consultation has taken place. The member will have to delay his question until we have consulted people on their views. On the basis of those views, we will reach conclusions. I am sure that the member will agree that that is the appropriate procedure, well established in the Parliament.
Unusually.
Not at all—it has always been my style.
We want to tackle non-municipal and commercial waste. Our green jobs strategy states that resource efficiency and minimising waste are good for business and, much more important, good for the environment. Put bluntly, resource efficiency saves business money as well as helping the environment. We need to get that message across clearly.
We fund bodies such as Envirowise, which provides business with support and information to help it to minimise waste. We have issued a consultation on the sustainable management of waste from business and public sector organisations in Scotland. The consultation makes the point that the Scottish Executive will not spend significant resources on tackling waste from business. The polluter pays principle applies. Business waste producers must take responsibility for the cost of collecting and disposing of the waste that they produce.
As we said in our green jobs strategy, the move to much more sustainable waste management helps to create business opportunities. There are opportunities in the collection and sorting of recyclate and in the processing of materials. There are many excellent examples of companies throughout Scotland using recyclate. Those examples range from the basic composting of garden waste and the crushing of recycled glass for use in water filtration or in construction through to the use of chipping wood for many purposes. A range of industries that make use of recyclate is now developing.
WRAP and Remade Scotland provide support to companies that process recyclate. Some of the support is financial. For example, last year, WRAP ran a Scottish capital grants scheme that provided £2.4 million of support to companies throughout Scotland.
We are making progress, both in providing new recycling facilities to help us to meet the 2006 targets and in planning for the future. However, I recognise, as I do in all these matters, that progress must continue and much more work needs to be done.
We look to make further progress in three main areas. First, we intend to extend and reinforce our progress on recycling both household and—perhaps more important—commercial waste. Secondly, we need to invest in the necessary infrastructure to deal with residual waste; I look forward to receiving authorities' strategic outline cases by the end of January. Thirdly, we need to increase the emphasis on the prevention and reduction of both household and commercial waste.
Although we have made progress, much needs to be done. The process involves getting engagement from our partners in domestic and commercial waste. We must win hearts and minds and convince people that we can make progress if we get ourselves focused in the right direction. It is not all at the hand of Government, although I understand and appreciate the role that we have to play. I believe that we have made a start and I commend to Parliament the Executive's motion.
I move,
That the Parliament welcomes the progress made in implementing the National Waste Plan; commends the response of the Scottish public to the efforts of local authorities, the community sector, the waste management industry and others which has led to major improvements in Scotland's recycling and composting rate for municipal waste; acknowledges the increased use of recycled material and the economic opportunities which this creates, and welcomes the Executive's consultation on the Sustainable Management of Waste from Business and Public Sector Organisations in Scotland and its forthcoming consultation on preventing household waste.
Debates such as this one do not exactly pack out the parliamentary chamber, but they are extremely important nevertheless. After all, the debate is about how we manage the planet's valuable resources here in Scotland.
I was interested to read in the WWF Scotland submission that was sent to members prior to the debate that if everyone consumed at the rate that we in Scotland consume resources, we would need three planets to survive. The submission also states that waste in Scotland accounts for 38 per cent—well over a third—of our environmental footprint. That means that waste accounts for more than a third of the resources that we use. That is a ridiculously high figure. We must take into account not only the environmental cost but the financial cost of managing—or not managing—waste.
At the beginning of such debates, I like to remind members that now that we have our own Parliament, we get to speak about the environment and issues such as managing Scotland's waste, which is so important in that context. Such debates would never have taken place at Westminster, but during the six years of the Scottish Parliament we have had numerous debates on the environment. Those debates have taken environmental policy forward.
We should bear in mind the fact that this is a matter on which Europe has a positive impact on Scotland. Europe gets a bad name in this country for its unpopular policies on many issues, but environmental policy is one area in which pushing by Europe has led to progress in Scotland. Many of the pieces of legislation that ministers introduce here are a consequence of pressure from the EU.
However, we should not be complacent. I think that the minister's comments on the progress that is being made smacked slightly of complacency. Massive challenges face us in respect of dealing with our waste and, in particular, in respect of recycling, which tends to be the public's interface with the waste debate. Although we have made progress, we know that we lag behind many other countries on recycling.
Indeed, the Government's strategy might struggle to be successful because we know that it will be difficult to meet the 25 per cent recycling target next year. We all hope that we make it, but it will be difficult. We know that we produce more waste in Scotland than ever before. The most recent statistic that I have shows a 3 per cent increase in municipal waste in Scotland. At that rate, we will have to deal with another 1 million tonnes in eight years. According to SEPA, the average increase over the past 10 years was only 0.85 per cent a year, so the most recent figure of 3 per cent shows that we are producing more waste faster.
We have made substantial progress in recycling. Before the Parliament was established, only 4 per cent of waste was recycled, as the minister rightly said. Six years later, the recycling figure is 17 per cent, which is a substantial step forward. However, we must bear in mind the recycling rates in other small nations: 39 per cent in Sweden; 32 per cent in Denmark; and a massive 58 per cent in Austria. We must learn from those countries and we must consider examples such as that of Canberra in Australia, in which 75 per cent of household waste is recycled. By 2010, Canberra aims to have no household waste.
The figure of 17 per cent represents progress in Scotland, but if we are to achieve the 25 per cent recycling target next year, we must achieve the equivalent of the increase in recycling that we have achieved over the past four years in the next four months. That is a big challenge for the Government, but it is a particularly big challenge for our local councils, which are at the forefront of the work to meet the targets. However, there is a variable performance rate across the 32 councils in Scotland. Nine of the councils are less than halfway to achieving the target and in more than half of them the recycling rate is below the national average.
Some local authorities tell me that they hope to achieve the 25 per cent target but that, if they do so, they will be unable to achieve other targets and might face fines and penalties for that. They are up against it and we must give them support. We must identify why there is such variable performance among local authorities. Many say that it is because of a lack of resources and recycling infrastructure. The minister must respond to those concerns.
The big black hole in the Government's waste management policy is in the tackling of non-municipal waste. Eight million tonnes of waste go into landfill in Scotland and business in Scotland generates 75 per cent of that. The Government's target for recycling municipal waste—the 25 per cent figure to which the minister referred—will amount to only 6.25 per cent of all the waste that will be produced in Scotland by next year.
Getting recycling facilities into place so that we can maximise recycling is a major challenge. As the minister said, doing that can create green jobs. Currently, a local authority in the north of Scotland sends the waste paper that it collects from households to north Wales to be processed; that is turned into recycled paper that is brought back up to Scotland to be used again and to go through the same process again. Aberdeenshire Council, for instance, sends 330 tonnes of waste to north Wales every month, which is 50 truck loads. In terms of our waste management strategy in Scotland, that practice wastes fuel and causes pollution. Surely doing that does not make sense. We must ensure that we have recycling facilities here.
We need help for the small business sector. I know that the minister is aware of the concerns of the Federation of Small Businesses, among others. The federation has cited examples of its members going to their local recycling facility in Aberdeen or wherever and finding that waste that is generated by small businesses is not accepted. The businesses must take their waste back to their workplaces and put it in with the general waste, which ends up in landfill. The recycling policy is failing in that regard. We look to the minister to introduce proposals to help small businesses to increase their recycling rates.
Of course, the crux of the matter is reducing waste in the first place. The biggest challenge facing the Parliament and the Government is to ensure that waste does not increase at a faster rate than we can recycle. We must look to public education to make everyone aware of the role of waste and, indeed, of the fact that they must redefine their whole approach to waste, because everything has a value and it is all precious resources. Public education is important. Indeed, in some local authorities, 20 per cent of people who have access to recycling bins from the local council do not use them, even when the bins are in their own driveways. We must move from being a throwaway society to being one that recognises the value of all our resources.
Finally, I want to talk about the Government's ability to implement an effective waste management strategy. The Parliament lacks the political powers to put in place an effective waste management strategy.
I was interested in the point raised about plastic bags. The Parliament is considering the Environmental Levy on Plastic Bags (Scotland) Bill, which is an attempt to cut down on litter and the waste of precious resources. How convoluted the process has become; it is in danger of turning into a dog's breakfast. Whether or not we support the bill, we have to admit that the process is convoluted and complex. It will lead to 32 local authorities having to collect their own separate levies, all because the national Parliament does not have the power to pass a simple piece of legislation to apply a national levy. The member whose bill it is, Mike Pringle, has to go through a convoluted process to get the levies in place. The Environment and Rural Development Committee is in danger of tying itself in knots trying to ascertain whether the Parliament even has the power to do that.
I remind the member that he is speaking on his own behalf; he is certainly not speaking on behalf of all members of the committee when he describes the committee as "tying itself in knots". He may be reflecting his own position; he is certainly not reflecting mine.
I said that the committee was "in danger" of tying itself in knots. That is the Scottish National Party's opinion. Of course I was not speaking for the committee. That is patently obvious.
The minister has spoken about his consultation exercise on reducing waste. That will mean thinking about manufacturing processes, product standards and all the rest of it. Right at the beginning of the production process, we have to cut down on waste and save packaging. We have to consider better design.
All those issues require the Parliament to have powers to legislate. We need to tackle this issue and we need the powers to do so. I urge members to support the SNP's amendment.
I move amendment S2M-3585.1, to insert at end:
"notes that the key to a sustainable waste strategy is a greater emphasis on reducing the level of waste produced; recognises that to maintain public support and participation, waste collected for recycling should not go to landfill; notes that municipal waste accounts for only 25% of waste and that the other 75% comes from business and industry and accurate information on the amount of such waste recycled is required; notes concerns over the lack of accessible recycling infrastructure; calls for waste management support for the small business sector, and recognises that, for any waste strategy to be truly effective, Scottish ministers require the necessary political powers to ensure they have all options available to them, including measures relating to manufacturing, design and taxation."
