Good morning and welcome to the 19th meeting of 2017 of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee before we move to the first item on agenda. Can I remind everyone present to switch off mobile phones as they may affect the broadcasting system? The first item on the agenda is for the committee to consider whether to take items 4 and 5 in private. Are we agreed? We are agreed. Agenda item 2, the second item of business on our agenda today, is to hear evidence from two panels of stakeholders to explore waste generation and disposal in Scotland. Can I welcome Robin Bair, the waste manager of Falkirk Council, Tony Boyle, the divisional manager of waste management and recycling, Land and Environmental Services, Glasgow City Council, Ian Gullin, the chief executive of Zero Waste Scotland and Rebecca Walker, manager of waste and landfill tax, Scottish Environment Protection Agency. The members have a number of questions that we have a lot of ground to cover. Can I remind members and the witnesses that short-sharp questions and short-sharp answers would be extremely helpful? You don't have to answer every question if you don't feel you have a locus in it. Alex Burnett, can you kick that off? Thank you, convener. Good morning and welcome everyone. Ray, a general theme to start off with and maybe if you could go around in turn and each give your views. I'm really asking about what you feel the general trends have been over the last 10 years in regards to waste generation, what your views are on the data collected about it and how that could be improved, any areas of improvement and finally what you see as the priorities of a hierarchy in improving waste management. A very general theme to start with. Ian, would you like to start? Yes. Thank you very much, committee, for the opportunity to come today. We have quite a lot in that. The question was over the last 10 years. We have seen a reduction in waste erisings over the last 10 years and total waste erisings over the last 10 years. The numbers are around a 47 per cent reduction in those 10 years and one of the challenges in the past is the decoupling of waste erisings from economic activity. I'm not an economist but the economy of Scotland has increased over that period. It's good to see that the trend is in the right direction and that we have decoupled waste erisings from economic activity. 47 per cent is quite considerable. Over the last couple of years, that number has been steadied slightly in terms of waste generation for a number of reasons. One of the things that obviously impacts a lot on that number is construction and demolition waste, which is a 45 per cent of the total erisings in Scotland. Although a lot of that is recycled and a lot of prevention activities are involved in that, the scale of developments can skew those numbers slightly. Some years you can see that although there's not a trend as such because some years is up, some years it's down, so it's a very steady state over the last couple of four or five years. Certainly from my household point of view, we've increased recycling. Household recycling has increased considerably over that 10 years. Everybody knows we're now up to around about 44 per cent. Although again those numbers are based on 2015 data, so that's one of the challenges we have is the data is always running slightly behind in terms of years. But the direction of travel is very positive, increasing household recycling. Obviously probably a lot more recycling is carried out in the commercial and industrial sector, particularly now that waste regulations have come into force in 2014 and then further strengthened in 2016, particularly around food waste. So you're seeing a lot more commercial recycling and industrial recycling as well as recycling and construction and demolition. So those are, I guess, all good news stories. I guess there's still, although the ways are rising have perhaps slowed down in terms of the reductions over the last couple of years, one of the things we have seen from our point of view is a significant increase in the reduction in terms of carbon. So as we start to target key carbon intensive materials, particularly things like food waste and plastics, the actual carbon impact of our waste over that period of time has reduced considerably by about 25 per cent over the last four or five years. So I guess this shows that you can look at the tonnages and the sort of weight-based approach, but with a lot more work being done, particularly with Zero Way Scotland and other partners around this whole idea of measuring through the carbon metric, looking at the carbon intensity of those materials and providing strategies to target those materials in terms of our climate change efficiency in Scotland, we actually are seeing another significant impact on different materials streams in Scotland. I mean, it's one of the things key to say, if you look at the composition of waste, so if you look at it from a weight-based prerogative, the top five materials in terms of carbon intensity in Scotland are not the top five materials in terms of weight-based. So it's trying to understand that if we're going to look at the carbon, if we're going to really target the carbon, then those are not the big heavy items in the overall waste stream. So I think more of our work now is trying to ensure that, yes, we're focused on the weight-based impacts in terms of our waste management, but also we really need to target initiatives and interventions around those carbon intensive materials. So we can, as I said, realise our more wider ambitions around climate change. Keep talking, sorry. Those are the series NB, I also want to come in on that point. Just to add to that, Glasgow is a microcosm of Scotland. We've suddenly seen a decrease in waste, overall tonnage, 2,078, 363,000 tonnes, 2,017, down to 265,000 tonnes. So it's quite a significant decrease now. Anyone else on that? I would like to add one other thing. Obviously, I think your specific point was regarding the last 10 years, and sometimes I think we forget where we've come from. If we had a look 10 years ago and had this conversation within this very chamber, we'd be having a different conversation in terms of being the dirty man of Europe. Now one of the most forward-thinking nations is trying to deliver sustainable waste management practices, whether that is through deposit returns or it's through enhanced kerbside collections. In terms of the one other point, I'd like to make is a composition. Ian touched upon in his answer there, the composition of waste is certainly showing significant changes over the last decade as well. If I asked any of the panel today in the committee how many people bought a paper this morning, compared to how many people bought a paper 10 years ago, it would be a significant change in itself. That has changed the composition of waste quite dramatically. A lot of people get deliveries from Amazon now, so you put a lot more cardboard packaging into the waste stream, but a lot less newsprint and stuff like that. That is another significant change in terms of data. Great, thank you. Rebecca Walker. I'll just come in on a couple of points and then also talk about the data. At the moment we have 11.6 million tonnes of waste being generated in Scotland. The most reliable figures are from 2011 to 2015 when SIPA changed their methodology in terms of commercial and industrial waste, so that helped in terms of the reliability by looking at regulatory returns rather than surveying the businesses. Household waste since 2011 to 2015 has remained relatively stable at 2.5 million tonnes. Commercial and industrial waste is relatively stable at 3.6 million tonnes, and we see the variability in the construction and demolition waste mainly due to the economy and the number of infrastructure projects going on. This has actually varied between 5.5 and 3.8 million tonnes. There is quite a significant variation there, but as Ian said, it's a good news story in the construction and demolition sector because we are at a 72 per cent recycling rate, which exceeds the directive target for 2020 for 70 per cent. In terms of the waste data, we do have more reliable trends dating back a decade, so landfill back in 2005 was 7.05 million tonnes. It's now at 4.1 million tonnes. Again, this is a really good news story, and household waste, we have seen an overall decrease in terms of waste generated. Again, this could be to waste composition in terms of paper, we're seeing a lot less paper, and so the tonnage is less here. We're continuing to strive on your data question to have more accuracy in terms of the data, so we've recently had, in the last few years, guidance out to the operators on this, and we're looking at different ways we verify. As we come on to online data reporting, I think this will help in terms of the reliability, and we're actively looking at ways to implement this to make sure it's as reliable as possible. In terms of the waste hierarchy, it's all about, to me, the right tools, the right levers and a mix of them in the right place. No single thing, we need to look at what we're doing across the hierarchy from landfill tax to move it away from landfill, but then all our interventions around recycling, such as producer responsibility regulations, the waste Scotland regulations, putting the requirement on the producers to separate their waste. Also, in terms of working with the reuse sector and manufacturing, we have a very comprehensive Government strategy in terms of the way it covers the hierarchy. I'd say it's the most comprehensive in the UK because it does cover reuse, remanufacturing, and then gives the landfill its place as well. We're lucky to have such a comprehensive strategy with tools across it to have those interventions. Again, there is more we can do. We need to understand what's coming out of our commercial and industrial sectors so that we know opportunities for the future to keep these materials in the economy and get the best value from them. Let's move on. Can I ask from your perspective how achievable the 2025 target to recycle 70 per cent of all Scotland's waste is and what we will need to do in practice if we are to achieve that? Who wants to go first? Rowan Baird. Thank you, convener. I'm happy to start that. As we sit here today, it's unachievable. It sounds a sort of striking thing, but we need to do a lot more to create the instruments that we have. We have come a long way in the last few years, but I certainly think that if you look at the waste data, we're starting to plateau in terms of how we're performing as a nation, so that has to be of a concern approaching 2021 with the landfill ban. So we really need to sit and take a, this is a good opportunity to take a step back and learn the lessons of the last 10 years, what's worked, what's not worked and what we need to do to move forward. If you look at most of the high-performing recycling rates across Europe, a lot of them have direct variable charging in place for the residual waste. Unfortunately, unless we seriously look at how we manage that residual waste, and especially I'm talking about from a householder level and how people take that seriously, then it's going to be pushing something uphill. We have in Falkirk moved to a four-weekly residual waste collection to try and take out as much of the recycling as possible because we have other collections in place that allow people to fully separate their waste, yet 25 to 30 per cent of our residual waste could still have been recycled using the services that we provide. So there's a long way to go in terms of what we want to do. This is the first step, having committees like this to make those conversations, but I'm going to put a challenge out to the committee and it's really how serious are we in wanting to achieve those targets because that will determine how serious we are to make the right decisions to change the behaviour that we see out there. Some of those decisions that you will have to make won't be popular, especially initially, but we have to take it and take the wider view and say, is it the right thing to do rather than the popular thing to do? That's a challenge, I'm afraid, that it's going to be put back to the committee. Through a question back at you, the variable performance of councils across Scotland in this area, how much of that is down to the public and how much of it is down to the councils themselves and how they approach the issue? Well, I mean, every council has recycling provision at their doorstep, so many would argue that the householder has the ability to make the right choice at the disposal point. So it's a bit of both, and I don't think any council would sit here today and say that we have perfected the communication to our residents. Have we made it as easy as possible? Again, we'd be open to debate, but at the end of the day we cannot influence, when it comes to it, we cannot make a householder do something that they don't want to do. Both Rebecca and Ian mentioned the Waste Scotland regulations. The most frustrating thing that I have always said within presentations and committee was we so badly missed a trick with the Waste Scotland regulations. If you really read those regulations, in brackets it says, accept householders. Does that strike you as really being serious about something when we exclude something so crucial as householders to make them recycle? That, to me, is a challenge I had to throw back. Why were those brackets put in there? Tony Boyle. Come in there as well. Robin's point, we seem to have given the biggest waste creators in terms of domestic householders a get out a jail card. We compare the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to what it became amended to this specific issue in there that talks about, if you'll let me quote, it shall, from 1 January 2014, be the duty of any person who produces controlled waste brackets other than the occupier of domestic property that expects household waste produced on the property to take all reasonable steps to ensure the separate collection of dry waste. Glasgow City Council and many councils is trying its level best to encourage and engender recycling. You can only take it so far. You can lead a hostile well but you can't make it drink. We are doing a lot in terms of trying to get residents to do it but I'm not compelled to recycle. It's very, very difficult. We've done a lot of work with zero waste and seep over the past couple of years in trying to encourage recycling but we've fallen short in terms of being able to get the residents to actively take up and being on my soapbox for a second. What compounds are some of the quite unique problems that Glasgow faces in terms of housing stock? We've got 160,000 flats. The people who live in flats as opposed to the 125,000 who have a kerbside service have a completely different level of recycling opportunities. If you stay in a flat, for example, like I do, you've got to walk around to a public recycling point to dispose of your glass whereas if you stay in a kerbside property you've got a bespoke glass bin you can use. A lot of stuff we can be doing in terms of encouraging residents but also tied to that is infrastructure ensuring there's enough infrastructure and indeed the budget and accepting that very much accepting that point you've just made. The variable approach of councils doesn't help either. For example, in Angus you can recycle your glass at the kerbside but in Aberdeenshire you have to take it round the corner to another facility so to what extent does that contribute to the problem? Quite significantly I would say but it's kind of horses for courses when you look at Falkirk, no disrespect to Falkirk but it's tiny in comparison to Glasgow. Glasgow is dealing with 600,000 residents it's dealing with unique issues it's under major financial pressure