Environmentally Sustainable Employment and Recycling
The next item of business is a debate on motion S1M-2635, in the name of Robin Harper, on environmentally sustainable employment and recycling, and three amendments to that motion.
This debate concerns the massive potential for employment in environmentally friendly economic activity in Scotland, which I conservatively estimate at 50,000 new jobs over the next 10 years. In Denmark, it is estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 jobs have already been created in renewable energy, mainly in the wind industry. In Europe as a whole, 800,000 new environmental jobs could potentially be created. There is no reason to suspect that Scotland should not get more than its fair share of those jobs.
I covered the potential for renewables last year, and things seem to be moving a little on that issue. However, they are still not moving quickly enough, especially in research. In public transport, we still need to set targets on traffic reduction, which the Executive has so far steadfastly refused to do. The latest round of funding, with its emphasis on road building, has been a huge disappointment to the Scottish Transport Studies Group. Although road building might create short-term jobs, they are not sustainable in any meaning of the term. It is difficult to assess how many jobs would be created by a more environmental transport strategy, but if we take into account buses, rail staff, stations and signalling, track maintenance, increased economic activity and incremental job increases in areas served by the new or upgraded railway lines in Edinburgh, the Borders, Clackmannan, the central belt, the north of Scotland, Ayrshire and so on, we must be looking at thousands of new, sustainable job opportunities.
The latest organic farming figures show that the Executive is missing yet another trick by completely ignoring the contribution that a greater conversion of land to organic status could make to our environment and to local economies. Organic farming supports considerably more jobs than conventional farming; however, while organic farmers in Scotland may get a few thousand pounds over only two years—which is the meanest support system in Europe—27 landowning industrial farmers in Scotland receive well over £250,000 each in subsidy every year. I wonder how many jobs are created by that huge giveaway.
Furthermore, if the Executive followed the philosophy of environmental and outdoor education that was being developed in the 1970s, we would create more than 300 teaching jobs—and probably hundreds more—by expanding existing outdoor centres and reopening those that have been closed down over the past 20 years.
In the first debate on Green party business in spring 2000, I called on the Executive to step up its efforts to insulate the 30 per cent of Scottish houses that are seriously substandard, and to introduce new building regulations that would compel the house builders of this world to insulate to much higher standards and to incorporate so-called passive ventilation and heating systems. Oddly enough, the further north one goes, the more sense it makes to use photovoltaics and solar heating systems to cut down on electricity and gas bills. Sound research exists to support that assertion. However, there have been very few signs of further activity on that front, despite the fact that new regulation and investment could quickly create at least between 5,000 and 10,000 permanent jobs that would incorporate a very wide range of skills.
The main burden of my argument centres on the looming possibility that we might be throwing away the best opportunity yet for local councils and the Executive to adopt a waste strategy that could create 4,500 permanent jobs, with the knock-on effect of creating many thousands more. I have seen many of the consultation documents that have appeared over the past two years on local authorities' area waste strategies. In some cases, we are presented with five options and absolutely no hint of an underlying drive or set of principles. I cannot understand why the area waste strategy groups did not simply adopt a single set of criteria that would produce the best possible environmental action plans. I call upon the Executive to take the following steps to ensure that we create the maximum number of jobs and choose the best environmental options. The two objectives go together anyway and should be the bedrock on which we plan our strategy and base our funding search.
First and foremost, we need a mandatory target for local authority recycling. Such targets have been set in England and Wales and as a result they are streets ahead of us. Some councils have attained levels of close to 30 per cent recycling, while we languish at the bottom of the European league with 6 per cent of our household waste recycled. New Zealand decided to introduce mandatory targets and attained a level of 30 per cent in eight years. There is absolutely no reason why we should not do the same. Why did the Labour-Liberal Executive not set targets as soon as it came to power in 1999? Was it terrified of upsetting Scotland's Labour-controlled councils by giving them something too politically difficult to do, such as prioritising their spending plans with some favour shown to recycling?
We also need targets for fridge recycling—including chlorofluorocarbons—and the reuse of white goods. There is so much good practice around in that respect that such a measure would be sensible. Furthermore, we must have targets for recycling batteries and other hazardous household waste. Too many people just chuck it all in the bin. Others have little caches of used batteries, garden poisons, unused medicines that have not been returned to pharmacies and so on. Surely it would not be too difficult to set up collection points for those waste streams.
The Executive should set a waste recycling target of 30 per cent by 2010, and it could take at least six steps to assist in meeting that target. First, environment and waste resource co-ordination and advice centres should be set up in all large business parks. Someone's waste could be someone else's resource, and it is always possible for one to find it more cheaply on site than anywhere else.
Next, the objectives for the waste industry must be clarified, with the clear message that there has always been a presumption against the building of incinerators and waste-to-energy plants, except in very special circumstances. How will the Executive solve the problems that might yet appear in the Highlands and in Aberdeen? If Highland Council follows the logic of its consultation document, it will not be building an incinerator or waste-to-energy plant, even though every bid it has received from contractors contains a costed proposal for a waste-to-energy facility. Does the council reject those bids? If so, what will the financial consequences be? The companies concerned will either have to re-bid, in which case they will wish to recover the costs of their initial bids, or not be offered any contract at all, with all that that might entail. It seems bizarre that both Aberdeen City Council and Highland Council have been engaged in a tendering process for huge incinerators well before completing the first stage of the area waste strategy programme. For all I know, there are others in the same situation, because at least 10 other authorities were considering waste burning as an option a few years ago. What a mess.
We should be starting with the foundations. There should be additional support for community recycling projects, which are a valuable source of innovation and could make a significant contribution to the waste strategy. They use a mixture of voluntary and paid help and often provide jobs for people who find it difficult to get into the jobs market. They must also be viewed in the wider context of the huge social contribution that they make. Grants and low-interest loans should be made available to small start-ups, as they are in the US, where many states are already reaching the recycling target of 30 per cent and going beyond it—I have plenty of figures to show members later, if I get the chance.
The distinction between commercial and voluntary activity needs to be clarified. Many small recycling enterprises in both sectors find it difficult to access funds because of problems with the rules. Most of the funding in the voluntary sector comes from lottery, landfill and smaller funds. A new source of funding may be required. However, before we think of that, what is to be done about Scotland's share of the reported £3 billion that is lying unused in the lottery fund, as was revealed yesterday? That is scandalous. Is the Executive going to do anything about that? Will it press for our share of it?
Community recyclers were not included in all the area waste planning processes, which is reprehensible and an insult to the value of their contribution. They must be included as of right in all further planning at national and local levels. We also expect the Executive to set the best example in the use of its resources, through procurement, consumption, reduction, reuse and recycling. I look forward to the publication of the next audit of its environmental performance.
UK landfill companies have been using the landfill tax to ingratiate themselves with local communities and to support their own strategic interests. The landfill tax is intended to provide a foundation for the promotion of the production of energy from waste. However, it has been used to promote research to undermine the case for intensive recycling and glossy booklets have been sent to every council in the UK. The Environmental Industries Commission's waste minimisation group, in evidence to the House of Lords, stated that it had not been able to obtain a penny of the landfill tax to support its research. The access of the big companies to our local authorities and the exclusion of the local community recyclers from the development of the area waste strategy plans means that the process has been fatally flawed.
