Chamber and committees

The R&D budget was set at the Scottish Enterprise Board meeting held on 28 February 2020.

As I stated in my answer to S5W-32552 the Scottish Government are in regular contact with the footballing authorities to discuss a range of issue.

In light of the publication of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Scotland's Strategic Framework on 23 October 2020, the Coronavirus (COVID-19): organised activities for children guidance for organised activities and services for children, including babies and toddlers, was updated on 12 November 2020. The guidance is not an instruction for all services and activities to open up at this time, since this will be based on the requirements that need to be met, relevant to each individual delivery setting. Private providers should read this guidance in conjunction with guidance for small businesses: Coronavirus (COVID-19): small and micro businesses guidance .

While our capacity to measure and monitor on a granular and sector specific level develops, we have identified some alternative interim measurement methodologies. For household data, we have utilised waste compositional data from 5 local authorities in Scotland from a wider UK waste compositional study conducted by WRAP. This has been analysed alongside information from Waste Data Flow, the national database that holds data on waste collected by local authorities.

For specific sectors, we have scaled to geographical areas based on economic and demographic metrics from UK level data. For example, we were able, due to the high level of participation in the Courtauld commitment, to calculate the ratio of local units in Scotland to the total local units in the UK in 2018 and this was applied to the total UK retail and wholesale food waste from 2018 to derive the Scottish component.

Prevention, reuse and recycling are always preferable waste management options, over energy recovery or disposal of waste.

We have ambitious targets to improve the way we manage materials by reducing waste, increasing recycling and keeping materials at a higher value for longer but still need capacity to dispose of residual waste while we make the transition to a circular economy in Scotland.

This year’s Programme for Government sets out an ambitious set of measures to help make it easier for households and businesses to support this goal, including the establishment of a £70 million fund to improve local authority recycling collection infrastructure. The Parliament has also now passed legislation to implement a deposit return scheme for Scotland which will help to boost recycling, and we are working with the other governments of the UK on reform of the packaging producer responsibility system to reduce waste and improve recycling.

A number of relevant projects in remote areas have been funded through the following funds:

• Litter and Flytipping Community Action Fund 2014-2015
• Flytipping Small Grants Scheme 2011-2013
• Recycle on The Go Infrastructure Fund

In addition, Zero Waste Scotland are the lead for flytipping on the Scottish Partnership Against Rural Crime, which includes inputting to regional partnerships against rural crime (PARCs) that focus on flytipping prevention.

Through funding supplied to stakeholders, 4,254 Recycle on the Go bins were installed across 22 local authority areas between 2011-2016, providing an estimated 600,000 litres of capacity.

An analysis suggests that the 3,095 bins (450,000 litres of capacity) installed during 2011-2013 collected between 1,300 and 1,900 tonnes per year.

The following table provides a summary of the number of calls received by the SEPA Call Centre Dumb Dumpers Hotline

Two thirds of local authorities improved their recycling rate between 2018 and 2019. We are aware that some local authorities face specific challenges in improving their recycling rates.

Alongside Zero Waste Scotland, we will continue to work with local authorities to support further progress. As part of this approach, our Programme for Government 2020-21 announced a £70 million recycling fund, to support local authorities in improving recycling collection infrastructure; and the development of a route map to achieving our ambitious 2025 recycling targets.

A contextual messaging toolkit has been developed based on behavioural insights research Public Perceptions and Concerns Around Litter carried published in 2015. The litter toolkit cost £120,000 and helps to provide effective context-specific and local communication messages.

A grant fund was available to organisations to bid in to use the toolkit in situ, a total of 9 organisations received funding across Falkirk, Edinburgh, Highland, North Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Argyll and Bute. A total of £43,000 was awarded to the 9 funding recipients. We do not hold longitudinal data that would allow us to accurately represent what the reduction in litter frequency/volume has been as a result of the local messaging.