in terms of budgets. At a time we look at reduced frequencies of household uplifts it's part of our economic solution as much as environmental solution but then again Glasgow has taken a leap in terms of residual waste treatment solution so we looked at the whole issue about landfill bands and the curtailing of that 10 years ago that worked on a progressive solution for that yet it will cost us more to provide that solution than it would if we were going to landfill. I want to open this out to the rest of the panel but let's stick with the local authorities at the moment I'll let you in the second round where let's just assume that we did move to a deposit return scheme what impact would that have on your activities around kerbside recycling and what is the danger if a danger exists of councils seeking to roll back from kerbside recycling where they couldn't access glass and plastic for example? First of all I'd like to go back to your point convener about the consistency aspect and I think you know the councils commitment is reflected by I believe you can confirm that that 25 local authorities have signed household recycling charter but I'll give you an example food waste, we collect food waste weekly pretty much a majority of other councils collect food waste weekly but we only get 55% to 60% participation in that service how simple can it be great caddy every week all food waste that's quite consistent with how other local authorities provide yet we can barely get 50% efficiency from our householder level so consistency because of the recycling charter and the fact that we've signed it is a big part but we need to be careful that it will not be the sole solution going back to your other question regarding deposit returns I think prior to this at the evidence gathering session I'm a strong proponent is you cannot spend the same pound twice so if you're doing deposit returns and you're having an established collection are you assuming that that's not going to work because if it's not going to work you have to then have a kerbside collection service if it is going to work you don't need a kerbside collection service because that waste won't be within the waste stream of the Tony and I deal with so if you're setting up a deposit scheme you have to then A, decide is it going to work if it is then B, local authorities can't put resources into collect material that shouldn't exist for collection Would local authorities roll back completely from kerbside recycling of other items that's what I'm getting at as my concern I don't ever see that being an issue in terms of dry and mixed recycling alone that it's not plastic box for example there's always going to be a requirement for that level of collection but I think there is an interesting point being made about the waste charter in terms of trying to have a one-size-fits-all for every local authority and quite simply there's winners and losers out of that and I would suggest that Glasgow's pretty much a significant loser in terms of trying to adjust its infrastructure to suit that when we've got this large amount of flatted housing stock one thing that we should maybe consider for the future is looking towards Europe and European models with these continental bands most of you are probably in holiday like I have in Europe and you don't see these 240 litre individual wheel bands you see these larger containment, sometimes underground containment and there has to be a series to look at that in terms of trying to move forward to some sort of uniform system that will bring economies of scale will bring certain advantages but it doesn't get as away from this issue even with a deposit return scheme we need to engender some responsibility within individuals within their own household to do the right thing Robin made the point about the food waste for example 30-40 per cent of the food waste even given we've provided an individual food waste collection scheme is not being recycled so people are still disregarding that and putting that into their general waste plan so it doesn't help OK thank you for that we can answer this question and come back to something else Ian Gollund on the deposit no on the original question sorry we've moved on for how achievable is the 2025 target yeah so it's quite interesting actually because was there the 70 per cent target in 2025 as all waste so if you look at the numbers to some extent at the moment although it's a 44 per cent household the actual recycling rate for Scotland is about 57 to 59 per cent so as Rebecca said high recycling and things like the construction industry or the commercial industry can pull up that number from the household but having said that to support my colleagues to the left although the household waste is only 25 per cent by weight it's actually 53 per cent by carbon so we really need to start seriously thinking about how do we increase the recycling rate in the household to a much more significant level because that's where the carbon intensity things and again that number is hard I mean a lot of it is because a lot of the waste prevention activity that goes on we've already mentioned paper although that's to some extent a trend rather than any specific intervention by government but a lot of the stuff particularly even in the commercial sector a lot of the waste prevention activity is taking out with respect some of the easier to recycle materials like paper so therefore it makes the actual recycling number harder to achieve because you're taking away that opportunity so I think there is a probably moment in time to look at the target in terms of what we're actually trying to achieve is that the right, is it weight based 70 per cent or are we looking to try and achieve some other outcome for Scotland and I guess you know since that target is being placed we have shifted our thinking around carbon we've recognised the opportunities in terms of our carbon ambitions clearly we now have a circular economy strategy so this is not all about just recycling for with respect to the sake of recycling you know this is about putting in place systems and processes and infrastructure in Scotland that can reap the benefit for the economic and social as well as environmental benefits in terms of making things last longer for our economy rather than with respect exporting the bulk of our material we export over 70 per cent of the materials that are collected for recycling in Scotland to other economies and if you start to look at the job implication for every one job in recycling it's accepted there's another eight jobs further up that processing stream in terms of reprocessing remanufacturing, resale, resupply of those materials back into your economy that's the real prize that we're trying to do to realise here for Scotland the terms of our circular economy ambitions so I think it's now's the time to really think about what are we actually trying to with respect chase in terms of targets what's the outcome we're actually trying to achieve for Scotland and I think there's much more focus now on the carbon implications of different waste streams, different materials and what they can actually do for our economy in terms of jobs and prosperity so that's probably just something to consider as well Just picking up on that point I'm interested in the impact of activities that are coming down the track oil rig decommissioning for example I wonder if you've done any work around that because there's a lot to talk about the jobs it creates and yet I've been briefed of a case in England where there's only 12 jobs once the rig involves when the rig actually comes ashore so essentially much of what can be recycled and reused is stripped out in the north sea than the rigs brought here what concerns do we have about the impact of any extensive decommissioning work that's carried out in Scotland in terms of waste going to landfill my understanding is that there's only one suitable site in Scotland for this type of material Yeah I mean I think people probably know a bit more about the facilities that are available but we have done some work we've done some analysis of the opportunities around the circular economy in the decommissioning opportunities in the north sea certainly the bulk of the material the bulk of the infrastructure that will come ashore will be recycled a lot of it is obviously metal and there is infrastructure and play in Scotland already to cut up that stuff for a better word at the harbour side and to all types of purposes send those materials off to other again most of it leaves Scotland to be processed in other parts of the world so that happens that's good for the environment I guess but there are opportunities there for the reprocessing of some of those materials even the steel here in Scotland but also the reuse, remanufacture repurposing of some of that equipment some of the high value equipment when it comes ashores instead of just fragmenting it up, cutting it all up and tripping off the recycling and that's something that the oil industry is very keen on now to look at that because again the value is for it's about a 15 fold increase in terms of the value opportunity both in terms of materials, products and obviously parts of the oil rig so to speak and subsea infrastructure but in jobs and that's we've been working with a number of them the bulk of it I can't remember the figure, it's very high 90s that a lot of that material is actually recycled infrastructure as you can imagine and some of the stuff is subsea but it's recycled and it's not reused or repurposed and a lot of that doesn't happen in Scotland, our job is really to dismantle it and cut it up so again the high value jobs would be to reprocess that stuff, remanufacture it and there's a lot of companies we've been talking to in the north-east and around Scotland because the whole supply chain that puts the stuff out to the north-east is Scotland wide it's not all based in the north-east so there are opportunities coast, Montrose, Dundee and further afield that could really see an opportunity to repurpose some of that equipment back into the north sea or to other oil installations across the world Okay, great, Rebecca Walker do you want to come in on that? Yeah, we recognise the value that's going to come on shore from the oil and gas sector of the materials we've identified oil and gas decommissioning as one of our first sectors that we're looking at through our sector approach in SEPA we're working with the Scottish Government to make sure we have facilities and the capability to bring those materials on shore to dismantle in Scotland and to get the added value for the Scottish economy within a strong environmental protection framework as Ian said a lot of this material will still go abroad in terms of our exports paper, plastic, metals both ferris and nonferris do you get exported in terms of the majority of them we have the reprocessing facilities in Scotland but in terms of oil and gas decommissioning we are in a position to have the facilities in Scotland that can do the dismantling and the added value at that part of the supply chain in terms of at home we tend to keep all of the heavier materials such as the inner the aggregate, the soils, glass, organic their recycled reprocessed domestically and we have a good circular economy supply chain working in Scotland on that as Ian mentioned in terms of tonogies and recycling it probably shouldn't be looked at in isolation we do have to look at all the factors here within an environmental protection framework we need to look at the economic benefits and also acknowledge that we work within global markets with energy costs and labour costs that have to be taken on board as well in terms of where we make the interventions and what's best for Scotland in terms of Scotland's environment society and economy here as well as quantity so at the moment we're at 57% across the economy in terms of recycling with the 70% target in 2025 so in terms of being on track we are but as we strive for that higher quantity we must address quality because this is where we'll get the secure markets in terms of sustainable markets and have the economic benefit from these materials as much as protecting the environment Moris Gull Thanks, convener First of all I should declare an interest with respect to my previous role in zero waste Scotland Just on oil and gas decommissioning just a couple of points I wonder if you could provide an update if you have it on the ability of Scotland to decommission a platform that's taken off via a single lift as opposed to piece large or piece small and secondly I wondered what the panel's thoughts were with respect to the utilisation of an electric arc furnace for recycling steel perhaps as a result of the oil and gas platforms coming from the North Sea Of course in terms of the single lift and the capability in Scotland could I please provide written evidence at a later date on this so that you have the accurate details around this Excellent I don't have that information So that is something the idea of electric arc furnace in Scotland looking at that steel is a live proposal I guess that is something that we as Zero Waste Scotland and amongst other partners have looked at we've done some feasibility work at a high level to understand what that would look like in terms of inputs and outputs and obviously the fact that it's electric and how that power could be generated particularly from renewables carbon envelope that we would all like to work in both an industrial level but a national level here in Scotland so it is a project that is definitely feasible in Scotland it obviously needs a number of other partners to come together and have that broader discussion about how that could be done and that would be something that as I know we are involved in and I'm sure others are involved in as well Claudia Beamish and good morning to panel I mean the decommissioning I'm very pleased that convener's raised this issue and I would just like to direct a short supplementary to you Rebecca and possibly in as well although perhaps full Kirkham dollars come out but we'll keep this brief but I was bit concerned when you think about the time trajectory in relation to decommissioning of the oil industry and the development of marine renewables you know of an economy that I think you just said Rebecca that it was important I can't exactly quote it but what we could do here and what was going to be exported it seemed almost like it was a ffata complet that there would be some reprocessing that just was going to continue to be exported could you comment any further on that please at the moment we don't have the facilities in terms of the investment for reprocessing in Scotland so we're focusing on making sure we can bring the material into Scotland and the added value that we can get from it there in terms of investments in Scotland I think we have to give that certainty around regulation to attract businesses I can't really comment further I guess in terms of the global market it's the energy costs and the labour costs we're looking at all options that get the best value for Scotland in terms of the economy and the environment here so we've been working closely with Zero Way Scotland with the Scottish Government and we also work with the Enterprise Agencies on this Can you just clarify that point a little bit my understanding is that the oil companies will take the rigs to wherever's nearest for decommissioning purposes so I guess the question is would we have sufficient raw material available in Scotland to justify the spend on the infrastructure that would be required I don't have the detail in terms of a cost benefit analysis around that I'd be happy to look to see if we could get that information for you OK, let's move this on Mark Ruskell Thanks convener I could go back to households again I