As a start towards ensuring a transition away from a throwaway society, I ask the minister to consider introducing a national mandatory target for recycling in Scotland. I move,
That the Parliament recognises the significant potential to create sustainable employment that will benefit both the economy and local and global environments; further recognises the potential of such employment to reduce the impact of climate change and toxic pollution of air, land, rivers and seas, protect and enhance biodiversity, reduce social exclusion and make better use of natural resources; in particular recognises the potential for new jobs in the sectors of renewable energy, energy efficiency, public transport, organic food and farming, nature conservation, eco-tourism, education and outdoor pursuits and materials re-use and recycling, and calls on the Scottish Executive to stimulate environmentally sustainable employment as a matter of priority, including by (a) ensuring that at least 30% of electricity comes from renewable energy sources by 2010 with further increases to 2050, (b) achieving between a 40% and 60% increase in energy efficiency across domestic and industrial sectors, including the introduction of enhanced building standards regulations for insulation, heat recovery and passive heating and ventilation, (c) developing a strategic plan for organic agriculture that would support conversion of up to 20% of land to organic production within 10 years, (d) setting targets for traffic reduction to further encourage a modal shift from private to public transport and to redress the present imbalance between road and rail funding, (e) setting a mandatory national target for recycling of 30% of household waste by 2010 and further, independent targets for recycling of fridges, re-use of white goods and recycling or safe disposal of batteries and other hazardous household waste and (f) producing, in order to achieve the mandatory national target for recycling, a National Re-use and Recycling Action Plan to include (i) additional support for community recycling, (ii) clarification of objectives for the waste industry including a presumption against incineration and waste-to-energy plants in new guidelines, (iii) a commitment to set an example in all areas of sourcing, consumption, re-use and recycling, (iv) new guidance to developers of composting operations including on methane reduction and recovery, (v) finance for and establishment of Environment and Waste Resource Advice units in all large business parks and (vi) steps to ensure that community recycling operators play a full part in all planning and development of area waste strategies.
I thank Robin Harper for framing the debate in terms of the link that sustainable development provides between the environment, and the economy and employment. As he points out, sustainable development must cut across government, which is why the Executive's response will address a range of issues under different ministerial portfolios. I shall focus on some of the issues that Robin Harper has raised in the areas of employment, enterprise and transport.
There are two good reasons for having the debate. First, it is often forgotten that there is a strong link between employment and the environment and—worse—it is falsely assumed that better environmental standards inevitably mean constraints on business and fewer jobs. Secondly, the Scottish Executive has a good story to tell on employment in general, especially on employment related to environmental improvement. The first principle in ensuring high and sustainable levels of employment is to create a strong economic environment. That has been a priority for the Scottish Executive working in partnership with the UK Government. As a result, the economic fundamentals in Scotland and the UK are good and we have seen the longest period of sustained low inflation since the 1960s. The base rate is at its lowest level for nearly 40 years and the claimant count for unemployment is at around its lowest level for 25 years.
While striving to ensure high levels of economic activity and employment, we must protect the environment and take advantage of the employment opportunities that it offers. One of the key aims of the Executive's "The Way Forward: Framework for Economic Development in Scotland" is to promote social and regional development and sustainability. The environment business sector, worldwide, is potentially larger than that of aerospace and pharmaceuticals, and it continues to grow at a faster rate than the economy as a whole. It is therefore vital that we target some of our employment creation efforts at harnessing part of that growth to benefit Scotland. We have undertaken to do that.
The Scottish welfare to work advisory task force has already established an energy and environment sub-group that is chaired by Raymond Young, one of the Scottish members of the Sustainable Development Commission. That group aims to increase the number of long-term unemployed people who are going into industries such as recycling and renewable energy by identifying skills gaps and appropriate opportunities.
There is a widespread belief that Scotland could be a major manufacturer of renewable energy technology. How will the Executive support firms moving towards that new technology?
Some of the comments that I have made point in that direction. The group that I described aims to develop employer-led routes into employment and to initiate local partnerships to deliver them. There are other aspects of that policy that I shall come to shortly.
The delivery of the group's objectives will be supported by the "jobs in the environment" support unit to be established by Forward Scotland, which has obtained £250,000 in private funding from BP over three years. Forward Scotland is a charitable body, part-funded by the Executive through the sustainable action fund that is designed to promote sustainable development in Scotland by creating such opportunities.
Many small businesses would like to create employment through the safe recycling of fridges. However, the Government has failed to make regulations that would govern such safe recycling. Storage is not an answer. When will those regulations be made? The European Union has produced the policy, but the Government has failed to make regulations that would allow small businesses to participate in safe disposal of fridges. When will the regulations be made?
I understand that regulations are in place, but that there are some issues relating to small businesses that Mr Finnie will address in his wind-up speech. He will give a response then.
The "jobs in the environment" support unit has prepared an initial report that identifies potential employment opportunities in the renewable energy industries—wind power, biomass, landfill gas, hydro and wave energy—and our enterprise initiatives will assist in pointing people in that direction and supporting the development of the industries that Sylvia Jackson described.
Robin Harper also recognised the importance for the economy, as well as for the environment, of having an integrated transport policy. There are good opportunities in the expansion of rail and bus transport, which are primary tools in tackling the challenge posed by growing levels of urban and inter-urban traffic congestion. The motion mentions an imbalance between road and rail expenditure, which was the position that we inherited from the Conservatives. In 1996-97, motorways and trunk roads expenditure accounted for some 87.5 per cent of Scottish Office transport expenditure. By 2003-04—the end of this spending round—our spending plans will show that that figure has fallen to less than half of comparable spending, even though our roads expenditure will remain at the same level in real terms. In other words, we have corrected the imbalance, not by neglecting our trunk road network, but by massively increasing our spending on public transport and other initiatives to ensure that we strike the right balance. From this financial year onwards, we are also taking on responsibility for the Scottish rail passenger franchise
Traffic congestion is an environmental issue, but it is also an economic issue because it has a major impact on competitiveness. Congestion costs Scottish businesses many millions of pounds every year. We are committed to tackling congestion for the sake of the environment and to protect businesses and jobs. For example, we are working towards the target of removing 18 million lorry miles of freight from Scottish roads by March, through the freight facilities grant. Before today, we had announced awards totalling some £27.6 million, removing 13.4 million lorry miles from Scotland's roads. We will continue to build on that. This morning, I have announced a further grant of more than £250,000 to Thurso Business Supplies, which will allow expansion of its premises at Station Yard, Thurso. Although that award is modest in size, compared with some of the really large projects elsewhere, removing those lorry miles from the roads of Caithness will bring immediate benefits to a relatively remote area of ecological importance. There are many opportunities, through the freight facilities grant and other methods, to tackle congestion and remove some of the negative environmental effects of Scotland's traffic system.
Renewable energy is key not only to the reduction of climate change gases, but to industrial opportunity. The same is true for energy efficiency. Through the warm deal and the central heating programme, many jobs have been created and many gains have been made in improving the energy efficiency of Scotland's homes. Those schemes demonstrate our commitment to sustainable development, to helping low-income households, and to benefiting the environment and creating jobs.
Working in partnership with the UK Government, we have created the right economic environment to stimulate employment. We have identified the environment business sector as a key growth area and we are working to encourage job creation in that sector. The Executive has supported and stimulated key initiatives to address social inclusion, employment and the environment.
I move amendment S1M-2635.3, to leave out from the first "recognises" to end and insert:
"congratulates the Executive on the progress made in integrating sustainable development at the heart of its policy-making and supports the Executive in stimulating environmentally sustainable employment."
As the minister said, we must congratulate Robin Harper on securing the debate. It is important that the Scottish Parliament takes this opportunity to show that recycling, sustainable employment and so on are not woolly concepts, but realities. If we invest in those areas now, Scotland will reap the economic and environmental benefits.
Members will not be surprised that I start my speech by giving some statistics from abroad. As everyone knows, the SNP likes to benchmark Scotland as an independent country against other independent countries.