I begin by apologising to the chamber on behalf of my colleague Alex Johnstone. He should be here, but he has developed a back injury and cannot be.
Speaking in this debate is a little like going back in time. Before the 2003 election, when I was my party's spokesman on the environment, I warned that the Executive was not moving quickly enough on recycling and that its recycling targets would not be met. Only 25 per cent of biodegradable waste would go to landfill by 2006 was the public assertion by Government ministers Finnie, Wilson and McNulty. We did not believe it then and we do not believe it now. I draw attention to that more in sorrow than in anger. We all sincerely hold the view that we should not be filling up our valuable landfill sites with biodegradable waste. I appreciate the minister's acknowledgement today that we could all be doing better in that regard.
When looking at the figures two and a half years later, it gives me no satisfaction to find that we still send 1.8 million tonnes of waste to landfill every year, and to find that the figure is increasing instead of decreasing. It gives me no satisfaction to note in the 2003-04 figures that only 12.3 per cent of our biodegradable waste was recycled by local authorities. It is a matter of shame that our recycling figures increased by only 8.5 per cent between 1999 and 2004. One cannot see how the target of 25 per cent by 2006 will be met. To meet it, we would need to double our recycling in one year.
I regret to say that fly-tipping is still a huge issue in urban and rural areas. To me, the problem seems to be getting worse and not better. As levies rise on the legitimate disposal of industrial waste—which Richard Lochhead referred to—so too does the temptation to fly-tip. That well-documented practice has significant long-term implications for the environment.
Urban fly-tipping is on the increase in parts of my constituency. In some measure, that is driven by South Ayrshire Council's policy of emptying our bins only fortnightly. After a week or 10 days, my constituents' bins, on occasion, are literally full to overflowing. What are people to do with their household rubbish then? During the summer, I spent my annual leave in Spain. I was amazed that bins there are emptied every day. If Spain can do it, why can we not?
In the north Ayr communities, tenants and residents associations are constantly asking for skips to allow concerned residents to tidy up their areas. There is a continuing problem for which we have not yet found a solution. We must do so.
The first priority on recycling must be to get something done. Area waste plans are all very well, but everything is just taking too long. When the national waste strategy was launched in 1999, we were very far behind on recycling in a worldwide context. At that time, we should have found out what best practice was elsewhere in the world and unashamedly copied it. There is no copyright on ideas about dealing with waste, but six years later, we seem to be little further on. By the time the area waste plans are agreed and implemented, we will have lost another few years. By then, the plans might need to be updated to reflect the best practice that has emerged elsewhere, so I would like the minister to tell us how much flexibility is built into them.
Perhaps it is time for a little blue-skies thinking on waste disposal. I am thinking specifically of the direct variable charging schemes that are being introduced in the United States and Europe with dramatic and positive effect. I understand that such schemes could work in Scotland by reducing the council tax by the average annual cost of collecting and disposing of waste—which is about £111 per household—and then levying a charge on the collection of waste on the basis of weight. In Europe, such charging schemes have reduced the amount of waste that is produced by as much as 30 per cent. Indeed, one scheme in the Landkreis Schweinfurt area of Germany resulted in a dramatic 40 per cent reduction in waste.
It might also be time to investigate advanced thermal treatment of waste, which is used to dispose of 78 per cent of waste in Japan. As the minister will know, ATT is not incineration. It is claimed that the process produces only water, carbon dioxide and heat, so it is certainly worthy of further serious evaluation. It appears that dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls are no longer a problem in the ATT process. We could build local plants that could cope with between 30,000 and 90,000 tonnes of waste per year, which would produce usable quantities of base-load energy.
We must stop being so lethargic in how we deal with waste issues. The minister alone can inject a sense of urgency into addressing such matters more effectively; I know that he is capable of that. He cannot be comfortable about the imminence of missed targets. For the reasons that I have outlined, I urge the minister and the Parliament to support the Conservative amendment.
I move amendment S2M-3585.2, to leave out from first "welcomes" to end and insert:
"believes that the Scottish Executive's policy on waste is failing and that the amount of waste being sent to landfill is increasing, so that local authorities will have to double their recycling performance in one year to meet the 2006 targets, and further believes that after six years the Executive needs to take immediate steps to free up local authorities to enable them to deliver innovative and appropriate solutions to suit their local circumstances."
We warmly welcome the debate, which gives us the chance to discuss Scotland's waste policy. There is no doubt that things are moving in the right direction. The figures for 2004-05 reveal recycling rates of 17.5 per cent, which I was interested to hear the minister say have now risen to 19 per cent. The present rates are more than double those of three years ago. A few years ago, our record on recycling was pathetic; now it is just poor. A quick glance at the performance of our European neighbours shows how far we still have to go, and Richard Lochhead provided some figures on that. However, the situation has improved and we welcome the progress that has been made.
It is instructive to examine the waste returns for individual local authorities. During the second quarter of 2004-05, Clackmannanshire Council managed to recycle no less than 45 per cent of its municipal waste. Over the same period, Midlothian Council languished at the bottom of the recycling table with a barely credible recycling rate of 3.9 per cent. I simply do not believe that the people of Dalkeith and Loanhead are naturally less inclined to recycle than the residents of Alloa and Tillicoultry.
Sadly, not all the news coming out of Clackmannanshire is good. There are reports that the council is moving towards commingling, whereby products for recycling are mixed in with normal waste and are separated out only later. That may boost recycling rates, but it will devalue the final product. Councils must think hard before going down that route.
People will recycle if they are given the opportunity. Although some authorities are pulling out all the stops to enable people to do so, others almost seem to be standing in the way of their residents' desire to recycle. I ask the minister what steps the Executive is taking to chivvy along councils such as Midlothian that are not pulling their weight. In spite of its underperforming councils, Scotland is making reasonable progress, so imagine what we could achieve if every council had the imagination and ambition of Clackmannanshire and community recycling groups that were as good as those that operate in that part of Scotland. The target would certainly be in the bag.
As it stands, it remains to be seen whether the targets for 2006 can be reached. We sincerely hope that they can. Getting recycling up to 25 per cent might just be achievable; getting biodegradable waste down to 1.5 million tonnes a year probably will not be.
What is standing in the way of better progress on waste? We have already seen that individual councils have a key role to play. What about smaller businesses and community recycling groups? It seems that overzealous application of regulation risks hampering many of the small players. Fees of £3,000 a year for a waste management licence are a barrier; many small groups simply cannot afford that. Clackmannanshire owes much of its success to the actions of Alloa Community Enterprises. ACE and groups like it are vital if Scotland is to fulfil its recycling potential—we cannot afford to price them out of the market. It is just possible that regulations that were designed to divert waste out of landfill may be having the opposite effect. It may be that SEPA is constrained by the fee structure with which it is obliged to work. If that is the case, I urge the Scottish Executive to work with SEPA to ensure that small groups are not priced out of the recycling market, while protecting SEPA's financial self-sufficiency.
Another reason why our progress is not as good as it could be is that our society is creating more and more waste in the first place. Although recycling rates are up, so is the overall mass of waste that is created. Between 2004 and 2005, waste arisings grew by 3.3 per cent—a higher rate than in the previous year. Even the rate of change of growth is in the wrong direction.
As long as our waste mountain continues to grow, policies that target only the downstream side of the equation can never offer a complete solution to Scotland's waste culture. As we all know, prevention is better than cure. Why wait until waste is generated before we act? We welcome initiatives on waste minimisation, which are a step in the right direction towards our policy of zero waste. We need to tackle waste at source, which means giving households, businesses and the public sector encouragement and advice on how to minimise the waste that their activities generate.
Ultimately, our target must be zero waste. During a debate on zero waste in the chamber about 18 months ago, members expressed a degree of scepticism that we could ever eliminate waste from our society. To them I say this: take a look around the world at countries, cities and communities that have achieved waste reductions that would put our best-performing councils to shame. Look at businesses that have dramatically reduced their waste output, in some cases by 98 per cent. In case anyone thinks that I am digressing too much by talking about zero waste, let me remind them that Scotland's national waste strategy describes zero waste as a key concept that is likely to shape future policy and action in Scotland. It is clear that Scotland has much catching up to do, and it is surely time that the Executive started using zero waste to shape current policy and action in Scotland.
I move amendment S2M-3585.3, to leave out from "implementing" to end and insert:
"improving Scottish recycling and composting rates but acknowledges that, in spite of these improvements, Scotland still lags behind many of our European partners and that the overall volume of waste being created continues to rise; notes that there is a wide variation in recycling rates across Scottish local authorities and strongly believes that access to comprehensive recycling facilities should not be a postcode lottery; commends the efforts of the public in rising to the challenge of recycling an increasing proportion of their waste in spite of often poor facilities and lack of clear information; expresses concern that many Scottish businesses and community groups engaged in recycling have found their efforts thwarted by inappropriate levels of regulation and heavy financial costs, and believes that a policy of zero waste, bringing environmental, economic and social benefits, is the only truly sustainable way to tackle Scotland's throwaway culture."
I apologise to the Presiding Officer and to colleagues for not being here for the entirety of the debate due to a long-standing meeting with a ministerial colleague.
First, I want to say where I think we have been coming from. I agree with much of the sentiment that colleagues around the chamber have expressed so far. We started off with one of the worst records in Europe and we are still one of the slowest countries in Europe to get our act together and recycle. However, without the European Union pushing us, with targets that are enforceable through daily fines, we would not even have got as far as we have. That has helped to concentrate the minds of the Executive and local authorities. The tranche of money from the strategic waste fund has been instrumental in enabling local authorities either to fund services themselves or to work with local community and voluntary groups to make a difference.
