Ond, welcomiwnau i gyd y 34 ffaith FFIR Energy i Gwyrddol Rhaglen gwybodaeth i 2023. Fe wneud yn gweithio ffoblol mewn cyflawn i'r aceriau Edward Mountain MSP, ac wrth gwrs bwysigiome brym yn gwybod bwysig i gyflawni'r llyfan ym Mhendin. Ie, ond, nes yw bwysigio, maen nhw'n gwybod gyda i gyd yn ff合od stiolionol oherwydd item three in private. Item three is to consider the evidence that we will hear today from all the witnesses on the circular economy bill. Do we agree to take this item in private, colleagues? Thank you. That is agreed. Agenda item two or next item of business is an evidence session as part of our stage one scrutiny of the circular economy bill. For our first panel, we are joined by organisations offering us a UK-wide and international view on the circular economy. We are very pleased to have all our witnesses with us in the room. I am delighted to welcome Leanne Kittenbore Christensen, a partner advocacy officer at SKEAF, the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund. I am also very pleased to welcome, joining us remotely, Jocelyn Blair-Rio, executive lead for international institutions and policy at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Emma Hallett, programme lead for resource management policy WRAP Crumew. We are really happy to have you here. Anna Larsen, director of the circular economy development at ReLoop platform, and Sherry Scott campaign and communications lead of the wellbeing economy alliance in Scotland. Thank you all for being here today. We have allocated around 75 minutes for this item, and we will move straight to questions. I would like to begin by putting a first opening question to you all, which is to hear your first impressions of the bill. Does it provide an ambitious framework to support Scotland's transition to a circular economy, and if not, what would make it more ambitious within the powers of the Scottish Government than the Scottish Parliament? I do not know if you want to go first as you are in the room. Yes, we welcome the circular economy bill, and we think it is an opportunity to make Scotland's resource use more sustainable. Circular economy is an important concept that can help to improve Scotland's environmental credentials. However, we also believe that the bill needs to be strengthened to ensure that the proposed solutions have a truly global outlook, and that is the main point that I would like to make here today. We need to think about how the bill and the strategy that it produces a statutory requirement for can have an international cross-border outlook. I do not know if you want to come on next. Thank you very much, and thank you for giving us the opportunity to comment here. We very much welcome the Scottish Circular Economy Bill as well. What I would emphasise is the need perhaps to go a bit wider than waste management and resource management and consider that circular economy also entails measures that look at business models moving from outright ownership to provision of services where applicable, giving assets more users than the actual linear model does by preventing the overcapacity in the system, and that perhaps entails some legislation that would need fiscal incentives, or looking at ways in order to strengthen the reverse logistic systems when it comes to products that have higher value and need to be circulated more than once in order to give them life cycles perhaps longer than the ones that we see today. So it is about the material side of the economy for sure, and reducing waste is an important part of this, but it's also important to link the bill with strategies such as the ones that pertain to either climate or biodiversity, because reducing the amount of materials that we have in the market when it comes to inputs and given considerations to the nature of the products as well as the volumes of the products that enter the market have an impact on reducing the need for materials that are sourced from virgin sources, thereby reducing the environmental impact and also the climate impacts. Thank you. It's also about how we move to wellbeing and economy, as well as a circular one, and decoupling economic progress from unsustainable consumption and extraction in some ways. I don't know if you want to comment more on that, Emma, and the initial question as well. Yes, so I think we welcome the bill, and I'm mostly able really to speak and share the experience from Wales where we've seen significant progress over the last 20 years in terms of circular economy approach and strategy, and I think you can see in the bill some of the very similar things that have driven some of the change that we've seen in Wales. Having statutory targets for local authorities has been one of the key drivers along with support as well as the challenge of the targets so that councils are able to make those transformations in the services that they provide. To add to the question around the international aspects of the impacts, certainly one of the things we've found really important is to ensure that we've got really clear end destinations reporting, so the duty on councils to report as best they can where their materials are being sent for recycling, and to do so in a way that is transparent and public so that we can all see exactly what is happening with that material, which helps to build that confidence in the system, but also makes people consider exactly where materials are going and making sure that it can be in our instance kept in Wales for recycling in Wales and re-manufacturing in Wales whenever possible. Thank you. My colleague, Matt Ruskell, is going to come in with a specific question on that shortly, but before we move to that, Anna, what are your thoughts on the bill overall? What are your overall impressions and does it provide an ambitious framework? Thank you very much for inviting me and for allowing ReLoop to be part of this session. ReLoop is a global organisation. Our vision is world without less pollution and our mission is to implement circular economy. As we know, the global circularity is at the level of 7.2%, which is very little. I also read your circularity gap reports for Scotland, which is 1.3%, so it is a lot to be done, and certainly the circular economy strategies are very important policy instruments to reach the objective of circular economy. I read the proposed act with great interest. I think it is a solid platform to reach the objective of circular economy implementation. However, what we have to bear in mind that what we definitely need is waste prevention targets. It is, of course, very much welcome that the bill, as it is now, addresses the need to reduce the consumption of materials during production, addresses the targets, but we really need to apply also waste prevention targets. It is very difficult. I acknowledge that all countries in the world have that challenge. We cannot decouple the economic growth from the increase in waste generation, but we have to start somewhere. Also, another important element is extended producer responsibility. As we know, within the circular economy, we have to collect the materials for the circular economy, but we have to also look upon that in the context. Someone has to pay for that, so extended producer responsibility is very important policy instrument to secure that the collection and preparation for reuse or recycling is efficient. Also, we have to remember that it is not enough to collect, it is not enough to pay for the collection and for the processes for recycling and reuse. If we do not have the market mechanisms that will make those collected materials attractive for the market, so we have to create the demand and that can be done through mandatory recycling content and mandatory circularity. We know that already today it is possible to secure circularity of the materials. The beautiful example of such is three countries already, Slovakia, Norway and Sweden, closing totally the loop for the beverage containers from plastic and metal, so it is achievable. Furthermore, we cannot, of course, proceed without bonds. I know it is a word that is not very much liked, but we need to think about banning some products and some packaging items. We really do not need all of the things that we are surrounded by today. If there are any further details, I will comment while we go into the specific provisions. Thank you very much, and I will come back to many of those points that you have raised in further questions. Lastly, what are your overall impressions of the bill? A transition to a circular economy where we are reducing the amount that we extract both in Scotland and abroad is a really key part of our transition to a wellbeing economy, which is part of the Scottish Government's priority. We all in Scotland welcome a lot of the provisions in the bill, but there are some concerns for us about what is missing from that as well in terms of the waste hierarchy. There is a lot of focus on recycling in the bill, but less so on the reduce side of things or repair as well, so we would like to see more of that in the air as well. There is also a concern for us over individuals being penalised for waste that is produced by companies as well, particularly during the cost of living crisis. There is a contingency that that could fall on most vulnerable households as well, so we would like to raise some concerns around that side of things too. Those are points that we have heard as well in our evidence and look forward to your further thoughts particularly around reducing repair. We now have a large amount of questions from colleagues, and we do not have enough time, unfortunately, this morning for everyone to answer every question, so if colleagues can direct their questions to specific witnesses, that would be appreciated. I turn to Mark Ruskell. I have a specific question for Emma, and it is about the Welsh context. Wales has a similar context in terms of devolution and the powers that are available, but you have the Well-Being Future Generations Act, a Welsh Environment Act that seems to embed some well-sustainable management, if not circular principles within that thinking. So how significant has that been, the Welsh legislative framework in driving things forward? Are there lessons that we can