can ask you a question about the Charter for Household Recycling we've already touched on this briefly Do you see it as significant in terms of driving up performance and the recycling rate and also do you see any conflicts within the Charter so for example we're looking through it some of the outcomes one of the high level outcomes is about quantity ensuring that there's high quantities but also as high quality I'm just wondering if there's conflicts between some of these also the third objective is about cost effectiveness so to what extent does cost effectiveness mean high quality and high quantity Is that just interested in your views about that Like certainly in terms of quality the more provide the waste charter basically espousies that you give a wider range of recycling facilities to more members of the public in short and what we've noticed when we've introduced recycling initiatives in Glasgow to the middle of the kerbside properties if you give them a dry mix recycle a blue bin they will use it more than they would you know tried to separate through public sites before the problem we've got is how do we actually do that and practice equally right across all of the residents very very difficult in terms of cost effectiveness that's the biggest challenge for Glasgow I've used Glasgow as an example it's not cost effective to roll this service out I just flipped back for a second to the food waste service we've introduced a food waste service as we're obliged to do under the waste Scotland regulations in the last couple of years that has resulted in us having a good news is we've created 100 new posts we're having to provide a weekly service in flats for food waste collections and this is a sort of example that would be rolled out with the wider recycling charter the reason I'm using it as an example we're providing a weekly service to backcourts people who present their waste to backcourts in common old bins are picking up between maybe 5 8kg of waste from those bins the carbon issues around that the extra vehicles we've got the staff it's not cost effective to do that so when you look at the wider principle of the waste charter it sounds great when you start to drill down to some of the detail of it it's very very difficult to see a benefit environmentally from that and one of the things we could look at for example is reduced frequency of collections but again I go back to the point that I made earlier on is it the right fit the waste charter for every local authority I can see benefits in some local authorities but I don't see it being a one size fit so it will reap the same benefits from each local authority Given the austerity that many local authorities are under at the moment the obvious need to make savings across the board do you see that as a significant driver is it objective 3 on cost effectiveness which is really driving service configuration I would like Robyn to come in in a second if I may but it's absolutely cannot uncouple these issues the economic pressure that local authorities are feeling just now to make ends meet is directly related to how we provide the service but what we have is well meaning well intended initiatives like the waste charter which make it absolutely impossible for us to provide an economic service in terms of having to pay their council tax and just to council broadly for the support grant to actually provide that service it's very very difficult to do that we've got well meaning environmental broad-ranging overarching initiatives the two things don't meet easily in the middle and I think we've got to look a bit more innovatively at how we can actually create solutions that bring both things home at this moment in time Glasgow will be looking at various frequencies of collections from the common practice we've got just now but using that food waste example does it make sense to go around every week to pick up food waste when there's no actually any requirement to do that you could maybe do it two or three weekly so can we bring benefits from that just as an example I think that through the chair I think that Robyn Burden and Ian Gulland wanted to come in so I think it's a very valid question in terms of the current climate differently and the question remains is if the current funding mechanism stays in place then local authorities are sitting there having to look at what statutory services aren't they going to deliver shortly but that's assuming that the funding mechanism that we currently have is the way it's going to go the question comes who should pay to collect material should it be the local authority or should it be a contribution through the packaging industry whether that's through a DRS system or through other means there is no doubt waste collection is inherently underfunded let's make no mistake about that I was asked a question by a resident they wanted to refund on these council tax because we missed a few collections and it turned out per collection the householder paid nine pence nine pence Tony's right that's not enough to collect the material that we need to collect it to answer your point that's not going to collect the material and the quality we need it that's not enough to collect it and the quantity we need it to get the investment that we need so what we need to look at is how do we fund this service to get the best quality the best quantity to create the best infrastructure to make sure everybody knows what they're doing and that's the question absolutely if committee chambers across the land are asked to pick between education and bins I guess what the answer is it's education first we need to think differently we need to get an understanding of what is the best way to collect it and the charter is the first point of that there's a general understanding that to get the quality to get the quantity we need to be consistent to go back to the chair's point earlier you need consistency you need to be able to have clarity to householders you then have to have that instrument that allows householders or makes them understand they have to do it but that might mean the collection has to change that collection might be expensive but down the line benefits like economic investment in the circular economy might make that investment worthwhile but that investment if it's local authorities doing the collection needs to be properly funded okay I think Maurice Gold has got a brief supplementary just on that point that was just made yes thanks Mr Boyle just on some of your comments with respect to collections I mean I'm aware from working with other local authorities and indeed municipalities across Europe that the business case can always be made to introduce food waste collections by changing the frequency of other collections by rerouting by having a comprehensive communications campaign and in Scotland's case by accessing funds via the Scottish Government primarily through Zero Waste Scotland I'm unclear why Glasgow is so different given that other local authorities indeed Edinburgh and Inverclyde which has many of the same housing stock have managed to roll out well in terms of recycling infrastructure I appreciate that at this moment in time prices for recyclet are low but in the long term I would expect those prices to rise and therefore it would make sense to have the appropriate collections and infrastructure to accommodate that just wonder if you could perhaps clarify some of your previous comments the food waste that we are picking up the volume of that is similar to most local authorities in Scotland but it's not a high volume in terms of what we're picking up and I don't think that there's any local authority in Scotland that's picking up high volumes of food waste in terms of the way they recycle it you're correct absolutely in saying that there's an issue in terms of pressure on market volatility in terms of trying to get rid of use and best income from that recycle I can tell you just now that if we were looking at the deposit recycling scheme being introduced successfully we would lose in terms of income £450,000 per year based on last year so we do have unique issues as well in Glasgow in terms of housing but there's not any other local authority in Scotland that has that. We are unable to provide the resourcing to the flats that we can for the kerbside properties and that presents really unique challenges for example if you live in a flat you'll use a communal bin or maybe six 240 litre communal bins per close and two 240 litre recycling bins for dry mix recycling but there isn't any scope for glass bins we've just recently introduced the food waste food waste is costing the council between £4 million a year that's a major burden on the council but why does it work in Helsinki and Greenock but not in Glasgow in terms of communal bins in terms of recycling infrastructure that's a really good question part of the reason is back to behavioural change we introduced this service we do it in a well-meaning way we do it in following the obligations of the legislation but we can't we find it really difficult to get residents to take up the challenge of recycling that's probably the biggest reason OK, if I add something to that you mentioned funding, that funding was de minimis the whole argument where you had the collection in place but the funding was going to run out OK in Falkirk what we came to be able to afford that collection was to go for weekly residual residual waste I don't think I need to tell anybody around the panel how politically sensitive that was at a local level so certainly Falkirk felt isolated and scrutinised when they made that decision so would I recommend a fellow local authority doing that tough this is what I'm saying, it was left an individual local authority to stand up and make that decision that's very tough at a local political level so if it is truly serious and I threw the question back to the committee, I had to throw it back OK tell us it's serious and commit to that, that's the way to deliver things and individually at a local level that will make the implementation a lot easier so let's go back to the others responding to Mark's question if you can remember any other comments to my colleague's question not to to somebody's then having another go at Glasgow it was just some of your comments Tony on the challenges around environmental potential impact or disbenefit of the recycling I just want to be clear that in almost all situations recycling is better than landfill or disposal it's not about the vehicles in the city or the vehicles that are collecting, the real impact is on how those materials are formed in the first place, the products that are formed and how they're consumed in the home or in the businesses and then ultimately how they're dealt with later on, the whole environmental impact of that is so significant and that's why recycling is so important there's this idea that some myths still around there that recycling driving your car to a local glass bank or something is causing more damage to the environment than recycling the glass itself, these are just myths recycling is really important actually prevention is even better but we get into actually managing the waste at the end of pipe it is very much about recycling support colleagues to the left about this because this is the real challenge the environmental impacts of recycling everybody knows it's the right thing to do everybody knows that after waste prevention that's what we should all be doing but we do need to understand how can we afford to do that and whether that's through the public purse or private sector or produce responsibility or whatever or other mechanisms that's what we need to really start to discuss how do we afford the systems that we want to have here in Scotland and going forward and to make sure they're flexible for all the other trends that we're going to be buffeted with in terms of materials and products and it is an infrastructure opportunity and that's what the charter and the code of practice is really all about is trying to align bring a bit of consistency to all intensive purposes as I call it a resource grid in Scotland we have materials we need to bring a bit of consistency in terms of through the pipe through the collection infrastructure so we can realise many of the opportunities that are real for us here in Scotland in terms of processing these materials and that is about taking on issues of quality and consistency of supply and that's what the charter is really all about is working with local authorities to provide some degree of certainty of those materials into the marketplace so not just so we can get a good price for them in our export potential but more importantly we can attract an inward investment or stimulate Scottish companies to do more with those materials because they have a bit of ownership of the supply and that's a challenge both in terms of working with individual authorities in terms of their budgets but it's also an opportunity at Scottish level to really start to understand what that infrastructure could look like into the future and how Tony has mentioned underground containers and all sorts of infrastructure that's available you can see it in other parts of Europe and abroad so that's the physicality of it as well how do we want our materials to be stewarded in the future the ones that are being used at business level or in consumer level or in households how do we want to steward these materials back through so for the benefit of Scotland in terms of the physicality of it so these are big challenges but that's all about us designing a system again around these opportunities that a circle economy brings to us which are very visible now for us in terms of the analysis that we've done on key sectors, key opportunities, key materials and I think it's really about those opportunities on that as a totality to make sure we can reap those benefits absolutely support what Ian is saying here in terms of the consistency and the quality as well as increasing the quantity here it's seeper as the environmental regulator we see the problems much further downstream but we recognise that addressing it upstream through interventions like the household recycling charter initiatives like the household recycling charter is what we need in terms of improving the quality and the consistency for instance at material recovery facilities that we regulate we're looking at the contamination levels in terms of what's going into them and out of them and we're publishing a report on this in July in terms of the material quality also our role in transplantation of waste at the moment the UK Scotland does not have a good reputation in terms of the quality of the materials that are being brought in abroad and we are repatriating containers and this is to the cost of the Scottish economy so we're trying to work with brokers shipping and across the supply chain here as well as up to the householders and the source segregation in terms of working with partners like ZeroWay Scotland and the local authorities to make sure that we're sending the highest quality abroad and we can improve our reputation in terms of the quality of materials that do go abroad in terms of households then we've come from a low baseline we're up to 44% now our sense is from what you're saying this morning that a lot of that low hanging fruit is gone we need to get up to 60% in the next five years what's the one thing, what's the one change that's required to achieve that can we just go quickly through the panel I think part of the problem with the waste charter in terms of I'm supportive of the waste charter by the way I hope it doesn't come across the opposite of that but part of the issue that local authorities have got is we've been working autonomously to try and bring some of these solutions forward so seven or eight years