Before that, however, I will deal with some information from the UK. Waste Watch, an organisation that is sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has said that if we can increase the amount of recycled waste to 30 per cent, we could produce 45,000 jobs. There are only 17,700 jobs in waste management at the moment. That shows that sustainable employment based on environmental practice can reap rewards.
In Denmark, 35 companies recycle 60 per cent of the country's domestic waste. Scotland could do with having 35 long-term, sustainable companies. In New York, a recent study on waste management found that a move to composting and recycling would create 890 permanent jobs as opposed to 350 in conventional incineration and landfill practices. The Bureau of International Recycling tells us that, in 50 countries across the world, 1.5 million people are employed in recycling activities. That business has a $1.6 billion annual turnover. Those statistics show that it is possible to invest in environmentally safe practices and produce sound and sustainable employment.
International comparisons are all very well, but I want to highlight a well-respected local organisation that, in two weeks' time, will tackle the problem that Andrew Welsh raised: the de-gassing of fridges. As we know, from 1 January this year, the process became much more complicated because of European Community regulations. I did extensive research before 1 January and found out that there is no facility in the UK that is capable of de-gassing fridges to conform with the EC regulations. On Monday, I visited Remploy in Clydebank and was told that, in two weeks' time, the new Remploy site that the First Minister opened in Wishaw will start to de-gas fridges from local authorities, beginning with South Lanarkshire Council. Remploy has seen an environmental opportunity and is using it to create sustainable jobs.
That is not the only good news that I heard on my visit to Remploy. I was also told that the company hopes to open new sites in the north and the north-west of Scotland. That particularly excites me because Aberdeenshire Council recently told me that, from 1 January, the only thing that it could do with its old fridges was send them to Manchester for storage. It is absolutely fantastic that a local organisation will provide sustainable employment in environmental management practices in Scotland.
Remploy has based the scheme on a previous scheme that it ran in Leeds that was worth £500,000 and employed 35 people. That scheme involved working in partnership with Comet to recycle white goods by passing them on to needy communities. That is the sort of sustainable employment that we must have in this country.
Sustainable employment is good for the environment. Recycling paper produces 35 per cent less water pollution and 74 per cent less air pollution than making paper by conventional methods.
With regard to the Government's record, I am sure that Labour and Liberal Democrat members are aware of last year's report card from WWF, which said that, in nearly three years of Labour government in Scotland, there has been no progress toward placing sustainable development at the heart of the Executive's plans. How often has the ministerial group on sustainable development met in the past three years? What has it done?
We have, in Scotland, an unsustainable industry that provides unsustainable jobs: nuclear power generation. It has a limited lifespan—our three power stations will be gone by 2015—but the lifespan of the deadly radioactive waste that it leaves behind is unlimited. Does the Government support new build in that unsustainable industry?
Germany has shown that it is possible to help create sustainable employment in environmental industries with the help of interest rates and investment subsidies to companies. Is the Executive prepared to do that? Is the minister prepared to put his money where his mouth is?
I move amendment S1M-2635.2, to insert at end:
", and agrees that these objectives, amongst others, should be considered for inclusion in a national environment plan for Scotland."
I welcome in part Robin Harper's huge motion. This is an important subject and I believe that there is an exciting future ahead for employment in the environment generally and in the renewable energy, recycling and tourism industries in particular.
There is growing interest, particularly among young people, in environmental matters. The prospect of employment in a related industry is what many are looking for. Many students, in their gap year, pay to work on environmental enhancement projects all over the world. That demonstrates people's growing interest in making a career in such fields.
It is clear that the renewable energy market will continue to grow. Whatever the outcome of the energy review that is being undertaken, there is a looming energy gap. The challenge for the renewable energy industry is to fill that gap as efficiently as possible. That is an exciting prospect.
If the demand for renewable energy grows, the work force must grow as well. One of the factors that limit the growth and development of the industry is the small number of skilled and capable people who are available. If we are to develop renewable energy, we must recognise that training and education must be provided. If we are serious about creating sustainable jobs in the environment, a new range of skills will need to be developed in schools, colleges and universities. That is a vital point.
When the appropriate skills sets are available, we will be able more readily to develop our renewable energy resources, whether in wind farming, wave power, tidal power or the deriving of energy through biomass production. One can imagine a new offshore industry growing up around tidal power generation with on-going construction and maintenance work being required, just as the oil industry requires it. Indeed, as jobs in the oil sector decline, one can imagine that they will be replaced by jobs in wave energy and tidal power generation.
Energy-saving policies will create jobs as well. Encouraging the installation of insulation and double-glazing across the UK would boost the building trades. We should promote that.
Of greatest importance is the technology that will be required to deliver renewable energy. It is important to draw the attention of entrepreneurs to opportunities in that area. We have the brains and we must develop in Scotland and the UK the skills and the technology to enable us to capitalise on what are likely to be enormous markets. If this debate alerts manufacturers to possibilities that would not otherwise have been thought of, it will have served a useful purpose.
I turn to recycling. A particular interest of mine—and of Fiona McLeod and other members—is the recycling of fridges. The fridge mountain grows daily. The Executive must do more than it is with its current policy of sitting, hoping that a solution for the disposal of fridges will appear. I welcome Fiona McLeod's announcement on fridge disposal. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that 2 million domestic fridges are replaced each year in the United Kingdom. Although 40 per cent of such fridges used to be recycled to developing countries, that can no longer be done under European Union regulations. I am delighted to hear that Remploy is taking up the baton and running with it. I would be interested to know whether it will be able to dispose of all Scotland's fridges, which must be a significant number indeed.
Given that the estimate of the number of fridges that need disposed of annually in Scotland is 250,000 and that Rhona Brankin, when Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development, answered a parliamentary question of mine saying that it was up to businesses to dispose of fridges themselves, we can congratulate Remploy, but should the Government perhaps do more to support businesses to dispose of those 250,000 fridges?
I agree entirely.
Household waste is another area in which recycling must be encouraged at local authority level. We must set ourselves realistic targets to recycle more of our waste. On that point, I have total sympathy with Robin Harper's target to recycle 30 per cent of household waste by 2010. Audit Scotland tells us that all councils failed to meet the Government's targets of recycling 25 per cent of waste by 2000. Some recycled as little as 4 per cent of their waste. That we recycle so little of our waste—around 6 per cent—is something of a national scandal when one considers that other EU countries, such as Germany, are approaching a recycling level for domestic waste of 90 per cent.
Incineration should be considered a solution of last resort, so more must be done. Increasing business and employment opportunities within the recycling and renewable energy industries must include solutions that will harness the power of the market, develop and encourage British green technology and give greater autonomy to local communities, as well as protect the countryside.
I move amendment S1M-2635.1, to leave out from "to stimulate" to end and insert:
"to note that the creation of employment opportunities in renewable energy products and recycling industries will require the creation of a broader skills base, and finally notes the need to develop in Scotland and the UK the technology to meet the growing demand for renewable energy, recycling and recycled products."
The debate has already proved to be worth while. Robin Harper's decision—in contrast to that of Tommy Sheridan in today's earlier debates—to have a lengthy debate on the important matter of environmentally sustainable employment and recycling has been successful.
Robin Harper's contribution to the debate will have influence beyond the outcome of the vote at the end of today's proceedings, whatever that outcome is. I congratulate him on his motion and the various issues that it raises. I also say to him that he betrays tell-tale signs of his former Liberal credentials, not only in the worthiness of his motion, but in its lengthy and convoluted prose. He must be aiming at a mention in "The Guinness Book of Records" for the longest sentence.
A sustainable environmental policy is of enormous and growing importance. There is now wide acknowledgement that part of sustainability is sustainable jobs and that radical environmental policy can create a lot of jobs. Acknowledgement is one thing; public policies that put sustainability at the heart of government are another. In Britain and Scotland, we have a long way to go.