We have not gone far enough or fast enough, but we must celebrate the achievement of authorities that have managed to go from a recycling level of 6 per cent to a point at which they can think seriously of hitting their 25 per cent target next year. Their achievement goes against the grain of our casual, throwaway, consumer society; we should celebrate it.
I want not only to reflect on the progress to date, but to think about where we go next.
Will the member give way?
If I may, I will get going before I do so.
A huge amount of work has been done thus far. The combination of the strategic waste fund and the landfill tax, which I know nobody likes, has been critical in providing the resources to make people do things differently.
There is an economic cost to landfill. Landfill is part of our whole out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude, except that people who have to live beside a landfill tip suffer as a result. Even well-run landfills result in thousands of lorry journeys every year, so nobody wants us to rely on landfill. However, the money that comes from the landfill tax has been used across Scotland to very innovative and great effect. In my city of Edinburgh, the Lothian and Edinburgh Environmental Partnership has done some brilliant campaigning work to engage people in the waste agenda through its waste awareness campaigns; composting trainers, who train up people on local community councils; and tenemental experiments, to enable people who live in more densely populated areas to become involved. We still do not have on-street recycling throughout the city of Edinburgh for tenemental properties, which is an obvious thing that needs to be addressed. We are at the point of reflecting on how far we have come and thinking about where we go next.
When the Environment and Rural Development Committee considered the issue two years ago, we identified recycling markets and businesses as critical areas of influence, as is waste minimisation. Not every member has focused exclusively on recycling in the debate; a focus on recycling markets and waste minimisation should be part of the discussion today.
In considering the waste hierarchy, we need to think about how we can make recycling worth while and how we can create products that are marketable. For example, nowadays, the vast majority of our newspapers are produced from recycled paper. As a result of the drive towards remade products, we now have new products that did not exist a few years ago. We need to keep developing and expanding that kind of work.
I agree with colleagues' comments about the need to involve businesses in the waste agenda. We have domestic targets, but we need to get across to businesses the message that waste is a resource-usage problem; we need a culture shift.
We need to return to the waste hierarchy: reduce, reuse, recycle and recover. Recycling is down there at number three, so much more emphasis needs to be put on reducing the waste that we create in the first place and reusing the products that we have. Let us take product design as an example. We know that it is possible to produce products that are much more efficient not just because they use recycled materials but because those materials can be recovered after the product has finished its useful lifespan.
Packaging is a huge issue, which the Environment and Rural Development Committee has considered over the past few weeks in our debates on the poly bag levy. Those debates have highlighted the extremely wasteful practices of supermarkets across the country. Instead of encouraging us to use bags for life, whether they are made from plastic or cloth, shops are offering us multiple bags and excessive packaging. Raising awareness is a real issue in that regard. The Parliament should congratulate companies such as B&Q that have progressive policies and are taking the lead in a competitive market. It is disappointing to see that others have not focused on the issue.
You have one minute
Reuse is also hugely important. I am thinking of some of the furniture reuse projects in Edinburgh. It is appalling that people dump furniture just because they are bored with it. Furniture should be passed on for reuse to people who need it. Because of the Bike Station in Edinburgh, bicycles that would historically have been chucked in the bin are being reused.
Charity shops are a brilliant model of reuse. I went to a Barnardo's shop on the recent make a difference day. I was amazed to hear that Barnardo's bills have been slashed because its shops can now recycle stuff that they used to have to dump—indeed, they get paid for that recycling. We are talking about joined-up thinking.
Repairing goods should also be on the agenda. Most of us just chuck out goods. I cannot remember the number of stereos and compact disc players that I have owned. It is cheaper to buy a new one than to take the old one to be repaired. The economics of that are crazy.
My final point is about procurement, which is where the Executive can take a lead. Let us look at the procurement guidelines.
You must finish.
I will wind up with two specific points. We must ensure that there is legal certainty to encourage people to buy products.
You really must close.
We must also ensure that we fully implement the European Union's directive on environmental protection through our procurement guidelines.
You must finish now.
I would be keen for the minister to get back to me in writing on that matter.
We are very short of time, so I insist that members speak for only six minutes.
I do not think that there is disagreement on the need to reduce the amount of waste that we produce and to improve considerably the way in which we deal with the remainder. Obviously, we need to waste less waste, but the problem is exacerbated in Perth and Kinross because of the substantial net inward migration that the area is experiencing, contrary to the national pattern—I suspect that Inverness is in the same category—which means that there are more people to produce waste. In effect, Perth and Kinross Council is having to run to stand still—or not, because despite all the council's efforts, the waste produced in Perth and Kinross has increased by 25 per cent in the past 10 years, but then so has the population.
In Perth and Kinross, there are serious concerns about strategic waste funding. I will examine two related issues. The first is a delay in strategic waste funding from the Scottish Executive, which means that the waste processing facilities that are needed to allow the council to meet European landfill diversion targets are unlikely to be in place. The second is the worry that there might not be enough funding for all strategic waste projects, with some councils receiving funding and others having to shoulder the burden of waste infrastructure costs themselves. That uncertainty is compounded by the delays in determining strategic waste funding.
In his foreword to the 2003 national waste plan, the Minister for Environment and Rural Development stated that the Executive was
"investing heavily, allocating £230 million over the next three years through the Strategic Waste Fund to enable local authorities to recover wasted resources and put the Area Waste Plans into effect".
I asked my local council how that commitment matched up to its experience, and it told me that the minister's pledge was fair comment for the early funding that was received. Perth and Kinross raised landfill diversion from 20 per cent to around 35 per cent, largely because of the strategic waste funding that was received, but—and it is a big but—the problem is that it can go no further without funding for the major infrastructure projects that are required to compost, sort or derive energy from waste.
I am sure that Perth and Kinross Council is not unique in that regard. The fact is that local authorities know what they need to do, but the delay in receiving the appropriate funding is holding them back. Perth and Kinross Council submitted its bid for funding in April 2003. Funding was not determined until February 2004 and even then was only partially awarded—the Executive withheld an outstanding £17 million that was applied for. Apparently, there was to be a strategic review to ensure best value. An Executive official advised officers of Perth and Kinross Council that the process would be quick and that funding issues would be cleared up within a few months. Since then, the requirements of the review process have changed on several occasions, resulting in successive delays.
Finally, in June the Executive issued written guidance stating the format that bids should be in. It also indicated that it would not consider bids until January 2006, with the preliminary outcome of its assessment being made available by autumn/winter 2006. Those delays, uncertainties and shifting goalposts are causing local authorities difficulties. For example, in Perth and Kinross, it means that once the time that is needed to procure and build large-scale waste infrastructure is added in, it could be 2012 or 2013 before plants are operational. The delays in providing funding will result in councils having to pay substantial landfill allowance fines of several million pounds a year, imposed by the very Scottish Executive that is the funder. That is worse than robbing Peter to pay Paul; it is holding back with one hand and taking away with the other.
There is more to the problem even than a delay in funding. I note the minister's comments about fears that the central belt will use up most of the money, but I understand that guidance issued in June stated that there might not be sufficient funding, and that three large central belt projects would be given funding priority. I hope that the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development will clarify that in her closing comments. If it is true, it will mean everyone else being left to scrabble around for the scraps after the lion's share has been gobbled up.
I understand that £79 million of funding is available per annum. If the three large projects are given priority, that would not leave much for the rest, especially given that the rough estimate is that each of the premium projects will have £15 million to £25 million each year. Officials from Perth and Kinross Council have proposed a form of interim funding from strategic waste funding that could, for example, pay for the costs of transporting waste to be processed at a facility in another part of the country. I stress that that would be a temporary measure, until the permanent facilities that have been delayed can be built and brought on stream. The proposal received a positive reaction in principle but, again, timescales and uncertainty are making it almost impossible to get arrangements in place before April 2006. I urge the Minister for Environment and Rural Development to reconsider the proposal and to do all that he can to expedite matters.
Sarah Boyack and Richard Lochhead were right to highlight the role that the European Union has played through its directives on waste. The minister said at the outset that much work has been done, but he also made it clear that there is still much to be done. I support that view. From the Rhine to the Clyde and from the Danube to the Dornoch firth, we can see the impact on our landscape that the control of waste is having. It was rich for John Scott to say on behalf of the Tories that we are not making progress. I remember the years when little or no money came to local authorities in Scotland to help with waste strategies. Fife Council had to stop its collection of waste paper as a consequence of that.
Will the member take an intervention?
No. I am just getting started, although I may take an intervention in a moment.
In my constituency of Dunfermline East, we have a project that could play a major role in helping the Scottish Executive to achieve its targets. At the Westfield site, which is in close proximity to the M9 and a railhead, there is a proposal for a development where recycling will take place. I opposed vociferously the original suggestion for the site, which was to use it predominantly for landfill. I, and the community that I represent, had a major objection to that. The proposal has been altered—the current vision is to develop Westfield in Fife as Scotland's first sustainable recycling park. Planning permission for the innovative proposal has now been agreed, which provides an opportunity for Fife and Scotland to build a flagship development. I am aware of only one similar development in the United Kingdom, in Castleford, in England. As Scotland strives to develop as a green industry leader, the site will provide an integrated and comprehensive approach to help to meet multiple local and national objectives, including the delivery of viable and environmentally sound solutions for waste resource recovery.
Fife Council has gone from a record of poor achievement in recycling to the current situation, in which paper is recycled throughout the area and there are compost, glass and plastic bins and excellent kerbside sorting processes. One development is the involvement of local communities. Shiona Baird said that we must ensure that we involve communities. We have resources such as BRAG Enterprises, a social enterprise that develops small business and job opportunities. I hope that the minister will encourage such developments.