ago we got into a strategic partnership to develop a residual waste treatment solution so what we will be opening next year is a residual waste treatment solution in simple terms what that is is the general waste bin the waste that goes into that which has got this rich recyclet that has not been otherwise recycled will be segregated through a mechanical means smart, mirth that's a material recycling facility there'll be an analogue digester to deal with organic material and we'll be able to divert something like 80% what would normally have gone to a landfill from that and improve a recycling by about 18% of the throughput from that so part of the issue we've got is we're already committed to strategic partnerships for 25 years these partnerships were put together before we started developing the charter I do think that there's room for both and I think that it makes sense to do that but we are committed towards providing a certain level of material a certain type of composition to that project a large strategic map for dealing with residual waste it's residual waste treatment it's not just a morph, it's an analogue digester to answer your point complete the circle of responsibility is a prime example I've done it a number of conferences is everyone has a responsibility to play make it clear make it clarify on who is responsible at each stage so the householder is responsible to use the services that they are provided there's not a get out of jail free car there's not a if you really want to please use it but at the same time manufacturers are understanding that they only produce products that can be recycled or reused the retailers understand their responsibility to communicate the onus, we all talk about communication the onus seems to be in all the local authorities to tell people we don't sell the goods that people buy there's an opportunity for retailers to communicate to their customers that they have a responsibility to recycle it once they get it so complete that circle make sure everybody within that circle has a responsible what does it actually mean what does it actually look like if you're a householder is that a sanction, is that a tax one of two things I think sanctions are very hard word I don't think any of us would want to take somebody to court for putting a glass bottle in a can is to understand what your responsibility is that you have to do it so say for example we empty residual waste every four weeks if you don't recycle effectively you're going to struggle so there's a way to move things without it being a sanction as such it's about what does sustainable waste collection services look like 2020 and beyond I think sometimes we can get stuck in here and now and not thinking about what does the future look like but Tony makes a valid point and Ian alluded to it as well all these economic models are assuming participation food waste collection if everybody uses it makes economic sense but 40 to 45% of people will only use it therefore it doesn't make economic sense unless it's fully utilised so the householder needs to understand what their responsibility is but at the same time a local authority or waste collector because it may not be a local authority a waste collector needs to understand their responsibility to provide consistent collections that allow for quality and quantity to be delivered so everybody has a role to play and everybody needs to clearly understand their role in contributing to it and then other views top change in approach it's similar not re-engage but further engage with both the citizen I guess and businesses around their obligations or their responsibilities in terms of the bigger picture in terms of climate change in terms of the opportunities from a circular economy which maybe is the local message that people don't really don't hear, they don't really understand there's still a lot of uncertainty from the public about what happens to the stuff that they put out for recycling where does it go and how does it message out really engaging with people so that's a big exercise both at local level and at national level and that obviously takes resources so I guess it is about that whole thing about we really need to understand how do we invest in this how do we invest in what we've got because a lot of the answers are still technically feasible with the infrastructure we've got it's not, you look to other countries Wales for instance as the ones that we've got represented here and the same so it's not, so we can get there but we need to invest in it we need to invest in the running course of that continually we need to innovate we need to look at different ways of collecting different ways of engaging with the citizen and obviously there's a key role for us as Zero Way Scotland and with other partners but how do we work, how do we support the local authorities and the challenge is as Robin says who else is coming to the table with support both financially or through their own channels whether that's the producers or not understanding everybody has a role in this and everybody should have that ambition to get behind us and support it because this is an infrastructure this is an infrastructure for Scotland for Scotland's economic, social and environmental benefit and we should all see that investing in it and continuing to invest in it and innovating around it is a responsibility we all have but also it really does show leadership both in terms of Scotland but across the globe Okay, Rebecca Orkin Partnership working here is so important in terms of being able to deliver these economic and environmental and societal benefits I think we really need to understand whether an intervention is brought in or a system is brought in at one point the knock on impact it has on the other parts of the supply chain and it is by working together that we can get all the right tools the right interventions and the levers in the right place to understand this to maximise the value we get from our materials Right, okay So just before we continue because I know you've got some other questions so we've got two brief supplementaries from Claudia Beamish and Finlay Carson Right, thank you, convener It's to ask the panel to go back to the point that was raised earlier about the exception of householders and the regulations and whether in your view they need to be revisited Finlay Carson as well so you can answer the questions at the same time Mine was relating to the new type of plant you're talking about to better separate from the main bin Does that not send out the wrong message that actually we're not going to change the culture of how people behave and moving away from the emphasis on kerbside recycling back to everybody can throw whatever they like in a bin together and the council will sort it out Okay, quite possibly that might be a message that's construed from that I think the issues I'll go back to again was local authorities as Robin points out are left holding the baby here in terms of trying to deliver sincerely the recycling targets we've got to introduce we do have the issue where we don't have the infrastructure to support something like say, Falkirk has been able to do so we've left with the challenge of how do we get the recycler and how do we move that forward even when we introduce food waste specific to each address in the city we will find that 30% of the general waste that's in the general waste bin is food so I think we've got to be I suppose pragmatic and realistic about what we can actually provide and there's got to be certainly there's been a kind of approach taken where we understand we'll always strive to have bespoke and individual recycling services but there will always be an element and I suppose what we're trying to do is do both things in terms of the question about the regulations I think really interesting question that and I think that absolutely there has to be some revisiting of that unfortunately I don't know what the solution is because I don't know how we actually impose that I don't know what the big stick is but there has to be something that compels residents to do more than what they're doing and that will get rid of those issues longer term but the problem we've had as a local authority using Glasgow as an example is we've not been able to wait we didn't know what waste charter was coming in eight years time we've been trying to sincerely meet our obligations as a counciller and I think Robin's point is really well made probably the mistake that's made continuously is it falls on the council to be a big brother and there has to be more done in terms of the universality of responsibility that comes from producer to the resident and certainly local authority have got a role in there as well but we seem to be the like a fall guy if you will for all the problems but we're trying to reduce frequencies for the right reasons as the councils fall we're trying to run on a meager budget at times there has to be investment in this but primarily we should look at the regulations unfortunately I can't advise on what measure you could take so it should be either meaningful or fair since I rant about the regulations more than anyone it's probably good that I answer that question absolutely without question the analogy that I give is the smoking ban that the Scottish Government did if we had a regulation round the smoking ban it said please can you not smoke in a restaurant what would have happened would we have had the significant impact and the significant change that we see now where we all can go out to a pub or a club without coming home smelling of smoke it's the same, this is behaviour change it's no different so again we have to see if we are serious and we are serious about our environmental credentials we need to then turn round and say this isn't a voluntary request you're not doing the council's job for them by recycling which I hear five times a week and I'm sure Tony hears it too you're doing your job because it's your responsibility to how you manage your waste in which the council will support you to make the right decision so absolutely I could just move on to organic waste garden waste, food waste you've mentioned some of the challenges around collection already but I was wondering if there's anything more that you want to add around this topic, around what the opportunities might be my sense is that we're seeing an evolving model of food waste collection but also quite a few local authorities rolling back on garden waste collection whether you see home composting as part of the solution here or what's the optimum mix start with Ian Gullen maybe on this one maybe move yeah I mean I guess certainly as you've said food collection infrastructures now very much in play in Scotland what was the aim over 80% of households are now access to it and that was the plan obviously there's a rural parts of Scotland are exempt so that's about 1.9 million people have access to it so we're now seeing some of those systems are only just bedding in as Tony's mentioned in terms of Glasgow so food waste collections are increasing and obviously like any of the systems that are in play work has to be done on participation rates not just about rolling out a service or introducing a box or a bin or a caddie to household as it's actually getting them to use it on a regular basis so a lot more work has to be done there I recognise that obviously from commercial the regulations in terms of food waste have kicked in and whilst I think there's a lot more participation in larger businesses there's probably still some work to be done on some of the smaller food premises in the high state so to speak but things are in generally that direction but it is still about engaging with people about the importance of that kitchen caddie I think as Robin said I mean it is an engagement opportunity because people I think generally want to want to do the right thing they're given a suite of bins and it is about communication people generally want to do the right thing both for the environment, both for their local economy and there's obviously some social opportunities as well for them so I think you're beginning to see an acceptance around food waste which is a very positive thing it's actually an engagement with the people individuals on the importance of food waste and we're now seeing that on television and fight, we've had debates in parliament on food waste and the real challenge of reducing food waste and obviously we have a target here in Scotland 33 per cent and that's the real challenge so there is a bit of a attention but we're actually trying to once we've introduced a food waste caddie to households in Scotland we're now actually trying to reduce this the usage of it, not in terms of the participation rates but the amount of stuff that possibly was going into it when they were first introduced which is very unusual to all the recycling systems which councils have introduced where they've actually tried to maximise the amount of material that somebody's tried to put into it we're now seeing technically they're actively going out trying to reduce food waste and that's possibly one of the challenges going forward in terms of the amount of food waste available to councils even working with ourselves and what was potentially going to be going to come out of the households is possibly less because actually we are now seeing or beginning to see a reduction in actual food waste both in household levels and in the commercial which is all good for these individual businesses and good for the economy in terms of not just environmental savings but cost savings the issue with garden waste is yeah it's something that obviously a lot of councils have introduced initially and obviously there's no obligation for them to provide a garden waste collection so some of them have obviously decided to either introduce a charge for it to residents or to reduce the actual availability of it providing going back to providing increased capacity at civic community sites or household recycling centres we've seen some encouraging home composting again so these are solutions but again it's about engaging with the householder and the communities on what those solutions are best placed for those particular situations Rebecca Walker do you have a few? Yeah in terms of food waste focus on the commercial site here given our regulatory roles so we've seen a huge increase in the food waste segregated due to the waste Scotland regulations over the last year we've used our new enforcement powers in terms of the fixed monetary penalty campaign to tackle those waste producers that have responsibilities with the duty to recycle we tackled 73 persistent persistent offenders in terms of their compliance and just the threat of the fixed monetary penalty changed behaviour here and we issued to fixed monetary penalties during this campaign and we have seen a change in their behaviour as well so we are seeing across Scotland an increase in the food waste from food waste businesses we also in terms of the second largest commercial and industrial source of waste food and drink manufacturing and I think it's really important to make sure that while we collect and take this waste in terms of recycling we need to have the right infrastructure in place here as well so we're working with industry to make sure that we can get the maximum value from all this organic waste in terms of keeping that circular economy in terms of keeping it out of landfill and used for soil restoration and agricultural benefit as well to infrastructure later on can I just go sorry my mistake apologies I just wanted to get Ian Gollum to comment on my question previously about revisiting the regulations but I didn't mean to interrupt you, apologies that Ian touched upon it Garden waste collections are the only non-stactury service collection