Chamber and committees

We can absolutely look at that. When the provisions are being developed, we will look at which and how many products are being disposed of and what is being dealt with in what businesses. Absolutely, understanding what cost recovery might look like can be part of that conversation.

We will probably add to the provisions over time. We still need to develop the process and then get it started. Yes, I can see us probably initially estimating a low enforcement level as companies come into compliance, but as more items and businesses are added to the scheme in future years, one can imagine that enforcement might increase.

There is some interesting data on the reuse of items. In France, for example, restrictions have been imposed on clothing, cosmetics, hygiene products and electrical items. Amazon has a charity that deals with those sorts of items, and it has delivered more than 500,000 items, worth £10 million, to families in need. Although the idea is to work with businesses so that they comply, part of the aim of the provisions is to create an overall benefit to society from making sure that not only are we not wasting resources and the valuable materials that go into such products but, where the products are safe and in good working order, we can get them to people who really need them during a cost of living crisis and also create a wider benefit to society rather than let things go to waste. There is, therefore, a need to look at the big picture to understand that the provisions will ramp up over time.

The member is talking about costs for communications and development of the process. The costs in the financial memorandum are specifically for enforcement, but I am sure the member is correct that, in order to implement such a scheme successfully, money for communications will be needed up front, which will be determined by the scale of the scheme and the businesses involved.

There are many provisions in the bill. I assume that you are referring specifically to the code of practice for local authorities, or do you mean more generally?

Absolutely; there will need to be investment. I am looking now at the amount of money that we have given Glasgow in this area. It has had £21 million from the recycling improvement fund. The member is correct that there needs to be investment in infrastructure, especially, in order to enable the scheme. That is why we have the recycling improvement fund, and that is why we invested more than £1 billion through the strategic waste fund between 2008 and 2022.

There is an interesting point, though, around designing recycling systems to make things easier. I also live in tenement land, where we have big bins in the streets, and I know that one of the improvements from the recycling improvement fund in Edinburgh is the change in design of the bin lids to make it more obvious what type of material should go into the bin. Similarly, East Lothian Council has a scheme involving some very clever trucks that makes it easy for people to put in the right type of recyclate and more difficult to put in the wrong type. Those sorts of design improvements make a big difference to decontamination. Some of it involves fairly cutting-edge research about how people interact with recycling systems. Sometimes, it is not enough to give people information; you need to make it easy for them to do the right thing. If it is difficult for people to get the big black bin bag into the recycling bin, they will not do it; instead, they will recycle properly.

Particularly in the code of practice, I want to work towards having common good design. That means that, where councils across Scotland are getting good results, we can share the knowledge from those areas with other councils and work together to have the best type of recycling. It is not about just investment. That is one of the challenges that we have seen through the investment in the strategic waste fund. Although that was more than £1 billion, it did not bring us up to the kind of recycling rates that we hoped for, so more is needed. That is why some of the provisions in the bill around targets and the co-design process, which will allow for that information sharing, are also needed. This is not something that you can just throw money at; it needs that design element as well.

It is more about having a proportionate level of scrutiny. With any number of single-use items—cups, vapes, plastic bags—one can imagine that requiring primary legislation for each of those products would not only be burdensome on parliamentary time but mean that we would not be able to react as quickly. Primary legislation would take a great deal of time and mean that any potential pollution problem would last for the many years during which the primary legislation was going through its stages. Secondary legislation allows the Parliament to be nimble in reacting to new products that come on line and allows the level of scrutiny that committees and members of the Parliament deem to be appropriate.

The provisions will also have gone through the co-design process, which will be transparent and will have had input from the stakeholders.

That is exactly the point that we have been discussing, which is about the framework. Look at the example of the plastic bag charge. Businesses are allowed to recoup their costs for that charge. If we had a single-use cup charge, it might be managed along those lines, but it might be managed differently. We do not have that information available because it has not yet been developed to that level of detail.

That is because those things are being developed. Extended producer responsibility is being developed UK-wide, led by the UK Government, which is engaging with businesses on how to develop that scheme.

There is a principle that we would not double charge businesses, so, once the UK-wide deposit return scheme gets going, businesses that have those sorts of packaging will do their producer responsibility bit under the deposit return scheme. They would not be double charged with the EPR. In fact, my understanding is that the deposit return scheme will cost some businesses substantially less than what they might be getting charged under a standard producer responsibility model for packaging. That will drive businesses to want to get the deposit return scheme up and going. It is a big shift in our society from having public funds cleaning up our environment to making sure that private interests, under the polluter-pays model, do it, too.

There is a big point here that I am grateful to Jamie Halcro Johnston for raising. This is also about incentivising businesses to become more efficient and to choose to use packaging that is easier to recycle. At the moment, there is no penalty or advantage, and a business may just decide to use material that is not very recyclable. Once extended producer responsibility for packaging comes in, the fee amount that they will be charged will depend on how recyclable their material is. That will incentivise businesses to change their practice. There is a provision in the bill about reporting on sectoral waste and surplus. It has been shown that, when businesses implement good practice, it helps them to focus on reducing waste and, overall, it reduces their costs. This is part of a big shift in our economy to the polluter-pays model and to efficiency savings. We can drill down into each provision of the bill, if the member wishes, and talk about specific ones.

No, and nor would it be appropriate for there to be one. The relationship between the SNIB and Circularity Scotland, the private business that I believe that you are alluding to, was between them. The Scottish Government was not involved in that.