At Westfield, progressive restoration and enhancement of a despoiled landscape will take place, providing a range of biodiversity and public access benefits. Members should remember that British Coal removed 30 million cubic metres of soil and coal from the area, leaving behind the biggest hole in Europe, which is now filled with water. That was a blight on the area, so I am glad that the Scottish Executive now has an opportunity to work with me and my communities to tackle the issue. It will get business, local government and local communities working together to create an innovative site at the cutting edge of technology.
When we talk about how we dispose of waste, the key is how we use that waste. I hope that the minister will take on board how we can convert waste into energy. At Westfield, we also have the Westfield energy plant. The gasification process that is used there is able to provide energy equivalent to 1GW, which is equal to the output of one nuclear power station. The combination of the gasification of sewage sludge—a big problem throughout Scotland, which has been emphasised strongly in petitions to the Public Petitions Committee—and taking on board the issues of coal and municipal waste—
The member is in her last minute.
I cannot give way. It is really important that I get this particular point over. I was going to give way but, in view of the time, I cannot.
The gasification process is critical. It will provide energy in the local community and it could embrace all of Scotland's sewage sludge; it could embrace municipal waste as well. Members who are opposed to the development of new nuclear energy will be pleased to know that the process could be replicated in other parts of Scotland, as it can be retrofitted on to existing energy plants. Here we have the possibility of our municipal waste not going to landfill, not having sewage sludge left on our land and using coal—an indigenous fuel, that I, as the representative of a coal-mining community, would want to see used. I hope that the minister will take that on board.
Again, I emphasise the fact that we are very tight for time.
One would think that an Executive that is good at recycling its own rubbish in the chamber would be well equipped to deal with the rubbish that is produced by the Scottish public. Regrettably, that is not the case. This country is lagging miles behind the rest of western Europe, where recycling is taken for granted and the population is encouraged to take some responsibility and play its part in keeping the country clean. In France, for instance, fly-tipping is discouraged by the fact that it is made easy for people to dispose of excess rubbish in déchetteries, the equivalent of our rubbish tips but much easier to access and to utilise. Those local recycling centres in small towns are looked after by qualified people who proudly surround them with beautiful gardens.
The Executive's record on waste is not good and is not going to be good enough to enable it to reach its target of recycling 25 per cent of waste by 2006. Some councils have done well and I congratulate them. However, it is especially difficult for councils that manage remote rural areas to meet the targets that are thrust on them by the Executive, especially as we live in a throwaway society in which new buildings and new houses mean new furniture, leading to old furnishings and possessions constantly being thrown out in ever-increasing quantities.
The Executive's obsession with targets and action plans is not having the desired effect and the amount of waste that is being sent to landfill sites is still increasing. Many councils would have to double their previous performance in one year in order to meet the Executive's 2006 target. It is all very well for the Scottish Executive to dictate to councils what they must achieve, but it should be up to the Executive, as the Government of Scotland, to ensure that there are markets for recycled products.
"No targets without markets." That was what Highland Council told me in 2003. I remember saying that during a similar debate in our former chamber on the Mound. I am recycling that phrase now, because "No targets without markets" makes sense to me. As Sarah Boyack said, it is about joined-up thinking. I congratulate Moray Council, which hopes to achieve its 25 per cent recycling target. Western Isles Council, Highland Council and Argyll and Bute Council are working hard to reduce landfill and to increase the amount of recycling and composting. However, because of their huge geographical areas, their transport costs are much higher than those in the more urban areas.
Moray Council tells me that paper and cardboard go to Fife, aluminium cans to Alloa and steel cans to Glasgow. It has sold 429 composters and has given away a further 168. Green compost is shredded in Moray and transported to farms in Aberdeenshire. However, Moray's real bugbear is plastics. There seems to be nowhere in Scotland that deals with plastic recycling, so plastics have to be transported to England and then sent by boat to China and the far east. Most plastics therefore end up in landfill—
Will the member give way on that point?
In a moment.
That is why the trees that surround rubbish tips in Scotland are often hideously adorned with plastic bags, in sharp contrast to the well-kept French recycling areas with their sweet-smelling rosebuds.
Councils are trying to develop a new culture of recycling, but they face barriers erected by the Executive in the shape of bureaucratic delays caused by the creation of the waste strategy area groups and the area waste plans. Those plans will be far too rigid and they will not be in place until January 2006. As John Scott said, that means that, if the Executive takes a year to examine the plans, the plans will not be working until 2007. Why not let the individual councils use their own initiative and expertise to make the best decisions for their areas?
The member talks about individual councils doing their own thing. He also highlighted the fact that plastic bags are a serious issue. Does he think that the 32 local authorities would be capable of raising awareness in their individual areas?
Our feeling is that there should not be a tax on plastic bags in this country. One reason is that it is very wet in this country and, if a paper bag is used, shopping can fall out of the bottom. The Executive should concentrate on creating markets that encourage the recycling of plastics and hazardous materials in Scotland.
I finish by commending the idea of advanced thermal treatment. As John Scott said, Japan uses ATT to dispose of 78 per cent of its annual waste. The technology has the potential to cut down on landfill and provide energy and new employment in Scotland.
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. We all produce waste and we must all do what we can to minimise it. The Executive motion mentions the efforts of the public and the local authorities to implement the national waste plan. Although I fully support and recognise the work done by the ordinary people of Scotland, I question in the strongest terms what some of our councils are doing and the support that the Executive offers to them.
Reduce, reuse and recycle must be our watchwords if we are to tackle the growing waste mountain that threatens us. However, whereas the battle for the hearts and minds of the people of Scotland on recycling seems to have been won, we are being badly let down by some of our councils. Figures compiled by SEPA just last week show that, far from increasing the amount of recycling facilities and capacity, councils are continuing to landfill waste. More worrying than that, they are landfilling waste that was meant for recycling. In 2003-04, more than 7,000 tonnes of waste that was collected for recycling was sent to landfill. It gets worse. In 2004-05, that figure shot up to 40,000 tonnes.
My local area is seeing the reality of such figures. The landfill site at Shewalton in Irvine is being extended and a new one is being opened up beside the old one. That is happening in spite of objections from local residents and the environmental degradation that is being caused to the local community. While the size of the landfill site increases, there is silence from the council about new recycling facilities. The minister talked about rats. Rats are running around the housing estates surrounding the landfill site in Irvine, but no one is taking responsibility for that.
I have concerns about landfill sites all over the south of Scotland. Some of them are owned by councils but leased to private companies. What are the lease and financial arrangements for such privately run sites? What restrictions are in place to prevent those companies from transporting waste from other areas, which would make a mockery of the proximity principle? There is also an issue with the remediation of landfill sites when the sites become full. Whose responsibility will that be? Who will pay if the site is run by a private company? When private money comes in the front door, accountability flies out the window.
While all those issues need to be discussed, councils continue down the path of landfilling waste and continue to use private contractors, with the consequence that recycling takes second place. We can see the results in the SEPA figures. Householders are happy to sort their waste for recycling, but councils, rather than investing in proper recycling facilities, continue to waste money on private concerns that send waste to landfill. Where do councils get their lead but from the Executive? The lead comes from the Executive, which continues to push the private finance agenda.
Nothing is more important than the environment, as no spare earth is available for us if we muck up this one. However, instead of realising the importance of environmental issues such as waste, the Executive continues to focus its waste strategy on municipal waste and not on commercial waste. The Executive focuses on recycling but not on waste minimisation—although I was pleased to hear Ross Finnie's comments on that, so we hope and wait—and it leads councils down the garden path of privatising everything rather than acting in a publicly accountable way.
I recognise and applaud the work that ordinary folk up and down the country do in recycling waste. When I, too, worked in Barnardo's for a couple of hours on make a difference day a few weeks ago, I was impressed by the amount of recycling that I saw taking place. When bags of clothes are received that cannot be resold, the material is sold for recycling, which provides funds for the running of the shop. That is a brilliant idea, which could be extended. People are keen to recycle and they are keen to ensure that they do not throw out too much. We are educating and we are improving, but the improvement is down to the fact that ordinary people are learning the lesson. We must follow the example that ordinary folk are now setting by caring for the environment. I wish that local councils and the Executive would show the same kind of responsibility as the public show.
We last discussed the national waste plan in January 2004 in a debate on the Environment and Rural Development Committee's report on its inquiry into the issue. The then Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development said:
"We intend to increase our dependence on reuse and recycling".—[Official Report, 21 January 2004; c 4980.]
He also said that the Executive was committed to working with SEPA and local authorities to reduce our reliance on landfill.
Let me first give credit for what has been achieved so far. Although the amount of waste going to landfill has not been reduced, the most recent progress report on the Highland area waste plan shows a 27 per cent increase in the amount of waste going for recycling or composting. That is an improvement, although we start from a fairly low base. Recycling centres and civic amenity sites have appeared in our communities, as have some kerbside recycling schemes.
However, authorities that cover a huge rural area such as the one that Highland Council serves cannot possibly follow the model that works for more urban areas, as other members have pointed out. I am sure that the Minister for Environment and Rural Development and his deputy know what the challenges are. They will recall that the Executive rejected Highland Council's original proposals and cost estimates, but the council believes that the Executive's economic assessment ignores the geographic reality that kerbside collections are too expensive to operate away from towns. The council doubts that it will reach its 18 per cent recycling target by the end of March next year. It will thus fail to meet its targets under the landfill directive and its targets under the Highland waste plan, which demand 100 per cent kerbside recycling.
If the council fails to meet those targets, financial penalties will presumably be imposed. The council fears that the penalties could snowball to almost £5 million by 2010. That is of great concern, because such heavy fines will make it even less likely that the council will be able to comply with the Executive's targets. I ask the Executive to clarify whether it is indeed likely that penalties will be imposed. Perhaps the Executive can look again at the reality of the economics of supplying kerbside schemes in rural areas or agree to the same kind of flexibility as it showed when, several months ago, it helped to solve the funding problems of not-for-profit reuse and recycling groups in Highland. The groups were caught between the different perceptions of the council and the Executive about who was responsible for their funding and governance.