at the council and under the controlled waste regulations are within their right to apply a charge for the collection of that which is quite well established down south so I think it has to be seen that that service is a severe risk across the 32 local authorities in Scotland either to stop or be chargeable for 18 months to two years of that there's no question it can't be the telling stat I always have with food waste is when Falkirk council operated a residual waste collection every fortnight we collected 0.6 kilograms per household when we moved to a three-weekly residual waste collection we collected 1.2 kilograms of food waste per week when we moved to a four-weekly residual waste collection we are just under 1.6 kilograms of food waste captured per week the leaflet was exactly the same so what changed the behaviour it wasn't the communications it wasn't saying that I came up with a great communication method or a great tool or a great leaflet or a great interactive app there was only one thing that changed that made that behaviour shift across and that was going from the two weekly to the four weekly so again when you're looking at it people kind of know what they need to do but don't necessarily do it Claudia Beamish's point going beyond so that was the should we review the regulations in terms of the ex-householder the exemption I'm slightly struggling with it I'm trying to imagine what that would actually look like in practice but it did change that and how that would be get enforced to some extent but the other part to be more of a personal thing I'm more of a believer in the carrot first before the stick I still think with a respect we haven't really there's probably more efforts we could make with the individual household level of the citizen and the communities around their responsibility or potential around climate change or certainly in terms of recycling and waste prevention and taking these messages out I get the points that Robin's making but I still think there's a lot more that we could be doing and encouraging participation rates both at community level and otherwise I wouldn't say repeating the same narrative but changing the narrative slightly around all of the opportunities both at local level in terms of jobs is a missed opportunity because our own narrative has changed from just simply trying to recycle because we need to get stuff out of landfill to it's the right thing for the environment but actually now it's the right thing both for the environment and the local economy and tackling some social injustices so I think there is a real opportunity to re-engage with people people like to know what's happening to the materials why they're getting involved so I think that's probably my first response is probably there's more we could do rather than simply see legislation but that's very optimistic and I don't want to detract from that at all but why should householders be the only ones in the whole chain who don't have that responsibility put on to them in a statutory way can I add something to your point Rebecca mentioned earlier that the threat of the notice to the businesses was a huge impact we don't have that threat and so why are businesses not afforded the same opportunity to get on board but we will serve a notice in a business so if you run your own business we'll serve a notice of you you go to the householder we'll send you an office around which we don't have many of anymore Tony to say please so my argument is the same as you reiterated the threat of that on the business was quite a force to do that so are we overthinking this that sometimes the threat that we could do something we did it down south with the clean neighbourhood act where the local authorities do have the ability to serve a penalty on householders we're not saying we'll do it you have to do it in terms of if you have to engage with a householder we have sent an officer nine times to publicly engage to do individual meetings to do individual group meetings that still doesn't have an impact how many times enough is the question and if it's effective on businesses just that threat why why would we not do that to householders Mark Can I finally move on to packaging can I specifically ask Ian Galland and Rebecca Walker about where you see the greatest opportunities are to reduce packaging waste and what kind of initiatives are already under way in relation to producer responsibility to try and get a grip of this SIPA ministers for producer responsibility compliance schemes packaging being one of these regimes in 2015 alone we saw 7.4 million tonnes of packaging financed by the producers in terms of recycling not the waste stream in this covered paper aluminium steel and other types of packaging so in terms of what the packaging rigs have already achieved we should, it is a celebration I think this is a success but there's always been for improvement so we could be doing a lot more to look at this to work with other UK administrations in terms of achieving more through the packaging rigs so yeah quite a lot has been done on package not food waste packaging but food packaging and a lot of it is actually probably under the radar so we've worked obviously from Scotland with UK colleagues through the Waste and Resources Action programme through a commitment with the main retailers called the Courtauld commitment which really did focus on reducing packaging and a lot of work has been done in terms of the numbers and that's really been done through light weighting of packaging and changing of formats it's probably not easily recognisable when you're walking up and down in the supermarkets at home and I know that even from my own point of view but a lot has been done by the industry and that's been driven by a commitment to reduce packaging a voluntary commitment across all the sectors the main players but also a recognition that there's a business case for this in terms of the volumes that they truck around the country and light weighting in terms of carbon emissions so there has been quite a considerable amount done but that's not to say more needs to be done and I guess I would from my conversations that most of these retailers and producers are very focused on their packaging but more importantly they're trying to understand how they can get reduce the carbon footprint of packages even greater and they're very much focused on the recycled content because that's the biggest way that they can reduce the global footprint or the carbon footprint of the materials and that means again coming back to the point about infrastructure where does that material come from how can they access clean good quality plastic flake or glass or card to introduce recycled fibres or material into their packaging to get that back onto the shelf and also then the recyclability of it making it available for recycling so the recycling systems are available the will is there from packaging producers et cetera we can set targets we should have 30% recycled content or 50% and these are already considered and a lot of the industry is suggesting those targets themselves but actually accessing the quality of materials to put that into their products is a real challenge at the moment and that to some extent that's how the infrastructure needs to be joined up how do we then in Scotland supply that raw material into those industries who are actually looking for it there's a demand the clear one we have in Scotland that's one of their biggest challenges now to reduce the carbon footprint of their packaging glass how do they source good quality flint primarily in terms of clear glass and to reduce the carbon impact of their glass bottles they've done a lot of work on light weighting we've worked with them significantly over the last couple of years a lot of the main bottles are a lot lighter than they were in the past that's technically feasible to get more glass recycle glass into that but that's one of the real challenges now is how do they source that glass from a local base particularly in Scotland where the glass bottle manufacturing is primarily based for the whisky industry so that's one of the challenges I think going forward that we really need to try and join up our infrastructure and the quality and the supply of those to those people who are already making those decisions that they want to drive the recycle content up OK, thanks Thank you, Maurice Golden The next section is on waste treatment infrastructure and I'll direct my questions to Ian Gulland and Rebecca Walker in the first instance however, if the local authorities would like to chip in just flag there's four areas that we'd like to cover in a quite snappy fashion first of all just generally looking at infrastructure then looking specifically around incineration thereafter exports and finally closing off with some particular materials and the opportunities around that so first of all in your opinion Ian Gulland, do we have sufficient infrastructure to meet Scottish Government targets? The simple answer is to somebody saying yes because there is infrastructure available and if we are talking about energy from waste there is also an opportunity to export materials so if there is an oversupply of material for energy from waste going forward then there are markets overseas particularly in the rest of Europe and that is an opportunity because I guess the real challenge is we've talked about the trends of waste composition both in terms of volume and quality what is the infrastructure that we require both immediately and going forward when Tony has already talked about his 25 year commitment in terms of Glasgow so those facilities that you're talking about are long term facilities so this is about do we want capacity that fits our future needs or our immediate needs bearing in mind all of the things we've just talked about in terms of what we're actually trying to achieve here in Scotland so I guess in terms of the targets there is facilities available you could argue well we want to do more with that waste material in Scotland so that we still need more infrastructure to be developed over the next five years but again if that ties us then into 25 years beyond that so that's a 30 year horizon then is that really what we're trying to do so I think the real trick at the moment is to really think about what's the infrastructure we need in the future and not tie us into something which is going to A limit our recycling ambitions and also if I may ask and I've said this before in this chamber really becoming an outrider in terms of our low carbon ambitions I mean with respect incineration in terms of CO2 emissions per kilowatt hour it's still it's still very high per kilowatt hour gram CO2 per kilowatt in terms of the fact that we're shifting towards renewables so going forward the more of those plants we have in Scotland the more outriders we're going to have the more long annex we're going to have of the future in terms of energy from waste so that's something I think from an energy point of view or a low carbon point of view in terms of the Scottish position we need to really consider those are not long term well they could cause us longer term going forward so I guess that's the simple answer said in a long winded answer just to kind of push you a little bit further on that the current estimates from the Scottish government is that incineration capacity is going to go up 12 and a half times over the next five years and as you've pointed out that actually ties Scotland in for up to 30 years so how does that reflect on the target for a recycling rate of 70% for example in 2025 well I mean at the moment it's not I guess we've focussed on the recycling rate to get as much of that material out high value material that's what the systems are being put in play in the public sector and the commercial sector so I guess the question is hitting the 70% target does that leave enough material to be fed to the incineration capacity going back to the point if we see more increased waste prevention of that I guess these are the numbers and that is something that is modelled on a regular basis between ourselves and SEPA and others in terms of the government analysis as well to try and understand what does that final picture or not even the final picture how does that picture evolve over not just the next five years but beyond that and can you outline what that is I mean is it right that Scotland should be increasing incineration capacity by 12.5 times over the next five years or should we be focusing on exports of that waste because that provides flexibility for Scotland and indeed the councils going forward and ultimately would allow an ability to meet targets and move in a faster manner I'd say this because when I talk to colleagues in Europe they say to me learn from our mistakes don't build incineration capacity because then you'll struggle to fill it in 10, 20, 30 years time I'm going to try and ask Rebecca in terms of the numbers because you've done 12.5% I mean understanding 12.5 times but that's from a very low point so it's about the actual number how does it relate to the actual material that's available I'd be happy to come in on the numbers here in construction we have four energy from waste facilities totaling around 945 100,000 tonnes in terms of meeting the targets if we were looking into the capacity in Scotland we'd be looking at just over 1.5 million tonnes so at the moment we're at very, very low risk of over capacity in terms of what is in construction and that gives us the flexibility that Ian mentioned in terms of what is going abroad so we at the moment send 200,000 tonnes of RDF abroad to those that have capacity in terms of energy from waste facilities and this gives us the flexibility like you say we're not locking ourselves into an over capacity here and there's very low risk at the moment of that and as Ian also mentioned we do model this quite regularly in terms of the infrastructure we need in the future because it's not just what we need now it's what we need in 30 years time it's what we need in 40 years time that we need to be thinking about I think it's got a supplementary on this Supplementary on, you see the four sites incinerators where are they and we speak we seem to speak flippantly about incinerators we have people who are very concerned about incinerators being built right beside them so what would you say to those people who 50 years ago we burned our rubbish and were fire but nowadays we want to burn an incinerator and we want to build them 200 yards away from houses in particular in Whitehill and Hamilton why would we want to do that? In terms of I appreciate your question in terms of the regulations compared to decades ago we're in a very different world we regulate incinerators to very strict emission limits and we also look at the energy that is recovered from them efficiently and the regulations they are very strict emission limits so why do people not believe you? In terms of the public perception of incinerators we are looking at a historical legacy sorry I'll just be brief I agree and I'll go back to an organisation I used to deal with APPSI I was a councillor for the years I agree with that but what do we say to people we want to incinerate but we want to build this plant right next door to you where are the other four sites you're talking about? We have two sites in Edinburgh we have one in Edinburgh at Millihill one at Dunbar a site in Glasgow and a site in Levensea so if there's a site in Glasgow why do we need to build one in Erdingser in Beilsel? That point just to give you a try and answer the question we don't recognise the term incineration it's gasification I'm trying to be clever I'm trying to answer your question because you asked a really pertinent question about the difference between household waste the way that that stuff that