draw from? Yes, I think that it has been key that sustainable development has been there from the very start of devolution as one of the founding principles, so that that helps to inform decisions that are being taken all the way through, and it also helps to ensure that we are looking at those decisions in as broad a context as possible. Following the ways of working within the Well-Being Future Generations Act around collaborating and those aspects of the work, as well as the real key focus on making sure that the environmental benefits from what we're doing are in front of mind, as well, when we're taking those decisions. So it's very much a framework that really informs the actions that we take, and then the specifics of the legislation enabling the changes that we've seen, so the targets for local authorities for their recycling, and then the 2016 Environment Act, which includes, for example, the ability to require workplaces to recycle as well. So, in fact, for discussion in the Senate today, is the new proposal around changes for separate collection of materials from all workplaces, which is due to start April next year. So that just gives the ability to specify what should be happening and where to really enter those targets, which really focuses people's minds. So, it's a fair to say that that approach has brought some kind of focus, I guess, an ambition, rather than it specifically requiring something in the waste management area. Yeah, I think so. I think it's, you know, the ambition of the targets, and the targets for local authorities are statutory targets. We have to remember that so that authorities are at risk of being fined if they don't meet the statutory recycling targets. So that's 64 per cent at the moment. It's going up to 70 per cent in the next financial year, and those targets are, those fines are potentially quite large. They're 200 pounds per ton of material that the target was missed by. So, for some authorities, that goes to a six or even seven figure sum if they don't meet those targets. So, that is part of the push, but there's also been the support for Welsh Government and really the sense that, you know, at least at the first steps recycling is absolutely the norm in Wales now. 99 per cent of households have a food waste collection. 95 per cent of people in our tracker surveys say that they regularly recycle in Wales. So, you know, that's new universal coverage. So, that then really completely makes it a social norm, and it's the thing that people expect to do. And once you get that cultural change, that, that, you know, that makes it become the regular, the regular thing to do. It's no longer something that's a minority interest. It is, you know, we recycle our food waste, that's, that's just a fact. It's not anything unusual.  So, it just builds it into, into, into our lives really. Thanks so much. And just building on that, is there anything in terms of the challenges around the quality of the recycling and contamination that we could learn from your example? Yeah. So, I mean, we have had a very clear guidance around the preferred approach for collection in, in Wales, and that's the Welsh Government blueprint, which is separated collection. So, using kerbside sort vehicles whereby the materials are placed onto the vehicle in broadly their separate streams. And we know that that, that means that the amount of contamination is substantially less than in the few remaining commingled collections in Wales. Our conversation analysis last year showed that really, really clearly there was a stark difference between them. And part of the reason for that is that when the materials are collected, the, the crews collecting materials, to see the materials in the boxes or the bags that they're collecting, and anything that is grossly contaminated will be left behind with a, with a notification saying, thanks for trying to recycle, but you put in X, Y, Z. It can't be, it can't be recycled. This is what you should be doing. And that positive feedback to householders means that they, they stop doing that because they want them to be collected. So, it just gives that control at the first point, which means we can have some really high quality material that has additional value for the local authorities that are selling it, but also that can then be used for higher, higher environmental outcomes. So, much more closely recycling rather than having to be, having to be either sorted further or not be able, not be suitable for such high quality recycling. And there's a consistent approach across the whole of Wales, isn't there? Not across the whole of Wales. There are, of the 22 local authorities in Wales, 15 have the Welsh Government blueprint. There are two or three that are moving towards it, and a couple that have something a bit similar. They collect in the multiple streams, but not in exactly the same format with the same vehicles that are specified in the blueprint. And the blueprint isn't, isn't statutory, but it's, it's very clear guidance that that is Welsh Government strategy, and so the support that they give is understandably focused towards achieving their strategies. Thank you for correcting me there, and this has been a point through our evidence so about the consistency of collection. So, thank you for all of that, Emma. Before I bring in my colleague Monica Lennon, I understand the joisling you want to contribute at this point. Yeah, thank you. I think it's a really important point to look at the bio side of the economy as well as being potentially circular and not focus only on technical materials such as plastics or electronic waste. And the, I just wanted to bring the example of the city of Milan, which is one of the best in class when it comes to European organic and food waste collection going back to peri-urban agriculture. And it is an investment in terms of infrastructure when it comes to separate collection to ensure that contamination doesn't happen. But I think that it would be interesting perhaps for the committee to look into the example of what has been achieved in a relatively short amount of time when it comes to getting that collection label to a scale where it is actually economically interesting and viable to put it back to production, to soil productivity and enhance just general ecosystem services. So, it's also worth remembering that on a global scale, and I appreciate that there are variations, but 25% of agriculture happens at peri-urban level, which means 40 kilometers away from city centres. And there's a strong potential to enhance the quality of the soils by separate and careful collection. So, I'm just putting the emphasis on the fact that now everything is about technical materials. Thank you. Thank you. That was very helpful, and I'll look into the example of Milan. Thank you. I now turn to Monica Lennon, who's got some questions for Lina. Thank you, convener. Yeah, I want to pick up on the written evidence that we've had from Skiath. Thank you for the submission. Skiath highlights the impact of unsustainable consumption in Scotland on global communities, including on environmental degradation and human rights. So, my first question is, who is gathering the evidence on this and do we, as policy makers on the wider public in Scotland, have enough of an understanding of how our consumption in Scotland is impacting on people in other countries? Thank you so much for that question, Monica. The people who are collecting the evidence right now that I know of are the partners that we work with in other countries. They're the ones doing the work, trying to protect their communities, their environments against the really, really bad mining practices that they see. So, as you say, we have this situation where a lot of the material that we consume here in Scotland leaves a global footprint, and some of that footprint is, as Monica points out, connected to environmental damage and human rights abuses. We really need to understand this impact better, and I do think that we want to have a deeper understanding of the negative impacts of Scottish consumption overseas, and from that can flow a better understanding of how we can reduce harm. That is why Skiath would like to suggest that we add something to the bill. I would specifically recommend that section 1, part 3, adds a point F. So, this is all about what the strategy needs to include, and we think that it's important to include there a point on that the principle of do no harm needs to be respected, and we would like for the bill to also reflect that international cross-border issues should be addressed. So, I think that a way for us to deepen our understanding of the harm that our consumption is causing is to include it as a mandatory instruction for the strategy to be able to reflect on this and have some deeper research into what harm we're seeing. Right now, it is not something Skiath is necessarily looking into as ourselves. It is our partners who have that expertise of really making sure that they track what's happening in their countries and what they report back to us. It's actually really remarkable because partners across different countries see the same thing. They see human rights abuses, conflicts, they see forced displacement of communities without any compensation. They see labour abuse, intimidation of campaigners, environmental destruction, biodiversity loss and pollution in the mining extractive industry. That's a really sad state of affair and we all have a role to play in trying to mitigate some of these issues, and I also think that the circular economy bill has a role to play here. Thank you for Skiath's suggestion on how the bill could be strengthened or enhanced. It was interesting that you said that the evidence in the main comes from partners in these countries, particularly global south countries. Do you think more needs to be done to have a more proactive approach here in Scotland, whether that's led by Government or others, to make it our business to find out what's happening? Could more be done through the bill or elsewhere? Yes, absolutely. Overall, we think that the circular economy bill needs to be amended so that the circular economy strategy has an objective in relation to the extraterritorial impact of Scottish