I always use HomeAid Caithness in Thurso as my touchstone for whether things are going well in the recycling world. HomeAid receives donations of second-hand furniture, does that furniture up and passes it on to folks who need it—for example, women who come out of refuges and set up home anew, starting with nothing. HomeAid also has a shop, which sells surplus goods to the public—the knick-knacks and doodahs that come from house clearances and which are given by the people of Caithness. The profits from the shop support HomeAid's core services. HomeAid also offers people employment, including supported employment for vulnerable people. The good work that it does spreads out throughout the community.
The strategic waste fund supports HomeAid's work, but it could divert many more goods away from landfill if it was better able to access funding for infrastructure, such as another van or more warehouse space. HomeAid thinks that the INCREASE fund's decisions are not bold enough to support organisations. I have written to the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development about that and I hope that she will give the matter her attention.
As other members have mentioned, a further problem in the north of Scotland is the distance from recycling markets. Low-value material cannot economically be hauled to the central belt for recycling, so, for example, Highland Council does not offer facilities for recycling plastic bottles and other plastic packaging. Such material makes up by far the greatest percentage of household rubbish, certainly in my household.
When I spoke in the debate on the Environment and Rural Development Committee's report, I asked why supermarkets whose vans trail up and down the A9 could not be required to accept the unwanted packaging and empty plastic bottles that they gave us in the first place. Mike Rumbles, who is not in the chamber this afternoon, confirmed from his personal knowledge that there are such return schemes in Germany. I recall that, in Germany, plastic bottles are made to be reused. Why does that not happen here?
Is the member aware that Campbeltown Wastewatchers in Kintyre recycles plastics? It offers a doorstep collection for plastic milk bottles and other plastic bottles, which it compresses. Those bottles have to go down south, but it seems to me that, if some groups can offer that service, others could do so, too.
That company is in Argyll, so it is nearer to the markets than we are up in Highland. That makes a difference.
I know people in the Highlands who, because they regularly drive south on business trips, save up their plastic debris and pop it into an Edinburgh recycling skip when they are in the city, thus enhancing Edinburgh's recycling figures.
Where is the crossover between business waste and household waste? If we required suppliers to dispose of returned packaging, I am sure that we would soon have less packaging. Perhaps we should also make purchasers more aware of packaging excesses by requiring manufacturers to display the cost of the packaging on the box. Purchasers could then ask for the box to be removed and the money deducted. I know that some people make a point of ripping off excess packaging and leaving it in their supermarket trolley—I have done that myself on occasions. We certainly have to do something to minimise packaging and get the supermarkets, which are the biggest offenders, to engage with that. There has been a European regulation requiring us to do that since as far back as 1998. If we do not minimise waste, our landfill figures will continue to rise. In the north, the answer will be incineration, which I would support if it included positive energy recovery schemes.
I urge the Executive to address waste minimisation and to consider whether the waste plan is deliverable in rural areas.
I welcome the debate, coming as it does after my evidence to the Environment and Rural Development Committee on my Environmental Levy on Plastic Bags (Scotland) Bill. I was encouraged to hear the minister say in evidence to the committee that the Executive will soon consult on measures to reduce household waste and I was interested to hear what he said about that today. He was unable to give the committee a definite date for the consultation but, now that the committee is considering my bill at stage 1, it would be good to have a more detailed timescale.
Over the past two years, the national waste plan has focused closely on recycling and composting, with a target of 25 per cent by 2006. As we heard from the minister today, in April to June of this year, we had reached 24 per cent. Others in the chamber have doubts about whether we will reach 25 per cent next year, but I suggest that, if we were at 24 per cent in April to June, we should achieve 25 per cent quite easily. I further suggest that that is because of the amount of money that the Executive has put into the work, which, as the minister said, is £329 million. However, some local authorities are clearly not doing as well as they should be. I would be interested to see the individual figures—if they are broken down like that—for the 32 councils from April to June.
We must ask ourselves what additional measures can be put in place to force the issue even higher up the agenda. Members will not be surprised to hear that I am of the opinion that we must place a real value on our waste so as to force a change in consumer behaviour. I do not in any way criticise the measures that local authorities are taking to encourage people to reduce, reuse, recycle and recover, but I believe that those practices will make it easier for those who want to recycle to do so; sadly, they will not force those who, for whatever reason, do not want to reuse or recycle to do so. That is because we still have a throwaway culture in which many people view waste as something that has no value.
The focus of the policy in my bill is on reusing and recycling, not waste minimisation. Across western Europe, recycling rates are considerably higher than they are in Scotland. In the Netherlands the rate is 59 per cent—or perhaps 60 per cent, as somebody else said. In Austria the rate is 58 per cent, in Germany it is 53 per cent and even in Ireland it is nearing 40 per cent, despite the fact that, three years ago, the Irish rate was lower than Scotland's. I do not believe that it is any coincidence that, in many of those countries, much of what we consider to be waste and which many people throw out now has a value. Countries such as France, Ireland, Norway, Germany and South Africa—the list is endless—charge for plastic bags and other items. That ultimately places a value on them and encourages people to choose alternatives that can be reused.
I was flabbergasted to hear Jamie McGrigor talking about people using a paper bag when they went shopping for goods in a supermarket. Nobody does that. The issue is not only about plastic bags, however, although they are a potent symbol of our throwaway culture. In Norway, many supermarkets now have machines that take in plastic bottles and give people money for them. I am told that they are constantly in use. If something has an obvious monetary value, people will not waste it. The Executive needs to think bigger. We need active waste reduction, perhaps moving towards zero waste.
The issue is not only municipal waste. I am glad that the SNP amendment mentions the fact that 75 per cent of waste comes from business and industry. They, too, must play their part. I would have been minded to vote for the SNP's amendment if it were not for the final clause. I believe that ministers have the necessary powers; what is needed is for them to use those powers to the full.
I commend businesses that recycle a large amount of packaging and plastic waste. The small voluntary plastic bag schemes that they take part in feed into the solution. However, there is no connected strategy in place. Is it not about time that we had one? In that regard, I welcome the consultation exercise on the sustainable management of waste from business.
I have a major problem with the way in which supermarkets contribute to our household waste. This week, I was horrified to see individually plastic-wrapped vegetables in a supermarket. That is crazy and unnecessary. I hope that the Executive intends to tackle that sort of waste.
Supermarkets give out 700 million plastic bags a year. I was pleased to hear what Sarah Boyack said about B&Q. If the supermarkets in Scotland followed the best practice that is advocated by B&Q, Ikea and others, we would reduce the number of plastic bags used in Scotland by more than 80 per cent. We heard from Ireland that 90 per cent of the revenue from its plastic tax comes from only 10 per cent of the retailers who are registered for it. If the supermarkets in Scotland only followed that example, my bill would be completely unnecessary, to be frank.
The issue affects us all. There are not enough planets to allow us to continue to waste resources as we do. I support the Executive's motion, but I have much sympathy with the SNP and Green amendments.
We all sign up to the kind of waste strategy that the Executive talks about, but we should not ignore the fact that a reasonable number of firms try to use their processes and products sensibly. They seek to use as much of the material from their production processes as they can and they increasingly dispose of any balance sensibly.
As legislators, we must seek to ensure that the regulations that we impose or translate from European law to achieve our objectives do not have unintended, costly or unnecessary consequences for firms. That is why I am glad of the opportunity to speak briefly in the debate and to raise an issue that was brought to my attention—fortuitously—only this morning.
The case involves a substantial fish processing plant in Kirkcudbright that deals largely with king scallops and queen scallops. The problem relates to the larger king scallops. The method for dealing with them results in a substantial amount of by-product of clean shells that do not go on to restaurants. There is no waste product and no guts attach to the shells, which are left after the scallops are packed and ready for the dinner tables of expensive French restaurants of the type with which I am sure the minister is only too familiar.
I am not about to share my tastes in restaurants, but I will help the member. The subject that he raises has been drawn to our attention. I hope that he will agree that it is sensible for us to enter into discussions with SEPA. We are not clear about why the relevant regulation has been implemented in that way. We will engage with SEPA and, if necessary, we will take action to amend the regulation.
I can recommend to the minister a good restaurant in Fécamp if he is ever across in France.
I will describe the problem for the record and to use up my remaining time. I do not know whether the minister has all the details. At present, Forest Enterprise uses 100 tonnes of clean shells a week to stabilise forest tracks and roads. The shells are particularly useful for that purpose, because they bind well with other material on the roads. They also have the benefit of greatly increasing the pH of the material on the roads. The minister will know that acidic run-off in forests is a problem, so the shells help with that.
After SEPA and the local environment department visited the firm this week, it was told that the clean shells that are being sensibly recycled would have to go to landfill within two days, because they were considered to be waste under the waste product regulation or whatever it is called. Doing that would cost the firm about £200,000 per annum. I know that the minister has given me an undertaking, but the issue must be considered seriously and quickly. The solution may be that the regulation is defective or that shells simply need to be recategorised as a different type of waste.
Does the member agree that what is classified as waste is an issue? Topsoil is considered to be waste if it is removed from one site to another, but if it is put through a riddle, which just removes the chuckies, it becomes a product rather than waste. Common sense is sometimes lost in the definitions of waste.
I agree. A substantial issue arises at Longannet power station, where the definition of waste has caused us tremendous problems and has not improved what we do in the environment.