used to be burnt in the fire the way that that waste is controlled now is 21st century in terms of how that we will have a residual waste treatment solution that we have kept specifically for Glasgow's waste at 200,000 tonnes done that for a reason one of the reasons is it can't be it be all an end all for the waste we have got to challenge ourselves continuously for recycling so I had mentioned earlier on we produced anything between in last year 265,000 tonnes to 10 years ago 350,000 tonnes of waste we built on a legacy for the future to try and challenge ourselves continuously in terms of recycling there's a residual waste treatment plant it's known as a Glasgow Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre well smart remove all the material that can be removed in terms of dry and mixed recycling organic material will go through anaerobic digestion then as a last port of call it will go through a gasification process and there's a whole range of chemical processes to be honest with you are beyond me but what they do is strictly monitor how that stuff goes into the atmosphere the noxious substances and what have you are strictly controlled and that's a key part of the package coming in for Glasgow but I know that Mr Carson had asked a question about is it not diametically opposed in terms of trying to introduce this solution but surely should be trying to do more with the wheel blinds what we're trying to do is build for the future but have a balance that ensures we're trying to maximise as much as possible from recycling to try and avoid that when stop shop at the end very brief way gentlemen because we're really up against it time wise the question I'd want to go back to is obviously Maurice your point you need to be very careful with the export exports factored on the pounds performance against the euro or the dollar you know after after Brexit was announced the cost of export increased by 23% based on the pound coming down there's a reason they're Scandinavian countries see the benefit of yes they have done over capacity slightly but they understand the heat generation and benefit they can come with energy from waste facilities and in some cases are right in city centres and in town centres to heat that town centre and city centre so we need to be very careful if we're relying on export two reasons the rest of Europe know we've got a biodegradable ban in 2021 if we get to that stage and we don't have enough capacity they're going to hold us to ransom because they know we can't landfill it let's be very careful and let's make a clear distinction between planned consent and actual infrastructure there's two clear distinctions there we might have a perception that the planned consent is over capacity but how many of them will actually hit the ground come 2021 when we actually can't do anything else and we're being held to ransom by our European neighbours Ian Gowan very briefly I'll counter the argument because quite a lot of the facilities in Europe are trying to find out for waste so I hear your point about health ransom but they are actually it's a cutthroat business in mainland Europe to try and get hold of waste from around Europe eastern part of Europe as well as ourselves here there's also an export market more broadly down south as well where there is very much concerns that there will be over capacity further south in terms of materials so I don't think that kind of ransom issue is as real and present as you say Robin sorry I'll be honest, I'm not a fan in fact I've been in this chamber in a previous role giving evidence around the situation so there is no aspects of looking up materials that could really stimulate investment and economic opportunities for Scotland so there's some real and present issues that need to be addressed but I guess as I say to everybody is about how you engage with communities around us if you are going to have it how do you engage you know whether it's I mean the reason some of our cities are about district heating systems and there's a very successful one in Shetland that provides heat and power to the hospital etc and that's how the good cases are pointed in other European countries where they've gone to communities and said how would you like with respect renewable heat or a heat district heating system that allows you access cheaper rates in terms of power and to local businesses and that's more of a selling point I guess and it's not about the pollution it's not trying to sell something that's going to to some extent impact on their health because as Rebecca says the monitoring of incinerators is far in excess of how it used to be but having said all that there is a longer term issue around Scotland looking at this strategically looking at what do we actually need now and to some extent what does that infrastructure look like now in terms of respect how can we wean ourselves off it if we have too much of it over going forward because as I said we'll look it in we'll miss opportunities around the circle economy in terms of recycling and jobs creation potentially here in Scotland but more importantly we'll start to really impact on our ambitions around climate change I think it would be really helpful if Zero Waste Scotland and perhaps in conjunction with SEPA wrote to the committee outlining some of those points which you articulated regarding the future infrastructure map I just want to touch on a couple of particular materials particularly food waste and according to SEPA's waste data analysis about 1 million tonnes of food waste is currently not being captured and processed so with respect to that how are we going to cope with the landfill band that's coming in in 2021 in terms of the landfill band working with Zero Waste Scotland Scottish Government and Industry to develop guidance in preparation for the band and that will be in conjunction with looking at the future infrastructure that we have so this is going to be all the biodegradable municipal waste the black bag waste that's going to be banned from landfill from 1 January 2021 Do we have enough infrastructure because obviously it's very short it's January 1st 2021 so I would suggest to stop the infrastructure either there now or being available then it could be an issue but With the energy from waste plants in construction and the option to To be burning food waste It's biodegradable municipal waste so it's all black bag waste from local authorities but we have that focus on reducing the residual waste and pulling out the food waste so we have other tools in terms of the local authorities the waste Scotland regulations in terms of segregating food waste there if it is biodegradable municipal waste coming from them so it's in terms of segregating that waste first we're always going to focus on the recycling of the food waste reducing the food waste and the dry recyclers before sending any residual waste to landfill and from 2021 to energy from waste What about in rural areas where there's currently an exemption on separate collections of food waste Do you see more of a challenge there or indeed an opportunity to build particular infrastructure in rural or in island communities or Mr Gulland place like Orkney For example If you're thinking again about energy from waste it goes point to... It goes like anaerobic the point that Mark Ruskell raised about the future infrastructure particularly around garden waste one of the challenges on a previous role there was a lot of community composting initiatives around Scotland and then when council started to take in garden waste as a collection infrastructure it basically took away the feedstock from a number of geographic communities some of them were in the rural parts of Scotland so you could understand the potential reversal where councils work more collaboratively with communities and others to bring in other solutions both for garden waste and food waste and absolutely I still believe that's the case in rural parts of Scotland in terms of technology we're seeing a lot of micro technology now that's the big thing both in terms of AD and food waste operations food waste processing those are opportunities for rural parts of Scotland in terms of whether that's run by local authority or whether that's run by community or another provider very much aligned to some of the renewable companies that are out there working so absolutely and I think that's something that we've been looking at is what does that technology look like and how could it be applied what's the perfect fit but I know we've done where yourself Morris worked in Orkney for a number of years looking at some real solutions for them in terms of their food waste particularly organic material not just from the householder but looking across the two distilleries, the cheese and the milk producers as well so absolutely I think there's a fantastic interest in that now where there wasn't before because it is about almost disaggregating that resource grid I was talking about in terms of trying to centralise that through the public system it's how can local communities and local opportunities arise and we've seen a lot of that interest now in the rural parts of Scotland I have a question if there was one piece of waste treatment infrastructure you could put in Scotland and you're not allowed to say an incinerator what would that be so I'm thinking something to deal with mattress, plastic recycling carpets, tyres what would that be very briefly something that could solve our tyre problem would be great I could pick one plastic is an obvious one but I think it's the whole thing in terms of the circle economy we should be thinking about landing all of that as a package so we should understand we have a tyres issue or a tyres opportunity we have a plastics opportunity, we have a mattress opportunity we have a carpet opportunity and it's how we actually this is an infrastructure so we started trying to just pick things and trying to hope that they'll actually land in Scotland we now have enough data, enough opportunity enough recognition of what these circle economy opportunities are for Scotland it might not just be one of each thing we've talked about their rural opportunities I think we can now start to coalesce around a package of infrastructure that would really make Scotland start to drive the circle economy forward in terms of the input materials and the output materials for our own economy that is a real and present opportunity now for Scotland and we're still just picking at things and saying let's solve this, solve that that's what we know here at Zeroway Scotland the working with partners, there are real opportunities now to make that happen but it has to be done at a strategic level so we actually start to realise that it's not down to, with every respect local authority level, it's done at a Scotland level to realise those ambitions okay, thank you right, thank you Angus McDonald thanks, convener, and good morning to the panel if I could turn to the issue of compliance and enforcement I'm keen to explore fixed penalty notices and other enforcement measures but to start with I'd like to focus on business compliance rates which Rebecca Walker has already referred to in response to an earlier question so with regard to the requirement for businesses to present key recyclables separately for collection as required by the Waste Scotland regulations 2012 what are the business compliance rates and similarly just for the record what are the compliance rates of food businesses presenting waste food separately for collection as per the Waste Scotland regulations thank you we've carried out over 7000 inspections in partnership with local authorities across businesses in all parts of Scotland 80% of these we're seeing a compliance rate of 80% of these carrying out some recycling in terms of their dry recycling and their food waste based on what type of business there is and where their focus should be in terms of what they're separating out we've seen we have information from service providers and local authorities and those that are persistently non-compliant and we do tackle these and focus our efforts in tackling these and we've seen a great change in terms of the fixed monetary penalty threats so we saw about an 88% change and then over 90% once we issued to fixed monetary penalties here so we are seeing high compliance here in terms of the campaign we do here the access to information of some businesses we went very closely with Serious Waste Scotland on the communications sometimes it's awareness and understanding and sometimes it's persistent and non-compliant and we need to know when to use the right intervention and the right tool to change behaviour here and we do have a process to go through in terms of tackling compliance okay thanks you've certainly mentioned in your submission to the committee that the fixed monetary penalties are powerful tools to increase compliance and the figures would certainly suggest that moving on I have some issues in my constituency regarding non-compliance perhaps bordering on waste crime I'm curious as to what are the biggest challenges relating to tackling waste crime in Scotland and also extended non-compliance which seems to be an issue at times around the country Waste crime is very difficult to measure, it's a huge problem it's because it's such a hidden issue it's difficult in terms of reporting on it, detecting it a recent report, Rethinking Waste Crime highlighted that it cost the UK economy £600 million per year so we take it very seriously SIPA treated it as a complete priority we're working with industry and partners at an international national and local level we recently came we recently undertook a perception study where we had 257 respondents and this is due to be published in July some of the key messages from this was that crime is endemic and that we do need to do more in terms of being more visible to do this education awareness campaigns around this and SIPA should be more visible in terms of what it is doing to tackle waste crime since we do treat it as a priority but at the same time the respondents highlighted that reducing it within the industry is definitely possible tackling it is so important because we do need that level playing field as well as protecting the environment and getting the maximum value from resources we need that level playing field for legitimate businesses to thrive that waste crime is an issue and it needs to be tackled and we are treating it as a priority okay thanks and can I ask the panel in general what their views are on the enforcement and compliance tools that are available to SIPA and how effective they are for example issuing final warning notices or referring cases to the procurator fiscal I'm kind of happy to answer that I think SIPA have the tool and have the will to use that tool and sometimes is environmental crime taken as seriously as it needs to be when it goes forward to the courts would be a question that I would certainly put to that that I certainly have worked closely within my local authority area with SIPA to deal with issues of businesses that were causing this concern but sometimes when it goes to the courts we are not necessarily treated with the severity in which the action in the crime warrants Come in there as well in terms of Glasgow the point that was made earlier on about the threat of the legislation and regulations has been so significant in getting local businesses to do the right thing and in fact that's probably been enough just to have that there just to have the aspect that we can actually say on those regulations if you don't do that get some to do the right thing I echo it's been so well received for us in terms of the regulatory powers that they have obviously our role has been working with them on the communication through our resource efficiency programme which