Chamber and committees

As I highlighted, the circular economy strategy, as set out in the bill, talks about reduction in consumption of materials. The most effective reduction in consumption is to move materials up the waste hierarchy towards minimising their use in the first place, and towards reuse over discarding and recycling. That is built right into the strategy.

We have had a bit of discussion about what details might be included in the bill, but strategies would be produced every five years. As Gareth Heavisides has highlighted, they relate to particular sectors and systems—for example, putting in place repair cafes and the systems that we would need in order to implement that approach. The strategy sets out space for those to be created.

I have not had any conversations with it. I do not know whether officials have had any.

We will look at that in consultation. It is necessary to ensure that goods are not being produced and then sent straight to incineration or landfill. I am sure that the member can appreciate that, during a cost of living crisis, it is absolutely in our interest to ensure that perfectly usable goods—

Of course. I am familiar with the work of the Remakery, as I was a board member for a brief time but resigned that post when I took up my ministerial post. Organisations such as that do much good work, not only in getting goods into the hands of people who could really use them during the cost of living crisis, but in ensuring that nothing is wasted and that materials are put to good use. Part of the route map looks at how we can support such businesses. I am keen for you all to see that draft route map, which will be with you as soon as we can get it to you.

Absolutely, and not only for the mainstreaming aspect that you mention—to make sure that everybody participates—but to get the best value for the recyclate. I know that you have taken evidence on that. The larger the volume of good-quality, clean recyclate that we can collect, the more it will be worth and the greater the value we can get for it.

I am sorry to interrupt, Janet, but I think that you are talking about local authority targets. Mr Ruskell, are you referring to the national targets?

No amendments have been proposed to me, but I am all ears if there are specific ones that the member or others have in mind. I have certainly had many discussions with environmental non-governmental organisations on the matter of targets, but they have not presented me with what they think the targets should be; they have simply said that they think that we should have some, and we agree. That is why the provision to create targets is in the bill.

That is something that I have been thinking about a lot. There are three basic approaches to problematic items, particularly single-use items. One approach is to ban them. That is the approach that we have taken to certain single-use plastic items, such as styrofoam cups. We are looking at that approach to single-use vapes at the UK level. Another approach is to introduce charges, which is what we did for single-use plastic bags and are thinking about doing for cups. Another approach is to use producer responsibility schemes, such as the deposit return scheme and the packaging scheme. Europe is considering such a scheme for textiles.

We have those three broad tools that we can use for particular items. It is a question of ensuring that we are using the right tool for the right job. I think that banning is the right tool for the job in certain cases. That is why we are considering that approach at the four-nations level for single-use vapes. However, we do not require any provisions in the bill for that because we already have the powers that we need.

As we have already discussed, the intention is to use the provision on reporting of waste and surpluses in the first instance for food waste in particular, targeting those waste streams that have the biggest environmental impact. We are considering larger businesses—I have given the examples of businesses such as Tesco, Unilever and Hovis, which already carry out such public reporting. It should be really clear what kind of businesses and sectors we are looking at. We might look at the construction sector as a follow-on.

I recently met Ewan MacDonald-Russell of the Scottish Retail Consortium, who had some of the concerns that you mention. I have agreed to meet him early in the new year and to meet some of his members who already do such reporting. The concern that he raised with me—perhaps he brought it to your evidence session as well—was exactly how onerous the reporting will be and what it will look like. However, given that some of his members already report such data voluntarily, I considered it a good opportunity to meet them to understand what they do and whether it would meet our requirements so that we have a working model to go from.

Ewan MacDonald-Russell said that his members would find it comforting to know what those reporting requirements would be. I have endeavoured, as we have with the single-use cup charges and with COSLA, to start working on that even before the bill is passed, so that businesses can have some comfort as to what they will be looking at.

We already have extensive powers to require businesses to report. I will hand over to Ailsa Heine for more details on that.