Question reference: S5W-10794
- Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 16 August 2017
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Current status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 1 September 2017
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what consideration it has given to introducing recycling targets for local authorities, based on carbon impact of materials.
Answer
The Scottish Government currently has no plans to set recycling targets based on carbon indicators, or to set individual recycling targets for local authorities.
Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS) has developed a Scottish Carbon Metric, which measures the whole life carbon impacts of Scotland’s waste using a ground-breaking carbon accounting approach that employs consumption boundaries to national waste data. This method includes the carbon impacts across the whole life cycle of a product.
ZWS published the first estimation of Scotland’s waste carbon footprint in 2013. Later this year, ZWS will publish the latest Technical Report using data from 2014 and 2015. Thereafter, annual reports will be published.
The Scottish Carbon Metric will help all of us, including local authorities, understand the impact of waste on carbon emissions. It will also enable local authorities to see how the valuable recycling and resource management they do contributes to Scotland’s performance in relation to climate change targets.