Ross Finnie inherited the environment brief at a time when he was burdened with the foot-and-mouth disease crisis and the various other rural issues that make the Liberal Democrats' group meetings so enjoyable for urban members. Ross Finnie is doing a lot to equip his department to tackle the environmental challenge and the new First Minister has also undertaken to give a new urgency to something that has to be applied not just in the Scottish Executive environment and rural affairs department, but throughout the Government as a whole.
We must put effective policy drivers in place to deliver challenging targets for organic farming, recycling, harnessing natural energy sources, energy efficiency, waste and packaging. I do not know whether Robin Harper's targets are realistic; that is a an expert issue into which we need more insight. We have a national waste strategy for Scotland and we are declaring 11 area waste plans. It is about time too.
Does Robert Brown agree that, as state after state in the United States has managed to surpass targets of 30 per cent recycling of waste within eight to 10 years and New Zealand has achieved a target of 30 per cent within six years, it is only sensible to suggest that we could do the same? There is no essential difference between our economy and those economies.
My point was not about the desirability of setting effective and challenging targets; it was about whether the targets in the motion are the right ones and whether they should be greater or smaller. That requires more expertise than I have to offer.
In Scotland, we produce 16 million tonnes of waste a year. With 10 tonnes of resources, we create a tonne of so-called product. Two million tonnes of the 16 million tonnes are domestic waste, of which 80 per cent is recyclable. We recycle, as I think Robin Harper mentioned, 6.6 per cent, which is one of the worst records in Europe.
The area waste plans have no national targets to work towards and are, in essence, voluntary for local authorities. Even worse, local authorities are tying themselves into unsustainable policies, with which they will be stuck for years. Aberdeen City Council, for example, has signed a 25-year contract with a private company of which the main component is the production of a large incinerator.
Such a strategy gets the jobs potential the wrong way round. A study by Friends of the Earth identified that, per million tonnes, landfill creates 40 to 60 jobs; incineration creates 100 to 290 jobs; composting creates 200 to 300 jobs; and recycling creates 400 to 590 jobs. Good environmental policy is also good employment policy, but local authorities have missed that challenge throughout Scotland. The performance of Glasgow City Council, which recycles 2.4 per cent of its waste, or North Lanarkshire Council, which recycles 1.8 per cent of its waste, is quite simply lamentable. How can they be so far behind Dundee City Council, which manages to achieve a recycling level of 8.6 per cent?
Incineration is a bad way of dealing with rubbish. It emits heavy metals, dioxins and acid gases into the atmosphere. That damages human health as well as the environment. Estimates suggest that incineration leaves 40 per cent to 50 per cent of the volume of the original compacted unburnt waste, which contains some nasty substances.
We must take recycling seriously and use the levers of public policy to support, encourage and require it. Recycling creates permanent jobs and has the potential to create more. The Scottish Executive cannot create the jobs, but it can do a good bit to create the potential.
We are at something of a pivotal point. I hope that the minister will tell members when he sums up that the momentum is growing and that the opportunities that Lewis Macdonald mentioned in his somewhat underwhelming speech are being seized with both hands by Parliament, the Executive and Scotland.
I will try not to underwhelm my colleagues. I will start, as all members have done, by stating that, although the motion is an Opposition motion, I welcome the debate as useful and timely. Many of us also have a great deal of sympathy with the general thrust of the motion but, like me, disagree about how it should be translated into policy commitments.
On the surface, there is a lot of support among politicians and the general public for the principle of sustainable development. However, we also know that, when push comes to shove, that support can be little more than lip service. People are often frightened that support for environmentalism could threaten their economic prosperity. Many of us are happy to be a little green, but not at the expense of our well-being. Rather than addressing that concern, the motion exacerbates it. It is full of uncosted commitments. It is perhaps radical, but it is definitely unrealistic.
The only way to deliver sustainable development is to take people with us and to show that support for the environment can mean more jobs, not fewer, and that it can lead to greater prosperity, not less. We in the Labour party learned the hard way that, to be trusted to deliver social justice, we have to be trusted to deliver on the economy. The economic stability that we have now achieved and the reduction in unemployment that that has meant would be undermined if we were to go down the route that Robin Harper suggests.
I said that the debate is timely. Later this year, the world summit on sustainable development will take place in Johannesburg. Our record will be put to the test there. I also know that many of my Labour colleagues will recently have seen the Socialist Environment Resources Association pamphlet on sustainable jobs, which I welcome for the emphasis that it places on making sustainable development a political priority. I am sure that many more members will quote from that pamphlet.
I welcome the Executive's reinvigorated commitment to sustainable development. I am particularly pleased that the First Minister has joined the ministerial group on sustainable Scotland—I do not know whether that is a direct result of some of my questions on the issue. In the past, much of the Government's good work has been undermined by ambiguity and the lack of a clear message from the centre. Perhaps the First Minister will take his cue from another written question that I submitted and will lead our delegation to the world summit in Johannesburg.
Although I sympathise with many of the policies that are detailed in Robin Harper's motion, I feel that it overemphasises the need for sustainability at the expense of development. People must be able to develop while not abusing or overusing the world's physical resources. I will give an example from the developing world. In rural areas in the Philippines, people lived sustainably, if not in luxury, for generations. They grew what they needed and enjoyed a measure of independence and autonomy. When the multinational companies came along, they bribed the people to part with the land—to which they had no formal titles—and planted thousands of acres of bananas and pineapples. The corporations turned people into wage earners with no choice but to work for the corporations at the rate that they chose to pay and under the working conditions that they chose to apply. That is the opposite of sustainable development. I do not claim that people do not have the right to progress and to try to better themselves, but that must happen in a just and sustainable manner and with respect for democracy.
We do not have to look abroad for examples of sustainable jobs or excellent initiatives. The warm deal is probably the best known of such initiatives in this country. It shows that it is possible to create thousands of jobs and simultaneously tackle fuel poverty and ill health. It improves the lives of many pensioners, while keeping money in their pockets.
My final point is on renewable energy and the sustainable jobs that result from our commitment to it. This week, Scottish Power submitted plans to build the biggest wind farm in Britain, in my constituency of Eastwood. That investment comes because of our Government's commitment to renewable energy. The plans will help us to meet our targets of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and will benefit the national and local economy by providing jobs. The turbines for the wind farm will almost certainly come from the Vestas plant in Campbeltown, which provides 150 jobs in a remote rural area.
As Sylvia Jackson mentioned, we can do more. Scottish Enterprise is seeking to highlight renewable energy to Scottish companies and to encourage them to invest in what is a growth industry. We have come a long way since our reliance on heavy, smoke stack industries with mass low-paid and disempowered work forces. The future lies in building a sustainable, knowledge-based economy and work is well under way.
Robin Harper's motion is commendable in some respects, but it would risk much of the work that has been done. I urge members to support the minister's amendment.
It has been mentioned that some people pay lip service to environmental principles. I agree—we need positive, practical action. The Accounts Commission report entitled "Environmental services: Comparing the performance of Scottish Councils" reveals Scotland's poor recycling record. In 1999-2000, 5 per cent of household waste was recycled, but 93 per cent was dumped as landfill. Only six councils reported a recycling rate of more than 10 per cent of household waste. I am delighted that SNP-controlled Angus Council was one of them and has one of Scotland's best recycling rates. In one Angus initiative—the Angus community recycling opportunities project—a trainer leads new deal trainees in all types of recycling work, such as servicing community glass and can banks, bailing of cans, collection and shredding of quality paper and refurbishing and adding value to articles such as bicycles and furniture. That practical work provides employment and a valuable community service.