If the minister does not take the rapid action that he has promised, the danger is that we will enter into a ridiculous situation that would fly in the face of what the Executive is trying to do. That is why I alerted the minister's officials to the problem this very morning. I am glad that communications in the Executive work so swiftly. I hope that the deliberation and decision-making process works equally quickly and successfully.
It is useful for me to begin by recognising again how much the Scottish Executive is investing in managing Scotland's waste. An allocation of more than £111 million in the strategic waste fund for this year shows that the minister is sincere in his determination to bring Scotland's waste services into the 21st century. That determination should be welcomed.
Having local authorities and SEPA working in partnership has brought real progress. SEPA has delivered the policy and local authorities are playing their part in providing the services and ensuring that the investment delivers value for money. The management of municipal solid waste has improved enormously. However, as we have heard, there are still concerns about the allocation of money for strategic waste management facilities. I listened carefully to the minister's assurances on that point, but major infrastructure, such as in-vessel composters, materials recovery facilities and thermal treatment plants, needs time for planning, procurement and construction. If the allocation of money is distributed sooner, we could add an extra 5 or even 10 per cent to our national recycling figure. I urge the minister to look into the timing of the fund allocation. The success that we have seen is heartening, and it would be sad if future progress were to be unnecessarily inhibited.
Although there has been a giant step change in the management of domestic waste, I am concerned about the management of certain kinds of waste outside the remit of local authorities. The sewage disposal issue is still not resolved. It seems a waste of investment for pre-treated sewage not to be used as a fuel—after all, it is extremely renewable. We could and should turn the challenge resulting from the tightening of regulations into an opportunity.
Research has been completed at Cracow University of Technology that shows that, if pre-treated sewage is burned for fuel, the resulting bottom ash can be successfully used as a commercially viable source of phosphates. The Polish academics are willing to share their knowledge in order to move forward this clever piece of resource management. Such innovation not only provides a good waste disposal option but increases our sustainability. The essence of good waste management is to create value from what would otherwise be regarded as waste.
As a few members have said, the creation of markets for renewable goods is crucial. The strategy is a cross-cutting initiative, and all Government departments must be involved in it at all levels. I urge both the Executive and Scottish Enterprise to place a greater emphasis on the initiative. We should be more up front about energy from waste—in all its forms, including incineration. Until the time comes when no energy is claimed by burning fossil fuels, it does not seem sensible to ignore the calorific value of waste. After all, domestic waste is often made up of renewable vegetable matter. In the Netherlands and other European countries, waste material such as waste wood that has been processed for fuel is classified as recycled. Energy from waste is regarded as a backstop for most of the European waste management regimes. SEPA's survey shows that the public prefer the option of generating energy from waste to that of putting waste in landfill. It is heartening that plans for that option are being pursued by many of the waste strategy areas.
It is also heartening to see the kind of forward thinking that looks to involve the planning system. That is necessary if we are ever to persuade individuals to segregate the recyclates in their homes, so that separate collections work properly. I commend the introduction of the new recycling bins for plastic that have been in use in this building since last week. Each one of us needs to take a stance on recycling at home as well as at work. I appreciate the initiative that has been introduced here.
The national waste strategy has provided a rigorous structure for Scotland, with clear definitions of the waste hierarchy and a realistic set of goals. That kind of integrated thinking has long been awaited.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am just about to finish.
The partnership working that is taking place augurs well for the future. We are still at the beginning of what can be seen as a long journey, but in my opinion we have made an excellent start.
I can give Eleanor Scott three minutes.
Thank you, Presiding Officer—I will be brief.
I will talk about the barriers that exist to meeting some of our targets; I have tried to raise the issue in interventions.
Some of the targets can become perverse incentives. In the Highland region, because composting is an easy target for councils to meet, the council is now collecting garden waste where it did not do so previously. The target has resulted not in a reduction in the council's waste to landfill, but in more waste arisings. The Executive must consider closely the effects of the targets.
On commercial waste, I mentioned in an intervention that sometimes a definition works in perverse ways. I know of a quarry operator who extracts virgin rock and crushes it for aggregate—that is fine. He also crushes demolition waste and sells the resulting product, but he has to have a waste management licence at considerable cost—again, that is fine. However, he also has to have the crusher specially licensed to crush the waste material and has to pay for monthly inspections by SEPA. We are talking about bricks, rocks and the like from demolition sites. The result is that the recycled aggregate is not any less expensive than the virgin aggregate on which aggregate tax is paid. There is again a perverse incentive as the regulations militate against recycling.
Another example is that of a small garage on one of the islands that, for heat, burns in a very small burner waste oil that is extracted from cars. It can follow that practice, which seems perfectly sensible, because it has a derogation from the regulations on burning waste oil. However, from the end of the year, the firm understands that it will either have to stop the practice or pay the same licence fee—rumoured to be about £50,000—that a big oil-burning power station would have to pay. If the garage has to stop burning oil—and it will have to do so—its waste oil will have to be sent off the island to be dealt with and the firm will have to import oil to burn in order to heat the premises. That is another perverse incentive that militates against a little bit of local, sensible reuse of what would otherwise be a waste product that would have to be dealt with at some expense and at a cost to the environment.
The minister referred to community groups with a great deal of warmth and appreciation. Community groups have a lot of energy, drive and inventiveness, which, unfortunately, they tend to have to use to secure year-on-year funding, because funding is not secure. The groups provide benefits that cannot be measured by the price per tonnage. They provide employment; in some places they make products, such as the flaked newspaper animal bedding that is produced in Golspie. That is a much better approach than bundling the newspaper and sending it to China for reprocessing, which is what happens to a lot of our recycled paper. Such community groups need much more support that they can rely on from year to year. They require core funding rather than challenge funding that they have to spend a lot of time bidding for each year.
We now move to the wind-up speeches.
The debate has been interesting. We have heard about a number of visions. The minister's vision is mostly focused on recycling, but it is good to hear that he is now increasingly focused on waste minimisation. John Scott of the Tories gave us the blue-skies vision, which seems to be where he wants to put the waste—up there in the sky. Sarah Boyack gave us the waste hierarchy vision, which is only one shade of green away from Shiona Baird's vision of zero waste, which is where we all need to end up at. We must answer the difficult question: how much waste is acceptable in our society?
The minister is taking his first steps towards that zero waste approach and vision by consulting on the waste minimisation strategy. It was nice timing that the minister launched the consultation on the strategy just before he came to the Environment and Rural Development Committee to discuss Mr Pringle's member's bill. That shows some real movement from the Executive. I hope that once the minister has examined all the responses to the consultation he will consider statutory levies. There are advantages in what Mr Pringle is trying to do. It is a good idea to create a level playing field for businesses—especially the big supermarkets—so that they can all move on a plastic bag tax, for example, without fear of creating competition with one another. Responsible business is now calling for a levelling up of environmental regulations.
I wish that the minister had moved a bit sooner on the waste minimisation strategy. The Greens have been calling for it for a long time and the Environment and Rural Development Committee called for it two years ago. The minister would have had a much better story to tell today if he had moved several years ago on waste minimisation. If we adopt the strategy and get progress on it, there will be a phenomenal reduction in the amount of waste that goes to landfill. We will be tackling waste from both sides: we will be recycling and reducing at the same time, whereas, as Richard Lochhead said, at present we are just running to stand still. If the minister adopts in full a zero waste policy, he will not be alone in doing so, because New Zealand has adopted the concept and the Labour mayor of Doncaster is mad keen on zero waste. We should all be working together on such issues.
Richard Lochhead and Sarah Boyack talked about the important issue of business waste and about how we can reduce the amount of such waste. Last night, when I looked at the Environment and Rural Development Committee's waste inquiry report, I got a sense of déjà vu, because it had a recommendation that was similar to one from the report on the committee's recent inquiry into climate change. There is a need to help business with waste—particularly small-to-medium sized enterprises, which do not have the cash to pay for environmental managers. The experience of the business environmental partnership in Midlothian is important in that regard. We need to mainstream support for all businesses in Scotland. Businesses have a vital role to play in achieving energy efficiency, which was discussed in the climate change report, and waste minimisation, which was discussed in the waste inquiry. Their efforts could save them hard money.
On the public sector, we now have important and useful league tables—though I hate to use that phrase—that show how local authorities are performing. For example, Clackmannanshire is doing extremely well, with a 45 per cent recycling rate during one quarter last year, whereas Midlothian is doing extremely badly, with only a 4 per cent recycling rate. We must ask why some local authorities are doing well while others are doing badly, because we do not want a postcode lottery for recycling in Scotland. One of the keys to Clackmannanshire's success is the strong partnership that it formed with Alloa Community Enterprises Ltd, a long-standing community recycling organisation.
Helen Eadie talked about community groups that are based at BRAG Enterprises Ltd in Fife. I remind her, of course, that Recycle Fife came out of the campaign to stop the Westfield landfill proposal. Maureen Macmillan talked about the important social element of sustainability in relation to many groups. The work that they do on supported employment provides real added value. It is extremely important that we do not lose the value of waste in relation to what it can do to create employment and to tackle some of our social issues.
We must have a culture of recycling. Sarah Boyack made that point when she talked about the importance of the strategic waste fund and the landfill tax in funding initiatives that can create a culture of recycling. Roseanna Cunningham talked about the importance of the strategic waste fund in pushing Perth and Kinross Council's proposals. However, I warn members against going for big infrastructure solutions such as incinerators or gasifiers that will lock us into solutions for decades ahead. Those solutions are at the bottom of the waste hierarchy, not at the top, which is where we should be. They are at odds with the vision that Sarah Boyack laid out and with Shiona Baird's vision of zero waste. Energy recovery is the last thing that we should do. We should be working at the top of the hierarchy.
We heard about some perverse incentives from Eleanor Scott and Alasdair Morgan. Shiona Baird pointed to issues of smart regulation, such as the need to ensure that small community groups that cannot afford licensing fees are not funding SEPA, and that large enterprises are doing so. The exciting visions presented during the debate move us towards zero waste.