doesn't just talk about energy but we've used that as a channel to talk to businesses directly about their responsibilities under the regulations and the potential fines etc but I do think there is other things and it is already happening but it could be done more of I guess it's that whole thing about there's other as well as SEPA officers visiting those types of businesses, there's environmental health officers, there's trading standards officers there's a whole range of other public servants who you know it's about getting them involved in this as well to some extent to not just to tell on those businesses but more to pass the message about responsibility that small businesses particular which are harder to reach but are being visited more often possibly than SEPA officers on the ground so I know a lot of work's been done that about training, about sharing information and encouraging others to get more involved and talking directly one to one with businesses so I think there's probably some initiatives there that we could build on to make it more successful because some of it is just about awareness raising the core of you. Thank you, convener. Could I just ask particularly Rebecca from a SEPA perspective you'll know that there was the Sterling management school report on suggesting that there could be more detail of of the recording of enforcement actions at a given site and more detail on the actual waste at sites and waste streams and I appreciate this may well be a resource capacity but is that something that you think would help the the drive to tackle environmental waste crime? We're always looking at new ways that we can tackle it in terms of the enforcement and communicating this so I mean I probably discuss this with my colleagues in terms of what we can do practically on the ground to do this but yes we need to do more to help address waste crime definitely and having that education and awareness about it I think is really, really important. Last but not least, David Stewart. Thank you, convener. Good morning panel. Can I ask you in conclusion a very general but important question and that is what the risks and opportunities are posed by Brexit for Scotland's zero waste plans. If I start with Rebecca Walker. Thank you. The EU directives have presented us with a very strong framework that has been translated into UK and Scotland New. For us at SEPA we're working closely with the Scottish Government in terms of advising them and providing technical advice. In terms of the detail of this it is quite difficult to say but we need to look at how this strong framework can continue. We're lucky we have a very as I mentioned earlier in this session a very comprehensive strategy to work to we have Scottish regulations that we're implementing but this is really complicated and I think it's really early in terms of the actual implications that this is going to have. We need to be aware of all these implications. We're also in terms of other areas we are assisting DEFRA as well in terms of the technical capacity when it comes to transfinition and of waste as well. OK, thank you. Ian? Yeah, so it's something we do look at very seriously in our business as you would imagine and also obviously with other partners with SEPA and economic agencies as well. I guess going back to Robin's point one of the obvious things is the trade of materials. What would us depending on obviously what happens in terms of the Brexit settlement what impact positive or otherwise would that have on our material flow out with going out of Scotland but also the impact of raw materials being bought in bought by our industries here. I guess all of that is deeply uncertain which I guess reinforces for us emphasises the importance of moving towards a more circular economy where we're actually making more use economically and environmentally of the assets that are already deployed in our society in terms of materials and products and how do we make more of them and create systems which are certainly better for the environment and better for our economy but more importantly perhaps more resilient depending on what the outcome is because we are a doomonger here but I think it reinforces the need that we can really these opportunities are real and still real and present within Brexit within Europe or out with Europe and working across the UK so I guess for us it just reinforces the need that the direction of travel we're on is the right one it reinforces the need for pace but on the other side there is a degree of uncertainty so we are actually trying to attract for some of these facilities we've talked about in terms of reprocessing with enterprise partners so all of that in terms of attracting investment and getting Scottish companies to invest can be quite challenging at this moment because it's a degree of uncertainty. What about the impact on the operations of Zero Waste Scotland because you have a large proportion of your funding that's drawn from the EU, don't you? Yeah, so at the moment we have a considerable amount over 30 million euros being supplied through structural funds up until 2018 I guess what goes forward will be a matter for obviously what comes out of the settlement I guess that money is being used, being matched with Scottish Government money to accelerate our work so I guess it's all about if we don't have as much money does our pace change does it slow down some of the activities or our ability to support some of the opportunities and that's something obviously we're very conscious of in discussions again with Scottish Government colleagues around that but it is not just about our money or Government money that we get and European money, it's about how do we lever and other investors, whether that's venture funds or banks or other mainstream investment that is available to both small medium enterprises and some of the infrastructure projects that we've talked about so yeah it's not going to impact on us in the short term but it could start to narrow our focus going forward I think one of the wider issues none of us obviously can foresee the future in terms of the negotiations but I would assume that we will be perhaps importing more from non-EU countries so there are big issues for example on plastics we may then find that we're taking plastics from countries that doesn't comply with EU directives on plastics which gets back to the problem that we're causing more problems in the circle economy and not less but welcome to actually Tony and Robin's views on the wider issue before I go into specifics I think as you said it remains to be seen we are certainly noticing just now in terms of the markets that are available they are much more competitive than they were several years ago but there's so much in play just now it's so difficult to actually put a handle on how we'll be affected I think I alluded to earlier I think it's when it happened the cost of export in RDF compared to the pound I think it was about 20% hit so as long as we're relying on export we're susceptible to that risk of external influences impacting how we can deliver across the spectrum how we handle our resource so while we have that reliance it certainly has to be at risk category in terms of the affordability of certain things moving forward if it changes and the cost models change so dynamically but the flip side to that Ian alluded to it that might create the opportunity to invest in this country I wonder that one of the big picture issues that concerns me is the whole area of European directives and enforcement and the European Court of Justice as you know is the group that guard the guards they're vitally important to ensure that environment standards across Europe are enforced and it's quite clear that the piece of me wants to withdraw from the European Court of Justice have the panel any concerns or issues they wish to raise around that point we have as well as European law we have case law from the UK and Scotland so where we do withdraw from that it will be following UK and Scottish law that has been made into case law here and has CPAD developed contingency plans in the case we withdraw from European Court of Justice in terms of enforcement at the point that there's some Scottish and UK legislation that the courts can still rely on the point I'm making that we relied heavily on Europe in terms of enforcement at a wider level at the moment we're discussing this with Scottish Government and supporting Scottish Government in this but we haven't, there's no detail yet it's too early to say Ian Yeah it's probably something I'm aware that these discussions are ongoing and all that is brings uncertainty how all that will work and getting that for some of the work that we're involved in working in partnership with CEPA on some of the issues around enforcement and regulation but as well as again business uncertainty all of that creates a degree of uncertainty for investment and while everybody sees the opportunities what is the kind of climate that we will all be working in regulatory systems and even for current businesses involved in waste management and resource management I'm sure that's something that they're keenly observant about at this moment but as he said the detail isn't available for us all to strategise around so it is about working up scenarios and trying to understand what that would look like so it's an evolving picture I think I think the final point I would make is obviously I take effectively Rebecca's point that we're perfectly capable of developing Scotland in the UK best practice on the environment and there's been a lot of examples there today but one of the great strengths of Europe has been best practice on the environment and practical enforcement and the great centre of expertise in Brussels around this have any of the panel members got any concerns about the loss of this expertise that may be developed once we've drawn through article 50 from the EU? Just very quickly in terms of our game plan we're working to zero waste Scotland plan and it's a robust plan it's a really good plan and our own local waste strategy tackling Glasgow's waste is built on the premise of the keystones that are within that zero waste plan so we've got absolutely no problems moving forward with that plan over the next 10 years I think the one thing I would like to add is a good idea is a good idea no matter where it comes from and we may not have access to the European Court of Justice the best of outcomes that come from that and we can still learn from our European neighbours and as they can learn from us as they have done with the work games team have done in the circular economy so it's not going to be a close shop in terms of any new ideas won't be shared a good friend of mine always says there's no need to reinvent the wheels so if the wheels there let's go and look at it Scotland's environment protection agency we continue to and will continue to work in partnership with our European partners with international partners learning best practice working together looking at the opportunities and the challenges together in terms of making the transition to a circular economy and also seeing how that can relate to Scotland definitely I'll echo that I don't think that's incumbent on us to maintain those links regardless and ensure that we're sharing best practice and learning and forming these partnerships because we're naive there are opportunities at the moment particularly around the circular economy because as many members are aware Scotland is seen as one of the leading nations in the world around that in terms of the progress we've made and even just the knowledge that we've built up in terms of some of the some of the activities we've been involved in we are sharing that openly with colleagues in Brussels and around Europe but more importantly we're able to European are thinking particularly around standards for manufacturing standards for products going forward thinking about equal design and all that because of what our knowledge is and we could potentially be influencing that with other nation states in Europe so I guess it's that bit as well as sharing it but if we were excluded from some of those discussions yes we would still like to copy them or share them when those standards come out from Europe that would be something that the Scottish Government would be keen to look at and evolve possibly in the actual shaping of those and I think you know as an opportunity we have now seen as a leading nation around the circular economy I think our European colleagues appreciate our role in those discussions as well as ourselves so something we were obviously keen to keep going as much as possible Okay thank you very briefly Maurice Golden Just a direct question for Ian Gulland with respect to Future Zero Waste Scotland funding I think it would be helpful just to confirm on the record that obviously all jobs of members of staff irrespective of Brexit are to remain but secondly given your answer earlier I wonder if you can foresee some opportunities irrespective of the level of funding to be without the restrictions of ERDF funding which is indeed focused on small and medium size enterprises has involved a number of meetings regulations form filling and you may reflect that there are opportunities to have funding without restrictions to use in Scotland as you require Yeah I wonder about staff would you want me to confirm that that all staff are permanent and will be there for the foreseeable future The thing about ERDF although we are funded I mean 30 million euros over the next couple of years is significant and it's matched with some Scottish Government money obviously but we have other monies from the Scottish Government which are not inverted commons ring fence for ERDF so that does allow us to work with businesses out with the scope of the ERDF funding as you say is primarily focused on SMEs in Scotland around the circle economy and resource efficiency although as well as that we've allocated some money into the climate challenge fund to support communities who are looking at resource efficiency more importantly opportunities around reuse, repair etc and tackling food waste at a local level so whilst respecting the fact that there is a bit of administration that comes on top we do have flexibility out with that to provide support to other initiatives as well but absolutely accept that we saw that as an opportunity that was worth taking on in terms of the European funding because it expanded our envelope in terms of what we could actually do with it in terms of investment but going forward if it's not European funding there might be other monies that are available which don't have the same constraints but administration burdens but at the end of the day with respect to public money so what's good for Europe should be good for the rest of us in terms of the Scottish Government and we'd like to think that our administrative processes are robust as they should be in terms of how we set up our systems and allocate funding and make sure and monitor and evaluate those going forward Can I bring this part of the meeting to a conclusion, thank the witnesses for their evidence today and remind those who've undertaken to write to the committee to follow through on that so thanks very much I'm going to suspend briefly while we change the panel welcome back to this meeting of the environment climate change and land reform committee we will now resume taking evidence on waste in Scotland and we'll hear from our second panel we are joined by Jim Brown the commercial director of bin group who's just about to join us I've been pointed out to me Ovens, the director of Ntech Solutions Barry Turner from the British Plastics Federation and Martin Gray of Viridore welcome along today thank you very much for your attendance and we will move to questions