Chamber and committees

The bill certainly looks ahead. In no way are we standing still. At the moment, local authorities are doing a lot of work. There is a voluntary code of practice in place for Scottish local authorities. Every local authority has signed up to reach a certain standard of recycling, but at present, only a third of local authorities adhere to that standard. Our local authorities are already on a journey. They already have a destination that they are trying to reach. The bill puts in place provisions for the next step beyond that.

Local authorities know where they are going to meet the existing code of practice. There is the recycling improvement fund, which nearly all local authorities have had money from. They are working very hard to move towards the existing standard. The bill is the very early days of looking ahead at the next stage and bringing recycling, waste management and resource management in Scotland up to a European standard, and more in line with what Wales is doing.

Councils know where they are in the near term; the bill simply represents the starting line for the next step. That is why the co-design process is so important. It will mean that the work on all the stuff in the bill will be able to start, and we can get into detailed conversations so that the councils will be ready for each of the specific provisions—whether on charging for coffee cups or implementing new powers for enforcement around littering—as they come forward.

I understand the challenge that the committee has in scrutinising a bill that has so many provisions in it, and I am happy to dive into any particular provision that you would like to look at.

The discrepancy is in understanding the difference between a framework bill and the provisions that will follow from that framework.

Where we need to end up and the outcomes are very clear, because they are based on the targets—the circular economy targets, which are national targets, and the targets for local authorities. The vision here is that we know that we need to achieve a certain level of reuse and recycling in order to hit our net zero targets. That involves putting those targets in place and then having a co-design process in which all of us, as a nation and as local authorities, say, “We want to achieve these things. How do we best do that?” That is where the co-design piece comes in. The leadership piece comes in on the targets. We know that we have to hit net zero, and we know that that means achieving certain recycling rates. It is then up to us to work with councils on how we can best do that, because the way in which we do that for a tenement in Edinburgh will look quite different from the way in which we do it on a remote island.

I think that I would give a 10 for the FM, because it is a strategic one. The bill, as a framework bill, is a strategic—

That detail cannot be there as part of a framework bill. That is not really the nature of the enabling bill. However, it will be presented in secondary legislation and it will then undergo parliamentary scrutiny.

Absolutely. We already have a voluntary code of practice for local authorities in Scotland to which every local authority in Scotland has signed up. That is what local authorities are working towards; indeed, the Scottish Government has invested £1 billion in local authorities in addition to the recycling improvement fund, which is around £70 million. Local authorities are working towards the voluntary code of practice, but, at this time, only about a third of them comply with it.

As a direction of travel, all local authorities are moving towards that code of practice, and it is a well-understood code. We know that the investment has been helping local authorities in that direction.

Although the code of practice is good, it will not enable Scotland to reach our waste target. It will need to be upgraded to the existing code of practice plus, and that “plus” is what the co-design process needs to create. The upgraded code will also unlock enormous opportunities for us. For example, most local authorities do not look at textile recycling, but textiles are very valuable materials. I have been hearing from charities that work in this space that people steal textiles because they are so valuable. If they become part of the upgraded code of practice that local authorities agree on, there will be some financial and revenue-raising opportunities for councils around producing good-quality textile recycling.

There are other opportunities that are not covered in the existing code, such as the collection of pots, tubs and trays and films. Those materials are also hugely valuable. If they can be collected in quantity and kept clean and sorted, there is money to be made. So, with that “plus” will need to come a discussion about how any additional provisions over and above the existing code of practice will reduce litter and waste and help us to reach net zero and ensure that we unlock those opportunities. If the council can say that it can produce X amount of a certain kind of recycling, and that it will be clean and sorted to a certain standard, investors will come in and say, “If you can produce that reliably, I will invest in your site, which will create jobs in recycling plants”. That is the kind of business opportunity that we hope to unlock with the upgraded code of practice.

—or that you cannot introduce any legislation until you have done the co-design on all those. That is not a sensible process. The sensible process is to set out what our intentions are: we have these targets to meet; we are going to enable these kinds of powers; and then we will work on the detail of each of them. We will get reporting on food waste. We have had those conversations, but members have suggested that we do textiles or construction next, so that we can then go down that path knowing how those processes work.

There are examples in other countries of how the regulations might look and might be implemented, so we can give an idea today, and I have given several examples of the kind of things that we will bring forward with the bill. The point is that you need to have the framework in place to hang those details off. If you did the details first, you would end up with very cumbersome, specific primary legislation, which you would then have to do all over again for every new product that you wanted to add to that.

The bill will allow councils more enforcement powers and will bring us into line with what is available in England and Wales. Our councils are currently fairly limited in what they can do in relation to littering from vehicles, and the bill will increase that provision.

You are absolutely right that it can be difficult to identify littering from vehicles. We have a pilot programme going on. LitterCam camera technology is being used on the trunk road network to understand how we can identify people who are committing those sorts of offences. We can move that forward. We have some examples. Bradford Council installed closed-circuit television cameras at a cost of £16,000, and, over about three months, the council issued that same amount in penalties. Therefore, once councils have the powers, there can be advantages to them using cameras and so on to collect fines from offenders.

We know that there will be value for money because of the opportunities that will be unlocked. I will give some examples. We know that the contamination of our waste stream costs local authorities money, that litter on the streets costs them in collection charges and that businesses are producing perfectly good goods that go straight to landfill or for incineration—during a cost of living crisis, perfectly good food is being sent for incineration or to landfill instead of going into people’s mouths.

There are some really good statistics. For example, for every £1 that we invest in reducing food waste, we get £250-worth of benefit for our local communities, because we not only prevent that waste for the businesses involved but ensure that the product—perfectly good food that might have had a bad label put on it or something—gets into hungry mouths. There are benefits to reaching net zero and to making sure that goods and materials from our society actually get used, especially by people who need them. That is an immeasurable good, and I am so glad that we are able to bring forward such legislation.

We do not know what the code of practice plus will look like; it will be part of the co-design process. As I said earlier in the session—I am just trying to find it in my notes—it is roughly proportionate. Zero Waste Scotland estimates that to bring all local authorities in line with the existing code of practice would cost about £88.4 million. The recycling improvement fund is £70 million. They are proportionate estimates and then some money that is allocated from local authorities’ budgets. The capital investment is broadly in line with the existing code of practice but the upgraded code will need more. That is where we need to look at the benefits from what might come after the recycling improvement fund can be discussed, and at things like the extended producer responsibility for packaging, which represents another source of funding—all the pieces of what the code of practice plus looks like. We are really at the starting point with that, with what the opportunities are and with what the funding might look like.