This has been an interesting and well-informed debate, and there has been a lot of agreement around the chamber.
I want to start by commenting on the amendments to the motion. The nationalists' amendment started off very well. Yes, we must reduce waste; yes, recyclable materials should be recycled; and yes, we have to be aware that domestic waste is only one quarter of the whole. However, when I reached the final three lines of the amendment, I thought, "Don't think so small." Business generates three quarters of all waste, as the nationalists point out, so, to create a level playing field, measures must be applied widely, across Europe at least, to avoid actual or perceived competitive disadvantage.
Does the member accept that—as Sarah Boyack said—many powers that need to be used to reduce the waste produced by businesses are reserved to Westminster? The SNP is saying that Westminster, with full control over our waste strategy, kept us far behind other countries. If we had all the necessary powers, we could catch up with other countries.
I think that the member makes a fair point, but I was going on to say—as Sarah Boyack again pointed out—that the main driver for change, complete with very effective sticks, has come from Europe. I do not really care who does it as long as somebody does it.
In the Conservative amendment, the call to free up local authorities was a bit strange. The national waste strategy and the national waste plan were constructed from the bottom up, starting with local authorities. The strategic waste fund is awarded to local authorities for projects that the authorities themselves initiate. Local authorities have a lot of autonomy; they have been given freedoms.
I am sorry to say that the Green amendment was terribly depressing. I like glasses that are half full and not half empty. Nobody can deny that there is a long way to go. However, a lot of progress has been made. Often the initial movement is the hardest; once we are in motion, it is easier to accelerate.
I want to pick out two phrases in the Green amendment. The first one is "postcode lottery". That is a phrase I hate: I do not aspire to bland uniformity. Local autonomy, allowing local people to develop in the directions that suit their particular circumstances, is likely to lead to better outcomes and a variety of models of innovation and good practice that other areas can pick up on.
We were trying to point out that, although there is a 25 per cent target across Scotland, what we really need is a 25 per cent target for each local authority. As I said, some local authorities are very good and some are very bad. Having a single target for recycling across Scotland will not achieve as much as we ought to achieve.
I disagree. Maureen Macmillan suggested that we need different horses for different courses. We have to encourage people to do as much as they can in the way that suits them best. The overall result will then be greater.
The second phrase is "zero waste". The concept is useful in that it raises aspirations, but I have a couple of reservations about it. First, the unconverted might regard zero waste as undeliverable and might just give up and not make any effort to attain it at all. Secondly, I wonder whether zero waste is attainable only through semantics—in other words, by calling any final irreducible residue something other than waste. Having said that, semantics can be a useful tool. If we could persuade businesses and the public to describe materials that they now call "waste" as "a secondary resource", they would deal with those materials very differently.
I will turn now to some of the contributions to the debate. John Scott had some good ideas, but a daily bin uplift in Spain is probably more to do with hot weather than anything else. I would also worry about what are called "waste miles".
Shiona Baird usefully raised the issue of small community groups. I agree that it is important to acknowledge the contribution that such groups can make and to be aware of the difficulties that they can face.
Sarah Boyack made a useful and forward-looking speech. She spoke about closing the recycling loop and about getting businesses to consider not only their internal behaviour but design, in terms of product reparability, recyclability and packaging. Clearing houses could also be provided to encourage the reuse of items that their owners no longer want.
Roseanna Cunningham illustrated the size of the task that lies ahead of local authorities in Scotland. They are starting from a low base and every area is trying to move forward at the same time. Marlyn Glen underlined that point.
As well as focusing on how much more could be done if even more funding support were provided, Maureen Macmillan considered how much more could be done at no, or minimal, extra cost through more effective use of resources. Alasdair Morgan illustrated how easy it is for any regulation or piece of legislation to have unintended consequences. The minister said that he acknowledged the problem and that there was a willingness to tackle it. We hope that that willingness will extend to dealing with sewage, which a number of members mentioned, and the issues that Eleanor Scott raised about targets and perverse incentives.
I must conclude, so I will jettison half of my speech—or rather, I will recycle it. Members should note that it is written on recycled paper. Reduce, reuse, recycle, recover—we need to lift the focus up that hierarchy. Government can set policies, provide infrastructure and offer incentives and disincentives, but at the end of the day progress can be delivered only when individuals get the message and change their behaviour. I commend the Executive's motion.
One thing is clear from this afternoon's important debate: Scotland's record on handling waste still lags behind that of many other countries. Sarah Boyack was right to state that the Executive has not gone far enough or fast enough and, to be fair, the minister conceded that in his opening remarks. We are certainly not short on targets and we do not seem to be short on ideas or, as the minister outlined, on funding. What seems to be missing, despite the Executive's best efforts, is a strategy to translate aspirations into action.
Mark Ruskell and others rightly emphasised the importance of recycling but, as many speakers pointed out, the Executive's recycling targets seem to be as far away as ever. Only 12.3 per cent of the waste that was collected by councils was recycled in 2003-04. That was an increase of only 2.7 per cent on the previous year. As we have heard, the Executive's target is to recycle 25 per cent of waste by 2006. Members such as Jamie McGrigor and Richard Lochhead pointed out that, to come anywhere near meeting that target, many councils would have to double their recycling rates in one year. That is simply not going to happen.
The vaunted area waste plans are another case in point. The Executive has grouped councils together and charged them all with developing and sticking to an area waste plan but, as Roseanna Cunningham and others highlighted, in practice that seems only to have created bureaucratic delays for councils. I hear what Nora Radcliffe says and recognise that she believes in the glass being half full rather than half empty, but councils need to be empowered to make more innovative and flexible decisions that will be more sustainable in the long term.
Is the member saying that area waste plans, which were intended to avoid unnecessary duplication of investment, were a bad idea?
No. The idea was right, but it is the business of putting the idea into practice that seems to have got bogged down in bureaucracy, as Roseanna Cunningham and others have said. That seems to be the case with many of the targets.
Recycling is not always economically viable and, by the time the financial and environmental costs of reclaiming the products and transporting them around the country are calculated, it is not always the best solution. However, the answer is not simply to send waste that has not been recycled to landfill; after all, the Executive also has targets to reduce the amount of waste that is sent to landfill. The Executive hopes to reduce the amount of such waste to 1.5 million tonnes by 2006. As John Scott pointed out, far from decreasing, the amount of landfill waste has been increasing over the past two years—it has gone up to 1.8 million tonnes.
Targets seem only to restrict the ability of local authorities to implement the best waste management solutions for their areas. John Scott and Jamie McGrigor mentioned the potential solution of advanced thermal treatment, which—in spite of the doubts that Mark Ruskell expressed—councils should be considering. ATT involves the treatment of waste at very high temperatures in developments that, because of their small scale, avoid the planning pitfalls that affect incinerators. The bulk of the eventual waste is water and heat. The heat can be used directly or converted to energy—at best, it can be used for both. As ATT offers the added value of meeting renewable energy targets, it should surely commend itself to Mark Ruskell. SHREWS, which is a Scottish development company that is based only a few miles from the centre of Edinburgh, is among the pioneers of ATT. Why is the Executive not pursuing that technology more vigorously?
I think that Mark Ruskell accused John Scott of clear-blue-sky thinking, which I have not heard much about. I will resist the temptation to say that Mark Ruskell and the Greens sometimes indulge in pie-in-the-sky thinking, although on this occasion Mark Ruskell made some valuable points, especially on waste minimisation.
Much could be said, and doubtless will be said, about Mike Pringle's proposed levy on plastic bags. Basically, they account for only 0.3 per cent of household waste. However, his Environmental Levy on Plastic Bags (Scotland) Bill highlights some important points, particularly in relation to litter. I am somewhat intrigued, especially in light of the minister's reaction to what Jamie McGrigor said, as to why the Executive has not thrown its full weight behind Mike Pringle's bill.
The minister glided elegantly away from Mark Ruskell's question. Perhaps that is because the minister's forthcoming waste prevention action plan intends to deal with the very issues that have been raised in Mike Pringle's member's bill. I look forward to the comments of the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development on that when she sums up. Alternatively, in the spirit of what Alasdair Morgan said earlier, if the minister would prefer, I would be happy to discuss the matter with her over scallops in any one of the three award-winning fish restaurants in my part of the country, which is north-east Fife. Perhaps she could indicate whether she would be happy to take me up on that invitation.
The Parliament has expressed many different views about the progress that is being made on implementing the national waste plan. I welcome the minister's recent consultations, in particular those covering commercial recycling and waste prevention.
The household is the starting point for municipal waste; the small business is the starting point for thinking about how best to encourage more people to get involved in the process on the business side. We must use the debate to measure the progress that has been made in those directions. Members from all parts of the chamber have raised matters that illustrate how often the intention is affected by how the relevant regulations have been set up.
There is a tendency to demand that people behave in a different way. Such a negative approach cannot possibly take us forward. I was particularly unhappy with remarks made by the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, Duncan McLaren, at the weekend. He called on the Executive
"to set out what action it will take against those councils that fail to pull their weight."
I do not believe that imposing more unnecessary penalties is the way to deal with this. As Roseanna Cunningham pointed out, Perth and Kinross Council's approach to dealing with waste means that it faces the threat of fines—because bureaucracy is getting in the way of developments there. That is very unfair. To encourage people to come along, we should recognise that some councils are starting from a difficult base.
Would the member like to explain how he would compel councils to comply with the national targets?
Our party believes in local government working in partnership with the Scottish Government. That principle would be accepted by most people as the way forward. Everyone has to get involved in minimising waste and so on. The member may disagree, but I will come back to that.