consumption. We suggest that that can be achieved partly by adding an objective for ensuring the highest possible standards within the Scottish context for human rights due diligence and environmental protection in supply chains and public procurement. Scotland has a role to play there. There are things that we believe Scotland can do better here. I also think that it's important, and I did touch upon this. We want the strategy to be informed by the principles of do no harm. We know that that's already a strategic priority for the just transition work that the Scottish Parliament does. We're also pleased to see the policy memorandum mention that a circular economy strategy must be consistent with the just transition plans. Those are just some of the ways that we may start to think about how we can have a better understanding of what we do. It's about supply chains, it's about procurement, and it's also, as I said, about creating a deeper understanding of the harm that we are causing. We can only do that through research into what harm we're doing across the world. I'm keen to bring in other colleagues. On the next question, it would be good to hear from Jocelyn and Emma, but if you can raise your virtual hand, I can try to bring everyone in. I wanted to highlight that there's been data from SEPA, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, so that the regulator, and they've highlighted that hundreds of tonnes of waste are exported from Scotland to least developed countries. Even in the last four years, that's been quite a significant amount. In response to that, the Scottish Government has highlighted that international waste policy is a reserved matter, so that's for the UK Government. I would be interested to hear from our witnesses today if you have any suggestions on how this bill could tackle this issue in any way. I'll go to Jocelyn first, if I may. Thank you for the question. I think it is important, following on from what Lina was saying, the impact, the extra-territorial impact of consumption happens in both upstream and downstream when you import some of the embedded negative externalities such as carbon, for instance, and that's somewhat tackled by mechanisms such as the carbon border adjustment mechanism that looks at the impacts that happen outside of consumption-based emissions, scope three, along the supply chain. The difficulty, of course, is the availability of data and the modulation of potential fees that are imposed on those materials, and then the second one is, of course, downstream when the post-use materials and byproducts are exported, in some cases, back to producing countries. This, I think, is difficult to tackle except from a sectoral basis and looking at specific material streams that have reverse logistics chains such as the export of waste plastics, for instance, which was a very well-established mechanism, somewhat disturbed by the fact that China in 2018 has imposed what they call the national salt policy, which is banning imports of plastic waste, and that disrupted the whole value chain and somewhat changed the material flows because some of that proportion then went to countries which had even less of an adapted collection and recycling facility. Therefore, you added the impact on other countries that couldn't really cope with it, and that triggered some sort of cascading effect of those countries then refusing to get the waste back. So, the idea is potentially to, first of all, enshrine into the building that notion that reducing waste exports is a key priority in the circular economy action plan of the European Commission did that to an extent. It's much more difficult to be granular member state by member states and product category by product category, but looking also at the way that these practices impact reported recycling rates is really important because saying that you've put a label on the container that says it's sent for recycling and counting that as recycled is absolutely critical when it comes to being transparent and realistic about the amounts that is actually recycled. So, recycling should be considered at scale and in practice and make sure that you can only label a waste stream as recycled when it's effectively recycled and not sent away to be processed in a non-transparent way. Thank you, Jocelyn, and if I can bring Emma in. Again, you'll recognise that sometimes tension between what's reserved and what's a devolved matter, so keen to get your perspective. Yeah, sure, so I think we've got... Sorry, I'm not on mute. Can you hear me? Okay, sorry. Okay, great. Thank you. So, I think we've got a couple of things that we were down to that. So, in terms of the end destinations of materials collected for recycling in Wales, all authorities have a duty to report as best as they reasonably can where the materials that they send on for recycling end up, and so that becomes part of their contract with their off-takers is having that transparency. So, that then enables us... We publish that... Well, that data is published in a by Natural Resources Wales, so the Regulatory Wales, and we take that data and put it into a more citizen-focused format. So, we have a website called My Recycling Wales, and that shows for any consumer, they can click on the area that they live in, and they can click on a material, and it will tell them exactly where their material was sent in any one year, how much was collected, how much plastic there was, where it went, where we have some information about it a little bit about the facilities that it went to. So, that gives an amount of transparency that it means that individuals can look at where their material is going to. It's something that local journalists can be quite interested in, and the point of having it public is to be able to start to have that conversation and ask those questions of council to know if you're reporting that your materials are going all the way across the world. Why is that? Are there not facilities that are available more locally? So, there's that kind of transparency of where it's going and really shining a light on that on the one hand, but then on the other hand I think it's really important we come back to this question of material quality, and so the aim is very much to collect materials as cleanly and as high quality as possible because that then opens up more markets either within Wales or broadly across across the United Kingdom, meaning that those materials don't travel so far, you don't have those impacts, but also resources recycled in Wales are able to be turned back into materials for use in Wales. So, I think it's that balance of the transparency is important, but absolutely key is how if what you've collected hasn't got a value in a local market you're going to have to look further abroad to solutions that you may not have as much control over, whereas if you've got the cleaner materials that the paper mills or plastics facilities within the UK are absolutely keen to use, then that means that you can make that loop within the circular economy that bit smaller and that bit closer to home. So, I think in some ways one of the answers is about how the materials are brought back into the recycling loop and to do that in a separate way as possible, it's really really important. Thank you, thank you, Emma. Thank you, Monica. I'm now going to bring in Bob Doris MSP on these particular areas and I don't know if Anna and Carys maybe want to answer these points, Bob, but over to you. Perhaps, give me a minute, I feel that I'm nudging back slightly on my apologies because I wanted just to kind of ask a little bit more on Ms Christensen's aspirations to have an additional target or additional part of the circular economy strategy. So, like Ms Christensen in the first instance, I apologise for that, convener. So, thank you because you get a very clear ask in legislation which doesn't always happen. It's general terms quite often, so it's to ensure the highest standards of environmental and human rights due diligence in Scottish supply chains and public procurement. I couldn't possibly disagree with any of that, but if that was to be in a legislation, it would be reasonable to ask who determines what a just supply chain looks like and how that would be monitored. So, if it was to appear in a strategy, it would be interesting to know how would the monitor measure compliance in relation to that. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, who decides what a just supply chain looks like? I think we do have frameworks on an international level that points us in the right direction on these kind of things. And as I'm sure that many of you know that at the UN level we're right now, they're working on a piece of legislation that actually works towards that, a binding treaty on human rights and business. So that's actually also a place I would point to as a point of inspiration. How do we do this? Because it's such a complex question. How do we measure what just and what right looks like? But there are frameworks in the works that we're trying to get through on a more international level and I think Scotland should have ambitions to be at that same standard at the very least. Okay, now that's helpful. I mean it could be considered as aspirational and that's not a criticism or maybe I will be very sympathetic to what you're suggesting. In terms of reporting on the strategy and the strategies every five years the Government would be criticised if it had a strategy and didn't measure its progress against that strategy. So would we look for the Government to take reasonable steps or appropriate measures to meet those goals? We'd have to give regard for a variety of international frameworks that are out there, keep a wee bit more meat on the bones if that's okay. In just in case I don't get back in for another follow-up question, convener, can I just sneak in a second thing? That's a big ask. I'm not asking you to flesh it all out, just to give you an idea of what that might look like. But would this be extended simply to Scottish Government and its agencies in relation to procurement, or would you like to see reporting and due diligence done within Corporate Scotland as well? I'm actually happy you asked that question. I'm not