Chamber and committees

Certain subsectors have been identified and prioritised but planned work has been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Zero Waste Scotland and partners have developed a specific toolkit for the hospitality and food service sector which has been promoted and shared with key stakeholders, including through a regional workshop (which 40 businesses attended), webinars (235 sign-ups) and round table events (12 operators with multiple businesses). The toolkit includes an e-module, a quick start guide and posters for kitchens to reinforce best practice and behaviours. Further sector specific guidance is planned for the next year, and will take into account the impacts of COVID-19 for certain sectors.

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. This information is held at a local level by individual local authorities and each authority would need to be contacted to provide the details.

Information on campaigns run by, or in association with, Scottish Government is provided in the following table. A significant proportion of litter prevention communication is led by local authorities in line with their statutory responsibilities.

This information is held at a local level by individual local authorities and each authority would need to be contacted to provide the details being requested.

Responsibility for dealing with litter primarily rests with local councils as part of their role in delivering waste services.

Zero Waste Scotland have spent the following amount of money on tackling litter from 2015 to 2020:

The Local Environmental Audit and Management System (LEAMS) methodology is currently used to assess litter levels on annual basis, this is used by local authorities and validated by Keep Scotland Beautiful. Results are published annually in the Local Government Benchmarking Framework Report .

A new monitoring system is being developed by Zero Waste Scotland and various partners on behalf of Scottish Government that will provide a spatial tool for monitoring litter and flytipping levels in Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-32339 on 10 November 2020. The Scottish Government 2018-19 ‘Food Waste Gone Bad’ campaign has most recently been evaluated. This campaign generated awareness of 47% and most notably, 76% of people who saw the campaign took action as a result, with a corresponding increase of 4 percentage points in the proportion of the target audience recycling food waste at ‘every opportunity’.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

There is no single dataset of all flytipping incidents in Scotland, as there is no legal requirement for duty bodies or landowners to report on flytipping externally. The figures provided below represent incidents reported via the voluntary reporting options Flymapper, Dumb Dumpers and Flytipping & Litter Monitoring System (F&LMS).

It is clear that the data varies significantly from year to year but it is not possible to deduce whether this relates to variations in incidents or variations in reporting by relevant bodies.

The Waste Data Strategy Board’s action plan includes key components of waste data monitoring and reporting. The plan includes the development of a national food waste monitoring and measuring plan to align with Food Waste Reduction Action Plan, and an update of the national food waste estimates.

We remain committed to consulting on proposals for enhancing food waste monitoring and measurement, as set out in the Food Waste Reduction Action Plan, in due course. As part of this future work, the Waste Data Strategy Board will work closely with the Scottish Government and Zero Waste Scotland to develop a detailed monitoring and reporting timeline. A full review of the Food Waste Reduction Action Plan progress is scheduled for 2021.

The planned consultation on the range of commitments identified in the Food Waste Reduction Action Plan, has been delayed by a number of factors, including the recent Covid-19 crisis. We remain committed to consulting on the Scottish Government’s proposals for an obligation for food retail sites over a certain size to redistribute edible food in due course.