Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S5W-32572

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Date lodged: Thursday, 15 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 16 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether energy-from-waste (EfW) technologies are low-carbon solutions for waste treatment.

A recent report by Zero Waste Scotland suggests that the greenhouse gas emissions from the incineration of residual waste at Scottish energy from waste plants are on average lower than landfilling the same waste. That being said, in terms of environmental impact prevention, reuse and recycling are always preferable over energy recovery or disposal of waste as waste management options.

The most recent statistics shows that carbon emissions associated with Scotland’s household waste in 2019 dropped once again on the previous year to reach the lowest level since official recording began. These statistics are available here: https://www.sepa.org.uk/environment/waste/waste-data/waste-data-reporting/

Question reference: S5W-32940

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Date lodged: Monday, 02 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 16 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the latest household waste statistics from SEPA, which state that the recycling rate in Scotland’s two largest cities either declined or remained stagnant between 2018 and 2019.

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.

Question reference: S5W-32510

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what behaviour-change marketing campaigns it has run since 2011 aimed at discouraging littering, broken down by the (a) cost of, (b) reach of and (c) outcome in litter reduction achieved by each campaign.

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.

Name of campaign	Year	Run by	Cost	Reach
Litter Week of Action – Flingin’s Mingin’’	2013	Zero Waste Scotland	£45,288	Press and radio: 300,000 Social Media: 2 million Overall reach: 2.5million
Dirty Little Secret	2014	Scottish Government	£400,000	88.09% of 18-24 year old (target audience)
Managing Our Waste (Flytipping social media portion)	2020	Zero Waste Scotland, Scottish Government, Keep Scotland Beautiful, COSLA	£907.26	Overall Social media: 236,187 Website views: ‎ 6849 page views 5948 unique page views
Scotland is Stunning – Let’s keep it that way	2020	Scottish Government, Zero Waste Scotland and Keep Scotland Beautiful	£47,600	Overall reach 14.5 million

Question reference: S5W-32508

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many public waste bins each local authority has had in each year since 2014.

Question reference: S5W-32511

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many fixed penalty notices for littering have been issued by each public body in each year since 2014.

Question reference: S5W-32495

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide details of the effect that its advertising campaigns have had in increasing uptake of tools to prevent food waste among consumers and householders.

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

Question reference: S5W-32500

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its consultation on an obligation for food retail sites over a certain size to redistribute edible food; when it expects to implement such measures, and what the criteria will be for site inclusion.

Question reference: S5W-32509

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its planned 2020 review of its national litter strategy, Towards A Litter-Free Scotland: A Strategic Approach To Higher Quality Local Environments.

Towards a litter free Scotland was reviewed in 2019-20 by a steering group of organisations. The key findings were as follows:

The focus should move to a more holistic approach, tackling throwaway culture by setting prevention within the context of the circular economy and linking to wider policy areas such as marine litter, climate change and biodiversity loss.
Improving the collection and use of data is vital to inform action and measure the impacts.
Future work should be led by a steering group to ensure ownership by a range of stakeholders, reflecting the need to work together across geography and sectors.

Further work on the review is planned for 2021 and will take into account the impacts of COVID-19 on littering and littering behaviours.

Question reference: S5W-32496

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how business advice and support services to identify and demonstrate the value of food waste to the hospitality sector have been expanded since 2019.

Requests for assessments under the Food Waste Reduction Business Support Service have significantly reduced compared to the previous year due to the impact of COVID-19.

However next year we hope to increase the support to the hospitality sector, increasing opportunities for staff training and providing more bespoke support in measuring and monitoring of waste, supporting behaviour change. The advice and support service will offer support to non-SMEs, whereas in previous years support was SME-focused.

Question reference: S5W-32502

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its plans to develop advice and support services for community food redistribution projects; what services have been developed; where they have been deployed, and which projects have benefited from them.

Zero Waste Scotland has carried out a mapping of the redistribution landscape in Scotland, including analysis of the challenges and barriers facing redistribution activities and engagement with stakeholders on the potential solutions and support needs.

We also remain committed to consulting on the Scottish Government’s proposals for an obligation for food retail sites over a certain size to ensure that they redistribute edible products in due course that will inform the development and scope of what an advice and support service for community redistribution projects could deliver and how.