sure I have a very detailed answer for you, but I actually do have another suggestion to where we could strengthen the bill. I think that the bill and the strategy that it creates this statutory duty for has to be informed directly by and respond to global needs. So when we are reviewing, when we are measuring how well we're doing, I think we really also need to think internationally. So I think we need to take evidence on the global impact of consumption in Scotland and take evidence from global south stakeholders as well on that. So I think the engagement with the global south on this particular point could be both in the development of the strategy, but as you say also in that five-year strategy renewal or refresh. And that could be a really good time to consult with international stakeholders on how well Scotland is doing to ask at both in the development of the strategy, but also in the review of it, how are we doing and how can Scotland be an even better global citizen than it already is. I also think that the global south advisory panel set up by Parliament could have a role to play here. Maybe they would like to be consulted here. And this kind of brings me to the second point I would like to suggest as a very concrete suggestion. In section two, consultation on strategy, we would like to suggest we add a point C. So that point C for me would be basically who do we need to consult international stakeholders as well. So that might not be the level of detail that you were hoping for, but I think it is important that we reflect on how can we measure this, how can we review this, and for me my answer is we need to consult international stakeholders. We need to ask how can Scotland be a better global citizen. Thank you. It was actually going back to Monica's question if that's okay around the waste management side of things. I think for us this is one of the things that highlights the need to reduce the amount of waste and just to highlight that recycling and incineration should be the last option within that as well. That really we should be looking at reuse and repair as a more prominent part of that. I just have a couple of examples within that. So one of our members at We All Scotland has a chain of charity shops and they are trialling different things at the moment because even within a charity shop there's a lot of waste of things that get donated that cannot then be sold on. They have pilot projects at the moment where they're looking at providing some of that as textiles to colleges and universities where textile students can then turn those into other products and one of those pilots is then they turn them into tote bags which is then given back to the charity shop that they can use for the products that they're selling. The other example that we have at the moment is a high street retailer who tried to implement a scheme where people could return clothes and get a discount on their purchases but the red tape involved in that meant that they had to become a waste disposal company in order to implement that. So I guess it's just highlighting the need we need to look at how we can remove barriers for businesses that are seeking to implement reduced waste or to trial new things as well and highlight those two people as well as forms of things, good practice and ways of reducing waste. Thank you for some important practical points for us to consider. I'm now going to move on to questions on the circular economy targets, some quite specific questions in the next sections ahead. So over to you Jackie Dunbar. Thank you, convener, and I'm going to apologise in advance for pronouncing some names wrong. So if I do, can you please correct me? I'm going to, my first question, if you don't mind, convener, I'm going to give to Anna Lyny and Karis. I think I've got them wrong by the looks of the names. It's in regards to the current statutory circular economy targets. With those in mind, what targets would you like to see introduced above those to help us drive the circular economy transition? I'll go to Anna first, I think. Oh, now I am. Is it possible to go back to the earlier address points or is it too late? It's never too late. Briefly, please. Yeah, thank you. Fantastic. I will try to be to be short. So I would like to reinforce what was said earlier with regards to the fact that we should treat waste as the resource within circular economy. And as you know, in Europe, the source separation of food waste is mandatory and many Nordic countries have had a very long experience with regards to the separation of food waste and also production of biogas. And of course, it is an fertiliseria because that comes together. So we already today have good practices implemented with regards to that. Yes, and I would like to agree with what was said that we should treat waste as resource and also address the food waste, which is excuse me, a very important part of the daily waste generated by the citizens. And then a very important point was made with regards to the transparency. So I'm sorry. I don't know if you have the waste management database, but it is definitely important to collect the information with regards to what is placed on market and what is generated by citizens and what is collected through the municipalities. And with this, I would like to say that a very important mechanism and policy instrument to facilitate that transparency is extended producer responsibility. As you know, we have that in continental Europe and it is obligatory for the producers and feelers and importers within the certain fraction of the waste to report on what is placed on market.  We need to know where we are if we would like to. Sorry to interrupt you Anna, but we have a question on the extended producer responsibility later. So if there's anything on targets, that would be appreciated just now. Thank you. Yes, so I will go to the question. So about with regards to the targets, I would definitely see that it is necessary to change the approach to mandatory because the targets have to be mandatory if you would like them to be to be efficient. And as I mentioned in the introduction, it would be useful to also add the waste prevention targets, not only recycling targets, reuse targets and targets with regards to the better management of the materials during the production phase. But we also need to take into consideration the reduction, the necessity for reducing the products and packaging placed on our markets. Okay. Thank you. If I can come to Linda next, please. Thank you. Yes, on the question about targets, I note that you had a very good discussion about the importance of targets in the evidence session on the 14th of November. I would really defer to those discussions on that question, especially friends of the earth, Scotland, who made the point about the problem of not including emissions from Scotland's imports in climate targets. That would be my main point. Scotland's existing climate targets do not include the impact of our consumption, which occurs outside of the UK, such as the extraction and production of imported goods and the management of exported waste. That gap means that Scotland can meet its climate targets by moving economic activity outside our borders rather than reducing global demand. That, of course, makes Scotland's mitigation efforts less effective than they could be. The Scottish Government's reporting indicates that that is happening. While domestic emissions have fallen, emissions due to imports have risen. I really think that including a carbon consumption reduction target would give decision makers, like yourselves, a better oversight of Scotland's global impacts. Consumption reduction targets are essential to account for the global impact of Scotland's consumption. Including consumption reduction targets would also ensure that Scotland keeps pace with the circular economy agenda internationally. In 2021, the European Parliament voted to create binding science-based targets for material use and consumption. I know that Sweden also did that in 2022. We would agree with what has been said already on the use of targets. One of the key things with that is having transparency around reporting and making sure that those targets are met. It is good to have targets but also the accountability to ensure that they are met. The only other point that I would raise at this point is that it is back to the reduction. There is no point in having an increased recycling rate or increased management rate if there is also an increase in the amount of waste that is being produced. I think that it has got to be inclusive of all of that as well. I am very conscious of time, colleague, so if I can just target to one or two witnesses, that would be brilliant. I was only going to ask the other two panel members that I hadn't asked a question already. I was just basically wanting to ask if you've got any international examples that you can share with us to where the circular economy targets are being adopted further up the chain and going beyond recycling. In particular, we are seeing if there are any other countries moving towards consumption emission targets as well as the terrestrial ones. If I can go to Jocelyn first and then Emma, please. The first example that comes to mind is the Netherlands, which is quite pioneer when it comes to adopting circular economy targets. It has a big aspiration on whether the country is fully circular by 2050. That needs to be unpacked in terms of granularity of where those targets lie and what data provisions are made in order to meet them. One thing which is really clear is that there is also a tension between the consumption of resources and the consumption of products and the purchasing power and the notion that actually economic dynamism of a country is measured by the level of consumption that can happen and the way that consumers are empowered. At some point, there is also a need to make sure that some of the access to services is made not through buying products outright but also the sharing economy and making sure that these platforms or these reselling platforms or these two libraries are also counted in the way that the circular economy can happen. Getting targets in order to reduce consumption-based emissions