Recycling creates more jobs than other types of waste disposal. For every million tonnes of waste that are processed in New York, landfill produces up to 60 jobs, whereas recycling creates up to 590 jobs. The UK Government estimates that the 30 per cent recycling target by 2010 could create 45,000 skilled and unskilled jobs. We should all aim for that target.
The clear message is that recycling is better for the environment and for creating employment. Up to 80 per cent of household waste can be recycled. There is huge potential, but no Scottish local authority has reached the Government's 2000 target of recycling 25 per cent of household waste. That is simply not good enough.
Holland and Austria have overall recycling rates of more than 40 per cent, compared with Scotland's pitiful 6.6 per cent. A practical job of work has to be done, with a great reward at the end of it, if the Government manages to achieve the target. There is no reason why, by implementing changes and examples of best practice from elsewhere in Europe, Scotland cannot match the best in Europe.
Last July, the Scottish Government launched its £1 million "do a little - change a lot" campaign to raise awareness of what we can all do to protect the environment. Doing little sums up the Scottish Executive's environmental policy. It is time for a more dedicated and radical approach. By expanding recycling facilities such as kerbside collection and having a comprehensive education and advertising programme, Scotland could shed its shameful recycling record and create much-needed employment.
Good, sustainable environmental practice must start in the hearts and minds of every individual citizen, with each citizen voluntarily shaping an attitude of mind that looks to the public good and a better environment for all. With a people freely persuaded of the benefits of such a system, the best is achievable for Scotland. That is the way it should be.
As a Highlands and Islands MSP, I am particularly interested in creating sustainable employment in any way possible. I recently supported Alasdair Morrison's debate on wind energy. I pointed out the huge significance of the new wind farm turbine manufacturing plant at Machrihanish, both for its benefit to local employment in Kintyre and because of the technology transfer to Scotland from the Danes, who are world leaders in the field. I supported the concept of the enormous wind farm project on Lewis, with its implications for jobs in the Arnish yard, and suggested that similar projects should be initiated in other parts of Scotland, with the important provisos that every possible precaution should be taken to avoid noise and visual pollution and that the views of local people should be listened to.
For those projects to go ahead, it will be necessary to substantially improve the grid, so that the electricity can be carried to where it is needed. That would provide more employment. Significant local projects will be windfalls from wind farm projects, which will in themselves create extra local employment. The Executive must introduce a fast-track planning system so that applications can be more speedily processed. Individuals have been wrestling with applications for seven or eight years. That is hopeless if the Executive is to meet its targets by 2010.
I applaud the creation of small hydro schemes—provided that they do not block the passage of migratory fish—as the financial benefit will again bring more income and thus more employment to remote rural areas. People involved in hydro schemes smile when it rains.
I will now focus on recycling. According to Audit Scotland, every Scottish council failed to meet the Government recycling targets, but there is not a council in Scotland that would not trumpet recycling in evangelical terms if they were given the funding. I have one thing to say to the Executive, which sets the targets: no targets without markets. It is unfair of the Executive to snipe at councils. Recycling at any cost is not a sound policy. No target figure should be set by this or any other Parliament until there is a full economic and environmental rationale for achieving such a target. Currently, especially in the Highlands and Islands, there is a lack of reliable, sustainable and expanding markets to pass or sell collected materials to. In other words, the councils can easily afford to collect the rubbish but they cannot sell it.
Two institutions—Remade, which is based in Scotland, and the Waste and Resources Action Programme, which is UK-based—are meant to identify markets, but I have been told that that is not happening. Remade and WRAP should be given the task of identifying the precise way in which targets can be met. Councils in the Highlands suffer extra costs because of the long hauls to transport collected materials outwith their areas. New incentives are needed to encourage local production of goods from waste, which would also achieve Robin Harper's target of extra employment.
It is stupid to put all our eggs in one basket. We should not exclude technologies by making presumptions against incinerators and waste-to-energy plants. We should consider the policies of such countries as Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria, which lead the European field in waste management. Those countries use every means at their disposal to manage their waste and we should do the same.
It is essential for Government and local councils to work hand in hand. Orkney Islands Council's record of recycling 20 per cent of waste is commendable and Argyll and Bute Council's subsidised home composting scheme, which was advertised by leaflet drop, has been impressive. The council sold 3,500 home composters, which equates to one each to 10 per cent of all households. Thanks to its pollution prevention and control arrangement with Shanks, the council is well ahead on its targets. However, the council is faced with the expense of having to lift 1,200 scrap cars each year. Those are not counted as household waste because the nearest scrapyard is in Helensburgh.
To improve local marine environments and coastal employment, we need profitable aquaculture industries in our sea lochs to co-exist with wild fisheries. Sea lochs should play a big part in future employment in diverse aquacultures. If fish farming is profitable, conservation is far more likely to fall into place.
Although I share Robin Harper's wish for better public transport, I re-emphasise the fact that the private car is still essential in most of the Highlands and Islands. In that area, any movement of timber and other heavy freight from road to rail or to sea transport is most welcome.
I congratulate Robin Harper on securing the debate and on his thoughtful speech, which raised a number of important issues—so many that it is difficult to address them all in a debate of this length. Perhaps that is why the debate has concentrated on waste plans and recycling. I would not want to disappoint, so I too shall cover that area but I want to mention one or two other matters first. The environment is a topic to which the Parliament has perhaps not given as much attention as it should have, and we should be giving a bit more time to it, with a few more debates on how we can improve on our environmental record.
Robin Harper's bringing together in the motion of the environment and employment is positive. The issues are not, as is often said, in competition; they can be addressed together. The environment is central to employment in conservation, the agri-environment, woodlands schemes and tourism, but we should also be developing other opportunities, such as those that are brought by renewable energy, including research into and the development and manufacturing of renewable energy technologies, energy conservation and community recycling.
The Liberal Democrats are recognised as being at the forefront of environmental policies in the United Kingdom. At the general election in June last year, Friends of the Earth gave the Liberal Democrat manifesto nine out of 10 for its green policies, which was the same rating as Robin Harper's party. I do not think that the SNP or the Tories even registered on the scale.
Iain Smith is lauding the Liberal Democrats as a UK party, but does he consider that the Scottish Liberal Democrats have failed in regard to their 1999 partnership agreement with Labour? The agreement states:
"We will set targets for recycling in public and private sectors".
The Government has not yet set mandatory targets. Will the Scottish Liberal Democrats, within the coalition, be pushing for those targets to be set?
We have put sustainable development at the heart of the Government's policies. It is, rightly, at the heart of all policies and should be considered across the board. We have a Liberal Democrat Minister for Environment and Rural Development, who I believe will help to deliver that policy, although I agree that much more needs to be done to improve the work of the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament in that regard. The Parliament and the Executive need to work much more effectively with environmental groups to develop better policies for the future. We need to develop environmentally based support for agriculture, and we require much more support for research and development in renewable energy.
It is important to recognise the work that has been done by industry to develop good environmental practice. The paper industry, for example, has done a great deal to reduce the amount of pollution that is caused by its manufacturing process, and we should ensure that the industry's work is rewarded rather than punished in relation, for example, to water extraction and waste water directives.
On recycling and waste plans, we do not yet have good policies on reduction and reuse, which, in terms of the scale of the waste involved, are more important than recycling. However, we need to do much more on recycling. The recycling record in Scotland is pathetic—I will, perhaps, recycle an old speech.
We used to lead the way in recycling in Scotland in North-East Fife—North-East Fife District Council was, of course, Liberal Democrat controlled. We had campsite paper collections and civic amenity sites, which offered opportunities to recycle glass, cans, plastic and clothing. We had composting schemes; fridges were collected for recycling purposes; battery and oil recycling were being considered; and there were bins for glass from licensed premises. All those schemes contributed towards an effective policy. Unfortunately, the collapse of the recycling market led to many cuts in local government recycling services.