I have some news for Maureen Macmillan. I hope that, sometime during its meeting today, Highland Council's transport, environmental and community services committee will consider recycling plastic bottles. The question is how the council can collect them and transport them to where they can be recycled. That is a major area where the Executive can help the process along.
The Environmental Levy on Plastic Bags (Scotland) Bill has been discussed. In evidence to the Environment and Rural Development Committee, British Polythene Industries plc made the point that it is the UK's largest manufacturer of polythene film products as well as the UK's largest recycler of polythene waste. John Langlands of British Polythene Industries pointed out that the company could recycle any scrap of polythene. Indeed, he said that the company's recycling capacity could be increased by 100 per cent, even using existing plant.
The question arises again, however, of who will transport the waste plastic to such factories. The waste programme has to tackle such issues. The Government has to give a lead; it needs to show from the centre how it will expedite progress on the potential of the waste plan. It needs to do so by means of simpler regulation and by helping commerce to make progress. By enabling recycling to be done locally, the Government can ensure that the transportation of waste is minimised.
Has the member costed those proposals? What subsidy would be required to transport unviable materials to destinations where they could be used?
That is precisely the kind of work that has to be done to make the programme realistic. Some goods cannot be transported. We heard talk of oil being exported—I think that it was from Shetland—which is ridiculous. Waste products have to be dealt with as locally as possible.
In talking about local recycling and reuse, no member has mentioned the burning of tallow as a fuel, in which the National Farmers Union of Scotland is interested. It appears that 22 EU member states will not enforce the waste incineration directive punitively against the burning of tallow to create heat. The point is that we are looking for a lead from the Executive to deal with that.
Anaerobic digestion needs certification and needs to be done locally. AD, of course, is the use of co-digest animal manures with source separated organic wastes from food processing and households. The Westray Development Trust sees as a barrier to development the fact that we do not have certification for anaerobic digestion, which could be done in many parts of the country. I hope that the minister can tell the chamber how such practical problems can be dealt with at this stage of the waste development strategy.
Many positive issues emerge from the debate, one of which is that the waste industry in Scotland could create between 10,000 and 12,000 additional jobs. I would like to hear from the minister how the waste strategy will increase the possibility of those jobs being created. Also, although more jobs are created in the interim, as we move towards zero waste how will those jobs minimise and become different kinds of jobs?
We need a strategy that moves towards the goal of zero waste, but we cannot have such a policy until the Government explains how it can be achieved. The SNP amendment says so, but the Green amendment does not.
There has been good debate and many wide-ranging contributions from members right across the chamber. I will do my best to answer some of the specific questions and to touch on as many of the issues as I can in the time that I have been allowed.
Despite what was said in some of the Conservative speeches, there is consensus across the chamber that we are, rightly, moving away from landfill and towards recycling, composting and other technologies that allow us to deal with waste. Our work in this area has been underpinned by the financial resources that have been made available through the strategic waste fund. It has supported local authorities as they improve recycling facilities, divert waste from landfill and prevent waste from arising.
Several members referred to zero waste and a number talked more broadly about the need for waste prevention. The Executive is committed to a policy of minimising waste and of raising awareness of waste. We have got to get beyond the rhetoric of the debate. Indeed, as Ross Finnie explained, we plan to issue a wide-ranging consultation on waste prevention.
I will outline some of the work that the Executive is already doing or funding in the area of waste prevention. WRAP is carrying out its work with retailers, home composting and real nappies. We have provided £2 million to local authorities to enable them to carry out audits of their own waste, which is crucial. Dundee City Council has estimated that around 7.9 per cent of the municipal waste in its area is generated by the council itself. Local authorities can set an example on how to minimise waste.
We have asked non-departmental public bodies that are sponsored by the Executive to produce environmental management statements, including what they are doing to minimise waste.
Reference has already been made to the eco-schools initiative, which helps to ensure that children become aware of environmental issues at an early stage in life. It is encouraging to see that 2,000 schools have registered with the eco-schools programme, and that more than 200 have been awarded green flags.
The minister will be aware that the Scottish Government will soon have a budget of £30 billion a year, which is a lot of spending power. How does the Government intend to use that spending power to increase demand for recycled products?
I intend to carry on with my speech, because in it I will elaborate on those points. I hope that Richard Lochhead will let me get on with it.
We fund bodies such as Envirowise and the business environment partnership to advise business on how to minimise waste. Several members have mentioned the importance of business, to which I will refer later.
Shiona Baird was extremely critical of local authorities, but I do not share that criticism. Yes, there is more to do, but I suggest that the member examines the most recent figures for the first quarter of this financial year, which show that 21 authorities are now recycling more than 20 per cent of municipal waste. As the member for Midlothian, I am particularly pleased that Midlothian Council has made great progress with recycling, which is up from 4.5 per cent in 2004-05 to 21 per cent in the first quarter of 2005-06. Well done, Midlothian. Mention has also been made of the business environment partnership. Ministers are well aware of the success of its programmes. I was a judge in the awards scheme in Midlothian. Along with other ministers, I think that it does a great job. Once again, well done Midlothian.
Will the minister give way?
I must make progress.
Maureen Macmillan raised concerns about Highland Council, to which we have already provided funding to implement recycling and composting schemes. I have invited the council to make a further application to the strategic waste fund to extend those schemes. Any further application will be considered against economic benchmark costs, which take account of rurality and other demographic factors to determine whether proposals meet the value-for-money considerations.
It would be premature at this stage to reach a view on the likelihood of penalties under the landfill allowance scheme, but ministers have the discretion to waive them. When considering whether to exercise that discretion, ministers would take account of all relevant factors, including what steps the authority had taken to comply with its obligations.
Roseanna Cunningham raised some points about Perth and Kinross Council. We understand some of them, but there were no delays in releasing funds in phase 1 where the local authority plans demonstrated best value. Phase 2 is complex, and we were asked to give more time, so we set a deadline of 31 January 2006. We will assess all bids, including that of Perth and Kinross, and allocate funds throughout Scotland.
John Scott, in an unremittingly negative speech, said that landfill is increasing, but that simply is not true. Recycling is having an impact, despite the growth of waste. In 2004-05, 1.724 million tonnes of biodegradable municipal waste was sent to landfill. That had fallen to 1.670 million tonnes for the year from July 2004 to June 2005. We are making progress, but there is a lot more to do.
Helen Eadie referred to the exciting developments at Westfield recycling park. Ministers are aware of those, and are aware of the plans of the Westfield energy plant. Indeed, officials have had discussions with the company involved. Marlyn Glen raised the important issue of energy from waste.
I turn to business waste. We have heard that SMEs sometimes make the point that it is not always easy for them to find recycling facilities. To help them, the Scottish waste awareness group is preparing a recycling resource directory, which will provide comprehensive information for businesses on the recycling services that are available in their local area.
WRAP intends to support trials on the collection of trade waste for recycling, to help establish which systems work best when collecting materials from SMEs. We have issued a consultation on the sustainable management of waste by business and public sector organisations in Scotland, a key aim of which is to seek views from SMEs on the barriers that prevent them from recycling and avoiding waste. When the responses are in, we will work with SEPA and bodies such as the Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland to find out what more can be done to tackle the barriers to recycling that small businesses may face.
Sarah Boyack, Richard Lochhead and others referred to the hugely important issue of markets. As Ross Finnie and others said, recycled material has a wide variety of uses. WRAP and Remade Scotland actively help to develop markets for recycled products. They run procurement programmes to encourage public bodies and others to specify recycled material when letting contracts. We are consulting on proposals to set targets on the use of recycled material for almost all public procurement building contracts. The proposals include a suggested target that 10 per cent of materials that are used in construction projects should be made from recycled materials. The consultation, which closes tomorrow, also suggests possible targets on recycled material in relation to the procurement of paper products. Several local authorities, including Stirling Council, Dundee City Council, Glasgow City Council and Aberdeen City Council already set requirements for recycled content in construction projects.
Several members referred to the community recycling sector, which is hugely important. To help develop and promote the sector, we fund the Community Recycling Network for Scotland. The CRNS is carrying out a study that will map out the sector, which is diverse, and help the Executive to consider how best to support it. We already provide significant financial support for the sector: our INCREASE programme provides grants to community recycling bodies and we have announced that £2.5 million will be available in 2006-07 and in 2007-08 to support the community recycling sector. As well as tackling waste, the community recycling sector brings social inclusion benefits, such as employment and training opportunities for the disadvantaged and provides furniture for people who are on low incomes. We take that important sector seriously and we welcome the contribution that it makes.
Mike Pringle referred to his Environmental Levy on Plastic Bags (Scotland) Bill. We have not taken a view on the bill, but we recognise that it raises several complex issues. We look forward to the Environment and Rural Development Committee's report and the subsequent vote on the bill at the end of stage 1.
There is general agreement that we need to move away from our historical reliance on landfill. The national waste plan lays out how we will achieve that. Following significant investment through the strategic waste fund, the landscape of waste management is changing and we are beginning to see results. Recycling rates have increased significantly and the public now have increased access to recycling facilities. We have provided people with the information that they need to recycle through the waste aware Scotland campaign, which is co-ordinated by the Scottish waste awareness group.
I will take no lessons from the Conservatives on the issue. The legacy that we inherited from the Conservative Government in 1997 was nothing short of a disgrace. Scotland under the Conservatives had the worst recycling record in Europe. We have achieved a lot, but we have more to do. We need to build on the progress that has been achieved to date in relation to recycling household waste. We are taking action to tackle waste growth and we are addressing non-municipal waste. We have made progress, but we appreciate that more is still to be done. The Scottish Executive and, I believe, most members, are up for the task. I believe fervently that the Scottish public are up for the challenge, too; indeed, in some cases, the public are ahead of politicians. I urge members to support the motion.