is happening at some stage. In some jurisdictions, it really is difficult to look at this without getting the right provisions on data and transparency. One of the mechanisms that a lot of countries are looking into are the adoption of what they call digital product passports that have embedded product information and that can be reported on. Again, one of the issues is that in a lot of cases, the reality is that the suppliers of the products themselves have the knowledge of what is going on in their own supply chain. That transparency is extremely difficult. I would probably refer the committee back to the work that has been done by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe on traceability in the textile supply chain. That is something that I can forward on to the committee after this meeting. Unless there are any particular international examples that witnesses want to emphasise to us, I am keen to move on. Okay. I am going to move to questions now from Brian Whittle MSP. Thank you. Good morning to the panel. I want to target these questions towards Jocelyn and Anna, if I could. There is a lot of focus just now on single-use items, especially in Scotland. There is a lot of light being shone on, for example, single-use vapes. If we fold into that, the disposal of unsold goods. The bill creates powers for the Scottish Government to tackle that. I wonder whether there is anything in this internationally that we should be focusing on that will help us to develop a more successful bill. What should we emulate in the bill? In your answer, could you also potentially bring in how we engage with business, because it is so important that we take business with us on this and make sure that there is no uncertainty associated with how they do business? Thank you. I will try to be brief. The example of the ban on destruction of unsold goods really comes from France, which was the first one to adopt this as part of this circular economy law. I know that it has been looked at by the European Commission to try to extend it to other Member States. The value that was destroyed in France prior to that law was around 800 million worth of new products every year. The only reason why this was done is because it was obviously cheaper to incinerate those products than to redistribute them. This has been tackled as a way to also enforce the just transition by ensuring redistribution of these unsold goods. Not only is it a waste of embedded materials, carbon, etc., it is also a privation of access to some levels of society to things that could be definitely redistributed. The difficulty is that getting business on board here is a bit of a difficult one, because a lot of these products are actually coming from e-commerce, which also begs the question of who pays EPR fees, extended producer responsibility of what is put on the market bearing in mind that it comes from big aggregators that do retail. It is a live discussion as far as I am aware, and I can again try to find the right people for the committee to explore the question further. The other one that you have, sorry, I cannot remember the first question. It is around the charges for single use products, although that is an idea that we should be adopting. Yes. When it comes to single use products, which is mostly plastics, the European Commission wanted to adopt it. Its plastic strategy in 2017 looked at a very simple metric, which was collection of plastic waste on beaches and looking at the 10 worst offenders in terms of items and decided to ban them outright. In some cases, Member States put a levy on those. This has been so far pretty successful, I would say, in the sense that a lot of these have been reduced in volumes. The difficulty, again, is to put the business on side. As we have seen in the latest round of discussions with the packaging and packaging waste regulation at European level, there has been a massive backlash when it comes to promoting reuse and banning single use products, especially when it comes to food takeaway and delivery. That is an ongoing battle. I don't know. Anna, have you anything you would like to add to that? Yes. I will really try to be short, but we now jump to the next section. I would like to add just two words with regards to the monitoring, that it would be probably wise to add some provisions with regards to the frequency of the monitoring and also to analyse what exactly you would like to monitor to make this monitoring more efficient. Now, going back to restrictions on disposal and charges for single use items, I think with regards to the restrictions on disposal, one element is missing, so the law is efficient, namely penalties for both economic actors, which do not impose the charges on the single use items, sorry, which do not comply with the regulations related to the restrictions on disposal. And now, coming to the second question of yours, charges for single use items, we know that it is a very successful policy instrument in the charges, both in terms of charging producers and porters, but also the consumers. It is part of the single use plastic directive mentioned today in article four, a single use plastic directive mentions that this measure policy instrument can be used to reduce the number of single use plastic items for the food vessels and the beverage containers, beverage cups. What we have to remember is that the fee, and probably it would be worth adding the principle within this regulation, the fee has to be at the level that we really function as the demotivating element for the consumer. And as an example, I can bring the study that was elaborated, commissioned by the government of Republic of Estonia, and with regards to the implementation of this article four, so targeting the food vessels and the beverage cups. So, for example, in that country, it was estimated that it's not, it has, the fee has to be at the level of at least 25 euro cents for that kind of items. Otherwise, it will not be efficient. So it would really be important to set the principle that the fee has to be at the level that will really function as the demotivator for a consumer. Just on that, I may, Anna, you talked there very much of penalising those who don't comply. There's another side of that coin, we should be encouraging those to comply. So, rather than a stick, we need a stick and a carrot. How can we encourage rather than penalise? Because I always think that's a better approach if you can. Well, yeah, of course, what would we like to achieve through the charge on the single use item, and maybe we can continue on the example of the food vessels and beverage cups that are addressed in the article four, the single use plastic directive. Of course, we would like to see less of those objectives, to see less of those items, but we also know that through penalising of the use of those, so it will still be allowed to use, but for example, the citizen in Estonia will have to pay 25 euro cent, which is pretty much in that market. And that immediately gives incentive for implementation of the, for other systems, collection systems, deposit systems for beverage cups, or also implementation of the regulation, which I forgot to mention, which is allowing, allowance for consumers to bring their own packaging for the food vessels and beverage cups. I myself can do that in Sweden without any problem. We have an understanding, and we don't need to have the law for that. In some countries, it is advisable to introduce the law, and we have a very good example of that in France. The consumers are allowed to bring their own package to purchase the goods, and in that case, the consumer himself is responsible for the hygienic security of that package. So I think it is very important to, on one hand, demotivate from use of single use items, and on the other hand, enable the practical solutions that are already out there. I am now going to move to questions from Douglas Lameston before a final couple of questions from Mark Ruskell over to you. Thanks, convener. I think that it is a question probably for Emma, first of all, and it is looking at about some businesses have called for the alignment of UK-wide approaches in those areas. Do you have a view on the extent to which, how aligned we should be across the United Kingdom, or is it something that the Scottish Government can go alone in certain areas? Do you mean in central economy as a whole, or in any specific perspective? Yes, as a whole and also in terms of some targets and charges, for example, on single use items or even potentially banning some certain items. We have seen over the last 15-20 years quite a divergence in different waste and then certain economy policies between the different nations. I think actually that has given us the opportunity to see what has worked from the different nations. I do not think that it is necessarily a unified approach that is required but really trying to draw the learnings from what has happened in the different nations over the last dozen years or so and then applying them to each nations specifically because obviously there are differences and there are different approaches that the different nations have chosen to use. Would you see any issues of the UK Internal Market Act that may arise from the bill that we have in front of us today? I do not feel like I am qualified to comment on the UK Internal Market Act. I think that it is quite a tricky piece of legislation as much as I understand. I know in Wales we have really had, because we have had that ability to set Welsh policy in Wales, we have been able to look to support Welsh server economy and the manufacturers in Wales to use Welsh products and then if needs be material going further around the UK. I think that has been really key to be able to develop that slightly different approach. I think that there are obviously some policies that will need to happen at a UK level. I mean we have already heard a little bit about export policies and those kinds of things and I think that does sit well at a UK wide level but in terms of the activities of local government and so on, I think that that sits very well at the individual nation level because circumstances are slightly different and focus is a different. Maybe if I can, just to get a