and we'll start with Kate Forbes very much, I just thought I'd start with a very broad question which is what trends you envisage in waste generation in the coming decade I'm quite happy to do that we heard earlier about the trends over the last 10 years but certainly over the last four to five years then things have levelled out and there's been little change if you exclude commercial construction demolition waste which is dependent on the economy stuff everything else is pretty settled in terms of commercial industrial and household and that's a good place to be and I think that will continue to be settled winding back we used to talk about housing growth and growth generally affecting waste and as Ian Gullen said before I think there has been a decoupling of those two so I whilst I would like to see a decrease I think there's some influence on household and economic growth against wasterizing which will mean pretty stable for the time being and certainly moving forward I think that absolutely is the case what I think we have seen over the last number of years and we will continue to see is a change in the composition of that waste as the circular economy really embeds itself it would make a very simple observation that five, ten years ago how we collected glass in Scotland is very different to how we collect it now what we do with plastics was very different to what we do with plastics now and what we see is some of that innovation continuing over the years ahead we're doing some really good work at the moment at UK level with the green alliance in terms of some of the companies there who are really at the cutting edge of packaging innovation and I know we'll come on to this later but I think that's the real opportunity for Scotland in terms of yet we've seen ten years of investment in recycling infrastructure the last five years have been about investment in landfill diversion or energy recovery infrastructure for us the big opportunity is where do we go in the next five and ten years and how do we make that case for reinvestment right here in Scotland to be determined by ongoing innovation in this area Does anyone else want to come in on that? From a packaging perspective we've seen considerable light weighting occur over the last decade the next decade I think we'll see further changes in terms of the way that we shop and that will influence what gets collected from the households we've already seen the internet play a far bigger part in terms of our shopping and we'll continue to see changes we've seen the supermarkets move away from large format stores to local stores so all of that will have some bearing on the packaging waste that's generated and the sort of waste that's generated Jim Brown do you want to come in on that? Just briefly just to back up what my colleagues have said the make-up of waste over the past ten years or so has changed dramatically Barry mentioned light weighting, that's certainly something people shop differently that has changed we don't get as much newspapers and stuff through the recycling that we pick up now tends to be more lightweight materials so yeah and I think that will continue to change Kate Forbes so obviously those conclusions must be based on data so how robust is the data that we currently have on Scotland's waste and what are the priorities for improvement as we look ahead to the next decade data is definitely improved and we're definitely capturing more than we had and I know there are huge plans within SEPA to make electronic data reporting systems consistent and there's a huge piece of work going on that so I fully support that and I think that will be the key to ensuring we have the right data but it's all about making sure it's smart data that we're actually collecting and not data for the sake of data and we have been I suppose in the past part of the problem has been a lot of data but in terms of interpretation and what we're actually collecting and why we're collecting that I think that it has led to data overload in some respects and not led to consistency so I am hopeful that the electronic systems will give us that consistency and peace for future Barry Turner from your experience and the robustness of the data compare across between Scotland and other parts of the UK well I've seen the data that's been generated by Zero Waste Scotland on the plastics arising I think the challenge for the sector going forward in terms of meeting future targets and maximising recycling is our ability to go down to what I call a granular level there was discussion in the earlier session about being in flat what sort of waste that they generate how does that compare with others with a curbside scheme it was quite interesting to see an article last week that was forecasting that in many cities the kitchen would disappear that people were eating so much food on the go and out of their premises that the home kitchen as we see it today would change dramatically in the next decade what impact is that going to have and also understanding the different flows arising from that particularly the on the go consumption I think that's an area we need to understand far better than we do at the moment as Scotland compares to the rest of the UK is our data quite robust or do you have any concerns about that I can only compare the the Scottish data based on population and the zero waste report took down the plastic waste arising it's that could possibly be looked at further but I think because just based on population and if I compare it with the UK as a whole it's possible that that estimate is still on the high side but I would come back to the point that I made earlier I think in terms of how we move things forward we probably need to take that to another level to help us in our journey OK Emma Harper It's just a quick sump to Kate Forbes' question to Barry Turner you mentioned that supermarkets are moving to smaller local outlets and what in your opinion is the implication of waste then for that will it be more, will it be less more packaging for instance I think it's indicative of the way that we're living our lives and are likely to live our lives in the future I made earlier the role of on-the-go consumption versus at the home consumption of food and drink so in terms of the implication if you're having a meal delivered to your home, to your flat that's going to come in a different sort of packaging to the the meal that you would buy from a supermarket for example so I think you need to consider the implications there in terms of shifts in the types of packaging that will arise because of that OK Morris Golden Thank you, convener Just thinking about achieving Scotland's recycling targets, what needs to happen in your opinion for the 2025 target to recycle 70 per cent of Scotland's waste to be achieved Linda Owens, do you want to start again? Again, I should start myself I would I certainly feel that there's a huge push on municipal waste and household waste and I would like to see more done on the other sector, on commercial industrial waste we have about 6 million tonnes of household and commercial industrial waste of which the household is much less than half of that and the emphasis the emphasis needs to shift away from just talking about what the householders can do more they've done an awful lot already in terms of getting us into some authorities getting to nearly 60 per cent in terms of their own recycling levels but I feel that the commercial industrial sector is definitely playing catch up in that section and that's where the biggest changes and gains are going to get to get to 70 I might add from a pen-on perspective we are we are one of the largest investors in recycling and energy recovery infrastructure in the UK currently investing £500 million in Scotland this is a critical one for us I think this is a real opportunity and I think Scotland is at the forefront of the circular economy space in terms of what we need to do I think we need to recognise which I think Scotland has done very well that this isn't just an issue of environmental obligation it's an issue of economic opportunity and how do we embed this right into the heart of Government in terms of an economic strategy how do we link resource use right into a new industrial strategy I think that's what Scotland's done really well I think it's globally recognised for that as we travel across Europe as I'm fortunate enough to do genuinely the world is looking at Scotland in terms of the work that it's doing in this space what I would say is as we have this morning we have come a huge way from that point when even I was a boy where everything went in that one bin to where we've got to just now in quite a short space of time seven or eight years ago when I entered the industry they talked about the fact that there was no real infrastructure in Scotland that has come on leaps and bounds in the last six or seven years I talked about the last maybe ten years investment in advanced recycling infrastructure the last four or five years is about what do we do with the stuff that we can't recycle and the next ten years five ten years will all be about how do we really grasp those circular economy opportunities and I am genuinely very optimistic about where we've got to about a year and a half ago two years Fyrredor produced a paper which was a set of policy asks from Scottish Government most of those I'm genuinely pleased to say that the Scottish Government has taken on board and some of those were about two main themes one was around aggregation of materials so in Scotland the fact that we've got 32 different local authorities often collecting material in different ways as an investor in infrastructure that makes investment decisions quite difficult so we heard this morning about the household recycling commitment I think that will make a huge difference over time we also heard this morning about the aggregation of materials through the brokerage service I think that has the potential to add to the investment case as well but also the other challenges one is aggregation of material the other one is about quality recycling quality and again we heard from SIPA and others about the Murph Codiff practice and again for us that's the real opportunity to bring that fresh focus because the point of recycling isn't just about recycling to hit a target it's about how do we create resources in the Scottish economy large manufacturers and remanufacturers to come here and invest and create jobs in Scotland and absolutely that's what we're doing right doesn't mean there's not challenges along the way still to achieve but many of those building blocks that will allow that next generation investment to come to Scotland are in the process of being put in place I would just add to that as well speaking from I think first of all I would say that we fully support the waste hierarchy and the good work that Zero Waste Scotland are doing putting all the regulation into place and I find as working for Bin Group we have a lot of interaction with colleagues from other companies across the rest of the UK and they look up here with Envy a lot of the time is to the good work that is taking place however what I would say is I would agree with Linda I think huge focus on household waste and rightly so best of interest as a householder myself and I want to see the overall picture improving and I think it will continue to do so but I think there has to be focus on the commercial sector I mean as a business we don't collect household waste but I think that there needs to be a lot more focus on the commercial and industrial sector and how we can make things better we put a lot of time and effort into it as a business by promoting recycling promoting best practice but I think is a kind of joined up thing between all vested interests and parties I think we should be looking closer at how we can improve the overall picture in Scotland moving on Mark Ruskell hi plastic can you give us some background on plastics type of plastics that are being generated in Scotland how they are being processed where they are actually going you have mentioned already about light weighting but can you give us some detail about the nature of this market and how it is being sorted in scond I will attempt to do but as always getting down to a regional level is quite difficult if you look at the total picture in terms of the total plastics I think of waste erisings compared to all waste the figure is quite quite low because of the light weight nature of the product so you are probably looking at based on the figures that were being mentioned this morning in terms of total waste generated in Scotland you are probably looking at around about 5% of that is attributable to plastics in terms of that figure that breaks down 60% roughly is associated with packaging the other 40% is various other areas including building waste including other industrial waste that are generated that are used there are a wide range of polymers in use that are selected based on their ability to do the job in terms of what is collected for recycling there are various initiatives in place across the different polymer streams including industry initiatives that are focused on particular waste streams such as PVC for example as well as schemes that are farming the plastics that come back through the household stream of the plastics that come back through the household stream a number of polymers are widely recycled including HDPE and PET with strong markets for those materials where are they going the plastics a large percentage if you look at the UK as a whole probably around about 60% of that is being exported from the shores for the reprocessing that's probably likely to continue although it will be very much influenced by what happens as a result of Brexit it's got to be that but around about 60% of it is exported from the UK I guess in terms of I did order to give you some context there the plastics that we see coming through our facilities will be collected at our materials recycling facility our nearest specialist polymer facility is at Skelmersdale near Liverpool so those will go there to be effectively pelletised and then they will be traded either across the UK or across the globe where there is a market but I think that goes back to the point of what are we really trying to achieve in Scotland with the circular economy and that's why it's so important to recognise that this is an economic opportunity to make sure that there is more investment, more infrastructure in Scotland and also to make sure that manufacturing jobs that can flow from that are in Scotland and I go back to the point and the way to achieve that is through that aggregation because what stopped a plastic facility coming to Scotland at the moment it's the fact that we have had this aggregated market across Scotland's 32 local authorities and if we could pull those resources as the Scottish Government's vision seeks to do then that makes a whole different investment case for investing in a polymer facility in Scotland and if we are then to achieve that that creates the opportunity of what do we do when that polymer is in Scotland to be remanified in Scotland? Are there any particular polymers that are very difficult to recycle? Obviously we see films as being difficult obviously quite low in terms of weight but going back to Ian Gallin's point presumably in terms of carbon there's still a high value resource so are there particular types of plastic which remain problematic in terms of recovering and reprocessing? If I was to generalise I think the challenge is more what you want to do with those plastics when they're recycled I think unfortunately I think we started the journey on recycling plastics trying to possibly do the most difficult thing which was take a lot of them back into food contact materials that is always t