The landfill tax was another issue. If the tax is used as it should be, it can support new policies. However, although areas that did not have kerbside collections could use the revenue that was raised to support such collections, areas that already had kerbside collections could not use the money to continue to support them. The tax should be used to promote the environment, and not simply to put more money in Treasury coffers.
I agree with those other members who have stated that this is a useful and important debate. Sadly, I cannot agree with Robert Brown's criticism of Lewis Macdonald's opening speech, which I thought was a good exposition of the job opportunities that will be available if we grasp them. I believe that Lewis Macdonald focused on all the relevant areas.
Robin Harper's motion rightly
"recognises the potential for new jobs in the sectors of renewable energy … organic food and … eco-tourism".
We all appreciate that renewable sources of energy can and will make a vital contribution to combating global warming, and I am delighted by the commitment of the Scottish Executive and the UK Government to the domestic development of renewables.
We have a lot to offer in the Highlands and Islands. We have the highest average wind speeds in Europe and some of the best wave and tidal resources. Coupled with that, we have a long track record of renewables development. As far back as the 1890s, monks at Fort Augustus abbey installed an 18kW turbine on a hill burn near the village. That made Fort Augustus one of the first communities in the world to have a supply of hydroelectricity. Some six years later, the Fort William Electric Lighting Company followed the Fort Augustus lead. In the same year, 1896, the world's first large-scale hydroelectric power station started operation at Foyers on Loch Ness-side.
As some members present will recall, 50 years later came the pioneering efforts of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. Then, the potential of our lochs and rivers was exploited to help bring mains electricity to almost every household in the Highlands and Islands. For the record, the home in which I was brought up, in North Uist, was first to be supplied with electricity in 1970. The inordinate delay was thanks to the lords and lairds who then ran much of the Highlands and Islands through Inverness County Council, one Lord Burton of Dochfour being one of the great men of that era. Lord Burton is still with us, it is good to hear—wittering inanely about our land reform proposals.
Obviously, I am delighted that my constituency is playing a pivotal role in the exploitation of renewable energy. Last month, the chief executives of two blue-chip British companies came to Lewis to announce, with the Minister of State for Industry, Energy and the Environment, a £600 million wind farm development. All three gentlemen supported the proposals, with equal vigour. Not only did they represent the largest inward investment in the Western Isles; they represent what is potentially the largest wind farm development in Europe. I was also delighted when the Executive clearly committed itself to the Arnish yard in my constituency.
As Robin Harper notes in his motion, there is great potential for jobs in the organic production of food. Crofting, a non-intensive form of agriculture, is now recognised across the European Union as a viable and sustainable form of agricultural production. It is sympathetic to the environment and should be rewarding to everyone who is involved in it. Will the minister consider doing more to assist crofters who are involved in the organic production of both vegetables and meat?
The member is in his last minute, Mr Harper. We are running out of time.
I am sure that the minister is well aware of the success of the crofters' markets, which ran for the first time last summer in Stornoway and on the island of Benbecula. That has to be a welcome development, but I ask the minister if he will consider further support for the crofters who are involved in such production, further assistance for crofting townships and advice on soil husbandry and how to access markets. It is important that the minister uses his good offices to ensure that the Soil Association becomes less cumbersome and more accessible.
It is regrettable that Robin Harper's motion does not recognise what has been achieved since 1997 at UK level or since 1999 in Scotland by Labour in partnership with the Liberal Democrats. I urge members to support the Executive's amendment.
We have time for brief speeches from Colin Campbell and John Farquhar Munro.
My green credentials are very modest—my bottles and newspapers go to Renfrewshire Council's facility in Bridge of Weir. Renfrewshire Council provides glass and paper recycling facilities and pays a paper recycling company to remove the paper. In Elderslie, the council is running a pilot scheme that provides recycling boxes into which cans and plastic can be put. In Bridge of Weir, Brookfield and parts of Ralston in Renfrewshire, the council is collecting and composting garden waste, along with shredded Christmas trees, to produce top dressing for its parks and to cover land that is being reinstated. One hundred per cent of what is collected under the pilots is recycled; unfortunately, those pilots are running in only three wards out of 40. Execution is running behind the council's noble intentions.
Listening to Jamie McGrigor's speech, I was reminded of my recent visit to Islay where, with European money, a farmer was shredding all the island's used newspapers and converting them directly into cattle bedding. The material was moved from one shed to another, which is probably an ideal version of recycling.
Robin Harper's comprehensive motion calls for
"a modal shift from private to public transport".
I spoke last week about rail transport and will not expand on what I said then. We all appreciate the benefits and disadvantages of the private car. Car ownership grows daily and the car industry sustains a huge work force that is involved in building, selling, servicing and fuelling vehicles. The tax-earning Government and all the individuals who are involved in the car industry have a huge vested interest in increasing car output. The advertising power of the car and the car fuel industry far outweighs any funding that Government produces to educate people in environmentally sound solutions.
How do we tackle that problem? The environmentally generated jobs may have to be in place before any political party will take the courageous step of really getting to grips with moving people out of private cars and on to public transport. A bus can move 80 people who would otherwise be using 80 cars. A shift from cars to buses would lead to a reduction in the number of people who are employed in manufacturing cars. We all understand the challenge of persuading people to forfeit their personal travelling space, to cut back on unnecessary car journeys and to walk a mile to the bus or train. As yet, the missing ingredient is a sense of commitment and urgency from every citizen in relation to that challenge.
Everything that I have said emphasises the need for a national environmental plan for Scotland, which is the substance of the SNP amendment. I hope that members will support it.
Anyone who was in doubt about the availability of tidal and wave power in Scotland had only to visit the west Highlands last week to see the tremendous potential and power of those elements.
Scotland's renewables resources are the very best in Europe. We have a constant tidal, wave and wind resource. Surprisingly, most of the development in this area is undertaken in Denmark, where 18,000 people are employed in wind turbine manufacture alone. That is more people than are employed in the entire UK coal industry. If we can develop wind, wave and tidal technologies, the prospects for employment in Scotland are good.
Lowering the threshold for renewables obligation certificates to units of 1kWh would be an extremely useful way of creating jobs in smaller communities. Smaller projects would have the advantage of creating and dispersing a large number of new jobs throughout the rural economy. A secure, cheap energy supply for the future would be created, run and managed closer to the source.
The Executive needs to send a clear message to the developers of small renewables schemes of all kinds—biomass schemes, methane recovery schemes, small hydro schemes, solar cell schemes, and wind, wave and biofuel schemes—that they will receive maximum encouragement through facilitated capital funding from lottery grants, landfill grants and the renewables obligation Scotland scheme, and under local authority planning guidelines. Developers need all the help that the Executive can provide from those or other sources.
The Executive must not pass up this opportunity to support an industry that, in the long run, could provide jobs throughout the north of Scotland, perhaps using the oil fabrication yards of Ardersier, Nigg and others. Alasdair Morrison has already mentioned Arnish. We have all the required skills and experience of designing and building for the hostile conditions of the North sea. That means that we have the research and expertise to become world leaders in wind, tidal and wave power generation. The possibility of providing ourselves with a sustainable green power supply, supporting a variety of jobs, is within our grasp.
I suggest that we harness the elements to our mutual advantage and demonstrate that we are prepared to put Scotland at the forefront of this exciting development. All we need is a crucial financial push forward. The Executive and the Westminster Government must give a firm commitment to making available capital backing for the projects to which I referred, as well as for some of the vital new infrastructure developments attached to those. It is in their hands. Time will tell whether their commitment is real and sustained.