EU perspective, maybe to ask Anna in terms of alignment across the EU member states, how aligned are the different members of EU and is there many countries going off and doing different things within a framework potentially? In a specific topic or in general? Just in terms of targets for example, is that something that is aligned across the EU or is that diverged? Yes, so we have a certain category of countries within the European Union that treat the targets as the minimum requirement and their objective is to reach out to those and we also have the countries that impose higher targets and also additional targets and we have the example of France also on top of the targets to impose the quotas for the reusable packaging in the market. So, yes, the European Union consists of many countries, there are many differences, there are different levels of the ambitions with regards to the different regions or individual states. Okay, thank you, thanks Camino. Thank you, understand that Jocelyn, you want to comment on this. Yes, very briefly, thank you. When it comes to European landscape, I think it's important to make the difference between a directive and a regulation and a directive leaves latitude for member states to implement, that's the case for EPR schemes for instance. What we see is interesting is that in some, in a lot of cases at the moment, there is a drive to move towards more regulation because the directives are seen as limiting when it comes to the level of ambitions. You'll have your usual suspects when it comes to promoting more ambitious targets such as the Nordics and France to a certain extent, not in all cases, but for instance, when it comes to the EU textile strategy, there is a potential proposal by the Commission to make EPR schemes for textiles mandatory for all member states, which is a new thing because typically EPR were at the discretion of national jurisdiction. So, I think it's more illustrative of a tendency rather than to give you a specific figure, but moving towards more regulation as opposed to directives seems to be a trend. That theme of the extended producer responsibility EPR is what we're moving on to now, so I'll bring in Mark Ruskell MSP. Yeah, thanks very much. I mean, I think we've covered aspects of it already actually and I was aware that Anna was starting to move on to that topic earlier on, but can I quickly go back to Emma and just what your perspective is on the UK EPR schemes and I think we've got what schemes being planned for textiles, bulky items, construction material, tyres, fishing gear. How do you see EPR kind of fitting with what the devolved administrations can do because I think EPR has been driven at UK level, it's largely reserved under the environment bill, but in terms of the context of this bill we're talking about, how do you and perhaps legislation forthcoming in Wales, I don't know, how does EPR kind of mesh with what the devolved administrations should be should be focusing on? I'm trying to get a sense of what the jigsaw puzzle looks like. Yeah, and I think jigsaw puzzle is probably quite a good description for it and I think it's really important that the EPRs that we might have coming up really need to mesh with the local policies and make sure that really it supports what's already in place in it. At some level, for example, the packaging EPR is going to probably bring a more consistent set of materials being collected across the whole of the UK and I think it needs to be developed very much with the differences between the nations in mind so that it is bringing up any nations to progress rather than potentially holding back any progress in other nations. I think there is a real balancing act to be done there really, but I think there is potentially a role for those more difficult to recycle materials, a lot of which you've just listed off there, that an EPR scheme can potentially support the development really of the markets for those materials, which is kind of where in a Welsh context we're starting to get to look at the more difficult to recycle materials that don't necessarily have regularly made markets for the materials that come out of them at the end. Does that mean taking a kind of sector approach then, so we look at construction materials for example, we could be using, reusing more of that, but it's also been put to us I think in evidence that we could be looking at ensuring that unused materials say in the construction sector, not just unused household goods but unused materials as a requirement to take those back and not to dispose of those, so I don't know, does the jigsaw puzzle look like a kind of sexual sort of picture if you like that there's a whole set of actions that are devolved and wrapped up in EPR that should be driven through a particular sector? Potentially I think construction isn't my area at all but on the face of it I mean certainly reusing material having means by which unused materials are used rather than disposed of it's going to be going to be absolutely essential as a general principle I would have thought yeah. Mark and all Anna wants to comment on these yes yes that's yeah I know Anna you think you were you were part of the way through getting on to EPR earlier on in the evidence so yeah if you want to come back. Yeah I just wanted to mention indeed there are freedoms with regards to the European Union and member states can decide upon adding more elements and more fractions under the EPR but nevertheless there are minimum requirements at least for the packaging ways that all European countries have to follow so one of the minimum requirement is for example that the data on financials so how much producers and importers pay to the pro to the producer responsibility organization so the organization that fulfils their responsibility for the producers it has to be publicly available and there are also different requirements of course we have differences with regards to how the extended producer responsibility for different products and packaging work in in European Union we have those that that act in monopoly like in practice in France and we have some pros in in in competition so for those also one of the provision with regards to minimum requirement in the waste framework directive is that there needs to be a clearing house for in in this individual market to comprehend the information on what's put on my market and what's also collected and and appointed for recycling of the reuse and I would like to also come back to what I said in the beginning now is that countries have freedom with regards to covering more fractions within the extended producer responsibility schemes and we can see the trend very very it is very distinct that that more more fractions are part of the extended producer responsibility the good example is is furniture as we know it is a problematic waste and quite quite heavy when it comes to the oversized waste collection France has it and and Portugal is also planning to implement the provisions with regards to extend the producer responsibility for furniture and we also have a very maybe a good example from from Republic of Slovenia Scotland this Catholic country so so I'm not sure about your your customs around 1st of November but Slovenia has extended producer responsibility for the for the candles placed at cementaries there are lots of them that are made of glass and plastic now and they create problem and and that's what's actually the the idea of the extended responsibility to tackle the problematic numerous waste fractions so the examples are very various across the member states in european union yeah that's interesting examples there particularly where you've got you know microelectronics and small batteries and everything yeah okay I'm going to move on because I think Monica Lynn and MSP has a quick supplementary oh thank you at this time yeah I was wanting to ask while I think Emma's here and possibly Jocelyn about nappies because we know that every single nappie that's ever existed is still in landfill and babies and toddlers on average will use around 5000 nappies so we do have some examples in Scotland of reusable nappies schemes I think Wales has something similar but could this bill do more to incentivise the use of washable or reusable nappies to get away from single use items Jocelyn and then Emma yeah thank you for that whilst I don't really have any specific figures when it comes to nappies or the volumes of the stream I think it applies in a wider consideration to all products that are disposable and it's question of the nature and the volume of what gets put on the market in the first place and if it doesn't if it can't fit anywhere it probably is useful to consider alternative option and reuse for sure having said that life cycle analysis is a very important tool to bear in mind as well because in some cases the impacts that are created by the transportation the washing and all of the added mechanisms that need to be put in place in order to ensure the safe and practical reuse of those materials is also needs to be considered and potentially is enough setting or at least it's a it's a trade-off that needs to be considered just going back to the previous question I think it's useful to know also that the intention of an EPR scheme really is to have an impact upstream and if the modulation is too low and the cost for the producers to clean up is not enough then evidence shows and it's been really clearly demonstrated in the report that was produced for the French government in 2019 as part of the circular economy roadmap is that so far even though France has 25 categories of products that are covered by EPR schemes the impact upstream is actually almost negligible because those fees are too low so effectively EPR schemes become ways for producers to just pay towards the disposal of their products without necessarily changing their practices so I think that modulation of fees is absolutely critical as well. I don't know if there's time for Emma to pick up. Emma, if there's anything that you specifically want to add on that question. Yeah certainly so we have a couple of different really approaches towards nappies and kind of more generally absorbent hygiene products so sort of incontinence