Like other members, I welcome today's debate, which has been of high quality. That does not mean that I agree with all the points that have been made. However, it is clear to me that members have done their research and thought about how the issues that we are debating affect their communities.
Robin Harper has proposed a huge topic for this annual Scottish Green Party debate. In my speech, I would like to acknowledge how far we have come and to flag up some of the key areas in which we need to go much further.
We in the Labour party have come a very long way in a very short time. If we go back to the party's roots, we find that it has always been interested in people's working and living environment. That concern has driven the Labour and trade union movements since their very early days. However, only in the past decade, since the Rio conference, have we directly linked our commitment to the environment to our economic ambitions.
Ken Macintosh mentioned the superb pamphlet by the Socialist Environment and Resources Association, Labour's environmental pressure group, on the opportunities that we need to grasp in Scotland. In 1997, and again in 1999, Labour committed itself to greening government; we can now see the benefits of the work that is being done in the coalition coming through in Scotland. Big investment is being made in renewable sources of energy. Today's debate is about not whether we are in favour of renewables, but whether those constituencies that could accommodate renewables schemes have them; in Edinburgh Central, we will pass on those.
The standards of energy performance that are required in our building regulations have been increased to bring us further into line with the northern European countries, but we need to do more in that area. In the next round of changes, we may want to consider photovoltaic technology. We are not yet quite ready for the mass application of that technology, but in very few years we should be.
Lewis Macdonald described the massive shift that we have begun to make in transport policy. We are seeking long-term investment and a better balance in how money is spent. Investment is being made in safer streets, safer routes to school, walking, cycling, buses and trains. We need to ensure that we cater not just for longer trips, but for short trips, too.
Almost everyone who has spoken mentioned the national waste strategy, which local authorities are beginning to implement. Robin Harper is absolutely right to say that we are at the bottom of the European league table on waste and that that has to change. That means making some difficult changes, such as reducing the amount of waste that we produce in the first place—few members have spoken about that this morning—and making maximum use of recycling and composting. The Parliament should welcome the first two area waste plans, which emphasise recycling and composting. Recycling and composting offer the most potential for job creation and provide opportunities for local companies.
While incineration is likely to be part of the solution to our waste problem, it is vital that it is not seen as an easy short-term replacement for our dreadful reliance on landfill. That is why we need to promote recycling and learn from pilot schemes, such as those in Edinburgh, which have shown that people will act sensibly if we make it easy for them to do that. That means providing local access to recycling facilities.
There is much in Robin Harper's motion with which we could concur, so I am a bit disappointed that the Executive's amendment leaves out the motion's first proposition, on which we could all have agreed. However, the test is what happens in government. Since Labour came to power in 1997, there have been huge shifts in UK and in Scottish Government policy.
Fiona McLeod's suggestion that our waste problems stem from the fact that Scotland is part of the UK is laughable. The fact that Germany, Denmark and Sweden have made huge progress has much more to do with the political composition of their Governments. In the debate, we should be positive about what we have achieved instead of using the opportunity to be negative all the time. We need to tell the non-governmental organisations, such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and WWF, that we take them seriously and that we are making progress.
We have an awful lot more to do. The report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution stated that we need to cut our CO2 emissions by 60 per cent within the next 50 years. That is a huge challenge. I believe that we have made the right first steps in government. We need to welcome what the Executive has done. We need to ensure that sustainable development hits the whole of the Executive and does not simply focus on the environment. That is what sustainable development is all about and that is why I support the Executive amendment.
I call Keith Harding to wind up for the Scottish Conservatives.
This has been an interesting and worthwhile debate. I too welcome the opportunity to contribute to it.
The problems of environmental improvement and recycling often fall to Scotland's local authorities to resolve. Many local authorities have taken steps to encourage recycling, but often there are considerable difficulties in their path. The greatest problem is that, despite the landfill tax, sending material to landfill is often easier on the councils' restricted budgets than recycling. Considerable costs can be involved in separate doorstep collection of recyclables, especially given Scotland's sparse population. There are also problems if the value of the recyclable material is low or if it has a negative value. However, many councils should, and could, do better than they do at present.
The real problem is funding. It is time that the landfill tax was used much more proactively to fund councils to promote more recycling schemes. For a start, we need to change the culture in our councils and in the Scottish Executive. Much though ministers may protest, government at all levels has a duty to reduce the number of glossy brochures that are produced. In view of what Sarah Boyack has just said, I trust that she would support such an initiative. Such a move would mean much less waste. From the parliamentary questions that I have asked, I know that the costs of producing such publications are considerable. The money that was saved could be diverted to schemes to encourage recycling.
Ultimately, if we are to do better, we need more markets for recyclable material. I believe that there are new markets. We need to encourage Scots entrepreneurs and inventors to harness our natural resources and skills to exploit them. Let me quote from the briefing paper that WWF helpfully provided for today's debate:
"The natural resources of Scotland - and the potential for industrial development that is environmentally sound - offer the key to a successful and dynamic economy. Further, in many areas such as energy, forestry, agriculture, fisheries, waste management and transport - recovery of depleted or damaged resources together with responsible stewardship and investment in new opportunities could lead to increased productivity, growth in employment and job security."
Indeed, there is great potential for recycling to be increased and developed to create employment. Today we have heard from various members about different and successful initiatives throughout Scotland. If we make better use of our financial resources, and if the Chancellor frees up some of the proceeds from the landfill tax, we can encourage more Scots to take up the challenge and start up the enterprises that will have a growing future in protecting our environment and increasing employment.
I support John Scott's amendment.
Excellent. We have picked up the bit of time that I was looking for. I call Adam Ingram to wind up for the SNP.
At the core of Robin Harper's motion is the simple message that if we are to build a society and a world in which the standard of living and the quality of life can be improved for all, we can no longer misuse finite natural resources in unsustainable consumption.
If I may borrow a concept from welfare economics, we are very far from a Pareto optimum—making everyone better off, without making anyone worse off, by moving down the road of sustainable development. It will pay us all to think globally and act locally, to use the catchphrase.
Robin Harper's motion is certainly ambitious but, given the level of cross-party support for most if not all of its targets and aspirations, is there any good reason for us as a nation not to take up its challenge? A national environment plan, as the SNP advocates, is required. We can lead the world in this form of economic development—we have done so before. More than 200 years ago, this city and country developed the philosophy of economic rationality; we were at the forefront of the industrial revolution, which changed the world beyond recognition in the century that followed.
In resource terms, we are a fabulously wealthy country. I am not referring to our reserves of fossil fuels but rather to our sources of renewable energy—the wind, water and wave power that Alasdair Morrison mentioned earlier. As John Farquhar Munro suggested, marry those sources of energy to our expertise in engineering and offshore technology and we could and should make rapid progress to shrug off our current nuclear dependency.
Although I acknowledge the steps that the Executive has taken in the direction of renewable energy, we must get rid of the timidity and we must strengthen the political will to move forward faster. Clearly, such developments would create jobs in both the construction and the operational phases and would reach parts of the country where employment opportunities have been thin on the ground.
As for energy efficiency, for the life of me I cannot understand why, given the similarities in our climates, we have not adopted the Scandinavian approach to insulation and building standards long before now. In this area—as in so many others—the British way has not been best for Scotland.
As many members have said, on the key problem of waste management Scotland trails a long way behind best practice elsewhere. We are limping along at the bottom of the waste hierarchy, throwing most of our waste into landfill. Given the failure of voluntary codes, mandatory targets are clearly required. Although it is important that a 30 per cent recycling target be achieved, how it is achieved will also be important. Robert Brown spoke about the problems involved with incineration.