products potentially used by adults as well in Wales so we do have one facility in Wales that actually recycles the product so a selection of our councils do collect them separately for processing that way I think though there are also quite a number of councils that use a sort of promotion and support scheme to enable families to access some of the reusable nappy products particularly for children that are available so whether that is having a means a sort of either a voucher scheme that can help reduce the cost reduce the upfront costs of reusable nappies or whether it is having information and kind of samples that people can see or in some instances a sort of purchase on a large scale so because that can that can then reduce reduce the cost on nappies to have those reusable options kind of I think there and I think you know we are seeing a change in the sort of hygiene products that people use and I think for many young women using reusable products for sanitary products is becoming much more normal and I think you would expect to see that transferring into into practices when when some of those young women become others as well and that they would then want to choose a reusable option for their babies as they have for themselves thank you Emma we're seeing that in Scotland too so thank you thank you Monica and Mark yeah thanks for all those answers if I could just briefly then just turn to a final set of questions just around you know because we talked about reuse talked about consumption it's very important but if I can just focus in on household recycling waste systems the infrastructure that's needed for that I'm interested in a couple of things firstly you know are there is there international evidence of what really works and we've heard a little bit from from Wales already but two specific aspects I mean if households are not complying with clear rules do you see a role for issuing fines in relation to that and also do you have experience of where waste charging has been brought in successfully and how some of the issues around kind of equity are dealt with within those schemes I don't think there are any of those schemes operating within the UK so again that would be an international perspective so yeah can I just sort of offer the opportunity for everybody to comment on that maybe indicate if you would like to come in on those points yeah let's take your hand up Anna do you want to go first on that I can go first I was waiting to be unmuted yeah it's it's it's a very difficult topic of course sometimes it is necessary to penalize the behavior that is not environmental I would maybe like to to bring the example of Scandinavia because that was discussed a decade ago of course as I mentioned it is it is efficient mechanism but you also have to apply a lot of it requires a lot of work from the from the officials from the council so Scandinavian approach is more in the direction of pay as you throw so so for example penalize or add extra fees on the residual waste bins to kind of incentivize the citizens to leave less of those waste fractions residual and and leave more to to the to the recycling purposes to so generally separate more recyclables and separate more food waste and there are a lot of examples with regards to how this pay as you throw strategy can be can be implemented as I mentioned in Scandinavia it's it's the volume of the container that has certain certain fee attached to that this is very efficient of course there are extreme examples of weighing the the waste there are systems for that already in in place but and some municipalities in in in Scandinavia have that however it is it is of course an expensive exercise to weigh each bin in that is basically the residual the the citizens can pay for the residual waste waste fractions but of course the the penalties should should stay however we have to be mindful that it will not be feasible to to appoint a lot of FTEs of the councils to to go and and check so it will only be based on some not so frequent controls but all in all the the pay as you throw strategy is probably more efficient and will more quick more quicker lead to achievement of the objective so proper sorting by the citizens yeah okay thanks for that and I'm presuming there might be different cultural starting points for adopting that kind of approach which which might differ as well if you've got any reflections on that that'd be good to hear otherwise I'll move on to jocelyn no okay jocelyn thank you yes the example of uh Flanders in Belgium came to my mind where weight based pricing was introduced and I think one of the first observations was that during the first year the impact and the waste reduction was quite considerable I think it was somewhere along the lines of 20% what the study suggested though was that after that first year the impact gradually reduces and at some point you go back to the original amount of waste even though the fee does stay so people actually get used to paying for it but go back to their habit so there's probably a limit to those systems as well it does have an impact in the first year but seems to decrease so what accompanying measures should be put in place is probably the next question okay that's useful useful to know is anyone else want to come in on this I think Carice you also wanted to come in thank you yes I think one of things to highlight I think is the unintended consequences often of these kind of systems there's a couple of concerns I think first of all to highlight that the differences that we have across different local authorities in terms of recycling can be quite confusing for people I live in Glasgow but one of my closest friends lives in Westlothian and when she comes to my house she'll often go to put something in the recycling that isn't recycled in Glasgow so there can be mistakes made very very easily in this kind of situation the one example that I do have for you I'm afraid it's not a good example but in vn in France it's a performance in France they have introduced a charge for waste bins and a maximum number after once you go over a certain number then you have to pay a charge but what that's led to is residents in the area travelling to other local authorities and putting their waste in the bins there rather than having to have extra bins in their own area the other thing that it's led to in the area is an increase in littering which was not a problem previously so what might seem like a good idea on paper has this the implementation I think it is the kind of key element that also go back to it to the example it was given from Wales earlier of where somebody does make a mistake that kind of highlighting and saying thanks for trying but here's where you went wrong approach I think is a much more effective approach for bringing people on that journey with them and the final point I would highlight as well is the problem that we have of how you would implement this kind of strategy with so many people having shared bins as well so you've not just got one household that's utilising the same bin where you live in a flat you would be sharing bins with other people also who gets the fine and are you then creating a culture of neighbours having to tell on each other and kind of causing conflict I guess between neighbours within that and that's a significant problem both in Edinburgh and Glasgow and in many other cities that we have in Scotland as well. Mark, Emma's wanting to come in but I don't know if you want to add your additional question specifically for... I think actually I think we've kind of covered Aspectual Wales already actually but Emma if you had any further reflections on these two questions so specifically about you know waste charging if that's being considered and then you know household fines as well as a last resort. Yes so I think really the second one of those as well we've got more to contribute there and I think as Charis was saying it's very much a case of that being a last resort and needs to be at the end of a lengthy process where we see authorities using this in Wales and they use it in a couple of different ways so if people are putting the wrong thing in the recycling they're contaminating the recycling and consistently doing that but also the other way around if people are not doing their bit they're not recycling they're just putting all of their recyclable material into the residual waste so both of those instances are set up with Welsh authorities to potentially give people fixed penalty notices so fines through that way but all of the authorities that do that would would really emphasise that it is the end of a really a multi-stage approach so you know the first starting off with the the sort of usual communications to everybody but then if a problem is identified trying to have an educational approach an informative approach we saw something was wrong this is this is what you need to be doing and really going through multiple phases of that having people visit a property and talk to the householders just trying to work out if there is is an issue or a difficulty or if an assisted collection might be needed because people have got mobility issues or any any of those kinds of things long before a fixed penalty notice would would be used and what we tend to find is that when a council has a phase of this this sort of work each phase sees a massive reduction in the number of people who are not complying so you'll you'll see the at each phase the sort of number of households that are being being included in in that round will will reduce by often a sort of factor of 10 so you know if you had 100 household a thousand households to start with the second time when you have a slightly more forceful communication about this is what you ought to be doing it's what all your neighbours are doing that would have come down to 100 and then to 10 and really the number of fixed penalty notices being issued would usually be most a handful and certainly after after those checks have been done that it's not somebody who's particularly vulnerable for some reason that there are real reasons that they are not recycling and it wouldn't be for the time when one person accidentally does one little thing wrong it's for those people that are