I do not want to see huge waste management facilities, to which waste is transported from all over the country for treatment and disposal, and the carrot of local jobs being dangled in front of planning authorities in economically disadvantaged areas. Such proposals are in the pipeline for Killoch in East Ayrshire and Westfield in Fife. They seem to me to be designed to gain control of the waste stream rather than to minimise disposal to landfill or by burning. They may represent a quick fix for many councils but the receiving communities will be further blighted. When it comes to waste management, the discipline of the proximity principle must obtain to ensure the achievement of best practice.
This has been a very worthwhile debate and I congratulate Robin Harper. As others have suggested, he is the only person who can get something like two thirds of his manifesto printed on the business bulletin. That is a significant achievement.
In his opening remarks, Robin Harper focused on waste—a topic that was discussed by almost every speaker—and on renewables. I would like to tackle him on some of the points he made. I would have been happy to agree with much of the sentiment in his motion, but I regret the slight fixation with targets and I was surprised at his condemnation of having local strategies. Perhaps he did not mean to, but he seemed to suggest condemnation of local area waste plans.
The Executive is totally committed to tackling the problem that many members identified. Almost everyone quoted the Audit Scotland figures, which are not in dispute. The issue is what on earth we do about them. We have a lamentable record and, regrettably, in the years before the Parliament—I hope it has not been in the past two years—we rushed to the cheap option of landfill. Landfill was the simple solution. That is why we are taking a bottom-up approach and creating a national waste strategy for Scotland and 11 area waste plans. We are well advanced on those plans and have been encouraged by the response of local authorities in trying to develop plans that focus attention.
The area plans will be brought together to create a national plan, which will require each area to demonstrate that it is employing the best practicable environmental solution. In answer to a point raised by Fiona McLeod, I can say that those in the north, in Ayrshire and elsewhere who want to put the case for incineration will have to demonstrate—before the plans are adopted—that incineration is the only available and best practical solution. There is no question of our sitting back and simply accepting that as a solution.
Will the minister comment on the £50.4 million strategic waste fund, which works out at about £1.5 million for each area waste plan each year over three years? Is that enough to encourage those areas to move away from the initially cheap quick-fix solution provided by incineration?
The first point that I want to make—to Robin Harper—is that we are totally committed to tackling the problem. The second point is that there is only one published target, which is to reduce biodegradable municipal waste by something in the order of 25 per cent. I do not regard that as good enough, but I cannot set further targets until I have a plan in place. We cannot say, suddenly, that we are going to double, treble or quadruple the amount of recycling if we do not know how we are going to do it. The whole purpose of the national waste strategy is to enable us to find that out. In other words, the next stage is to start looking at elements in waste disposal and, when we know that we have the capacity and ability, to move towards more definable targets, such as those that members have called for.
The £50.4 million over three years is a reasonable start. Much is being done. Local authorities recognise that. I am not saying that it is enough—we can always argue that point—but I think that that valuable contribution shows the Executive's commitment to stimulating a debate about a national waste strategy.
Will the minister give way?
I am sorry, but I must move on to talk about renewables—although I want to take up a point that Jamie McGrigor raised about recycling targets. There is a question about stimulating the market; there is no doubt that WRAP has a lot to do in trying to answer that question.
Robin Harper and Adam Ingram raised a question about building standards, but I think that the point was incorrect. The regulation on building standards that we have just promulgated, which came into force in March, should improve the thermal performance of new construction by between 25 and 30 per cent. The Executive is taking that issue seriously across its portfolio interests.
Alasdair Morrison and other members based in the north, who have experience in such projects, mentioned renewables. We are wholly committed to that. Issues about consuming organic purchases were raised. I am happy to say to Alasdair Morrison that I am conscious of the need to get the Soil Association and others to work with the Executive in providing advice.
Fiona McLeod asked what the ministerial group on sustainable development has done. The policy that has moved much freight off roads and on to rail is a direct result of the Executive's commitment to sustainability. The introduction of building regulations, embedding structural funding in sustainable development, the national waste strategy and our commitment to renewables development are all projects that have been pushed forward.
We must use our resources better and we must use less of them. We must put the environment and sustainable development at the heart of the Government's programme. That is what we are doing.
I express my heartfelt thanks to all members in all parties who have contributed to the debate. Much has been said that is encouraging and that I can take to heart.
I will begin by addressing the Executive's response. I was disappointed that the Executive's amendment seeks to wipe out my entire motion and substitute for it a self-congratulatory set of platitudes on how well the Executive is doing at the moment and how well it hopes to do in the future. Not until the Executive's winding-up did it confront the centre of the environmental argument, which is the setting of targets. It may be a chicken-and-egg argument, but if a target is set, it is something by which one can measure success. If a target is set, one can go back to an area waste strategy and say, "The strategy will not meet the target. You have to do better." At the moment, there is nothing against which to measure area waste strategies.
I will lay to rest a misconception. I am not against area waste strategies, but they do not go down far enough. They do not go down to community recycling, where most of the recycling in Scotland is happening at the moment. The people who really know something about it have not been involved in the discussions at the level that they should have been. That is another point that the Executive did not address. It has not addressed in detail any of the advantages of setting targets for the areas that I have proposed; it has simply dismissed them. The Executive has not won the argument.
I welcome Sarah Boyack's speech. I am sure that she was invited to respond to disarm me. She is a member of SERA—the Socialist Environment and Resources Association. In one its pamphlets that I read she called for 25 per cent renewables by 2015. I welcome that. Freed from the shackles of ministerial responsibility she can express herself in the way that she likes.
Alasdair Morrison did not address the real problem in farming, which is the fact that the Executive will not introduce tapering, which would mean that small farms and crofters would get their share of the money that is available for support. He was a little bit coy. I recommend that he read the same SERA pamphlet that Kenny Macintosh quoted from, and the contribution by Hugh Raven on organic farming. Kenny Macintosh must have been writing his speech during the second half of my speech, because my fundamental point was that we should start at the bottom and not hand everything over to big business.
That brings me to John Scott's point about giving money to big business so that it can train more people. It may surprise him to know that Scottish Enterprise has already identified more than 70 firms that have the technical expertise to contribute to the wind energy industry.
Robin Harper may have misheard me. The point of my speech was to encourage the market to take up the opportunities that undoubtedly exist, not to give money to big business. My position is that the situation should be entirely market led.
I take John Scott's point and many of the other points that he made, which were most welcome.
I have a quotation from a book on making money from waste that addresses what John Scott and Kenny Macintosh said. It states that "the consolidation of power", which means handing it to big business,
"can easily run into conflict with innovation and innovators. Innovation from below will become halted when it becomes successful enough to threaten existing structures of authority … While large scale technologies provide administrative solutions to those at the centre, they create real problems at the base."
I also thank Robert Brown for his contribution. He said that 500 collection jobs per million tonnes will be created. I add that a further 2,000 jobs will be created in remanufacturing.
One of the chicken-and-egg arguments is that we cannot recycle until there is a market and we cannot set up a market until we have the recycled material. The problem has been solved all over the United States, in Europe and in New Zealand. The answer is to bring the two projects along together over a period of eight years. Can we not remember that it is being done elsewhere?
Members said that I am being negative. I do not think that there is anything negative in my motion. My motion is positive. I am saying that the environment is not a problem; it is an opportunity to be grasped as soon as possible.
I have notes on almost everyone else's speech, but I am sorry that there will not be time to mention them. The Executive says that the environment is at the heart of all its policies. That heart is beating a little bit faintly. I prescribe a diet and some exercise—a diet of the best available information on the environment and recycling and an exercise of the mind to ensure that we get the right solution.
I have already moved my motion and wish to indicate that I am happy to accept the SNP amendment.