continually just not participating in the situation so it's you know it's for gross contamination people continuing to put nappies in their recycling collections or just not putting any recycling out at all and you can see very quickly from a glance at a black bin you can you can hear the glass bottles you can see you know you can hear the cams it's not someone going through the bin and sorting every time a little bit and saying well there was you know there was one yogurt pot in your black bin and so we're going to find you. To pick up just on that last point sorry to interrupt but to pick up on that last point though how does that work with with communal collections of which we have a lot of in scotland due to tenemental properties yeah so it would be done on single household situation in single household situations usually so i think where you've got communal collections you can't you know well if there's obvious evidence you know there's obviously evidence of someone's name and address on it that could be possible but you know but in general that's an approach that we would take for for single household bin collections and in those communal properties i think the approach needs needs to be different according to the number of flats and you know the size of the bins and so on but you know in those our advice would be very much around making it easy and clear what needs to be done and you know having all the all all the right labelling and containment in place not making it easy for people to chuck a black bin bag it into what should have been cycling but actually having having the correct bins to to facilitate that but but absolutely right this it's not going to be you can't penalize a communal group like that okay thank you okay thank you um thank you all the evidence we've heard today has been really interesting and helpful so thank you for all of your time sharing your insights and perspectives we have obviously gone through quite a lot of content today you've provided both examples and also some ideas if there are any points after today's session that you want to follow up with us on whether that's anything further you would like to see on the bill or any points that come to mind that you wish you'd made today then please do get in touch with us and and also similarly some of you made commitments to share further information with the committee following today's session so we we are grateful in advance for for you providing that so yes thank you for sharing your views our stage one report will be published in january next year and the clerks will make sure that a copy of the report is shared with you and yes we'll say goodbye now and I will suspend the meeting briefly before we hear from our next panel thanks again for your time welcome back and welcome to our next set of witnesses we're now going to hear from a panel of academic experts in the field of circular economy policy and i'm pleased to welcome tony fritas lecturer in the circular economy and program director of the msc in circular economy at the university of edinburgh welcome dr henry Irving senior lecturer in public history at leeds becket university welcome dr frea lysnefska hope i've got that correct senior lecturer in sustainable transitions and environmental law at the university of surrey an honorary associate professor at university college london thank you and dr melissa marquess in mcune i hope i've got that correct assistant professor of sustainable and circular business university and also joining us remotely professor elin macarg professor of public law and human rights at durham university so thank you all for for your time and being with us we've allocated around 75 minutes for this evidence session and we'll move straight to questions from committee members and as with the last panel if you were listening in given the time constraints and that there are quite a number of questions that we want to get through if colleagues could direct their questions to certain panelists and don't feel that you're all expected to answer every question but if you do want to answer a question please indicate in the room either by signalling to me or professor macarg if you just raise your hand on the team's function that would be great okay thank you very much and i now move to my colleague monica lin and msp for the first question thank you convener and good morning to our panel today so the first question is quite a general one just to capture views on the bill so again not everyone might want to contribute to question one but it's to ask will the bill in its current forum make a significant difference in supporting a transition to a circular economy and in reducing Scotland's greenhouse gas emissions and if you think the bill could go further there might be suggest what needs to happen so melissa is okay i'll come to you first and i can work my way along the table okay thank you very much i think in its current form the bill will is a step towards a circular economy scotland and i think the bill will particularly increase the visibility of materials because there are some specific measures there to help increase the us to have more clarity on how circular scotland is and how the circular economy is advancing so for example we've got we'll have a strategy that will be revised i have five years we'll have targets and obligations for local authorities to comply with recycling as well as duty for businesses to publish about their waste and a date on unsold goods so i think that is i step forward however i think that the bill was tackling the small the smaller issues within an economy because i'm not convinced that we have enough measures within the bill to really significantly change how people and how businesses behave in this country i'm not convinced that targets on their own are enough and or the criminalizing behaviors as well is enough so it would be good i appreciate that the bill has perhaps is limited because of how the both legislation works and perhaps the scottish parliament doesn't have all the powers to change behaviors but there would be other measures that could be more efficient so for example instead of criminalizing the behaviors of a minority it would be better to improve the recycling and the waste infrastructure in the country and other measures as well for example incentives for more circular sustainable products would be much more effective in changing how people behave compared to criminalizing certain actions and specifically on the unsold goods i think is good in a way to have legislation and businesses to be more transparent about their unsold goods but i did read the amazon response to the bill quite closely and amazon for example they already have a number of measures to deal with the unsold goods they'll sell at discounted prices they have the big house project in five for example i think just as amazon all their businesses are doing what they can to tackle the unsold goods because it's good for them if they have less unsold goods they will obviously become more profitable and equally in terms of charging goods the bill proposes a charge for cups i think it worked very well for cups but what about beyond the cups there there's nothing there for let's say takeaway containers and so on so i think the bill is definitely to summarise i think the bill is a step forward but when i ask myself will the bill really have a significant impact towards net zero i have to say i think it will be very negligible in its current form but it's definitely a step forward thank you thank you i might come back to some of the points you've made but i'll just keep it quite your little so i can go around the panel is it fear would you like to go next we'll keep it a fear rather than dr lejaniewska that'll make it too complicated it's like it's like freya without an r so it's fear okay in terms of your question the the bill intentionally and this is written out in the memo intentionally is to align and take forward the climate change act 2009 so it's we need to look at the sectors that this bill is going to quite rapidly so we're trying to meet to our targets 2030 2045 quite rapidly are trying to sort of bend the curve down in terms of emissions one area that emissions are doggedly stuck aside from transport is construction and construction was identified in the roadmap for circular economy 2050 construction is a sector with significant emissions uh one two in three scope one two in three it's also over 50 of waste um in this in in the economy in the Scottish economy so to not have construction within this uh as a bill although it may be included in a strategy but it's not even referenced um to me is a concerning and it makes the bill when you read the bill like the idea of having the strategy and targets obviously there's more detail on that and then it kind of goes into the household waste single use so you've almost got a sort of hybrid bill of ambitious circular economy potentially transformation paradigm shift away from the linearity to a sort of revised waste management strategy sort of approach and I think you want to do one or the other um particularly if you're looking to reduce emissions rapidly the interlinkages between emissions and material um throughout the lifecycle increase the values of materials in an economy which is where there's opportunities for more just transition as well um so as it stands there's there's a foundation but there's work to be done and some decisions to be made so do you think more should be on the face of the bill particularly in terms of the the construction points that you've made there or could that be left to strategy I think indications need to be placed within the bill about different sectors that will be covered in the strategy um and I mean we can get on to sort of the difficulties of data gathering and monitoring and reporting and targets subsequently but the reality is climate change act faced exactly the same problems back in 2008 UK 2009 up to Scotland and they've been overcome you know the data gathering the costs new business opportunities have arisen uh influence the international scene 2015 paris agreement included targets included national plans transformed has had a transformative effect on the international approach to you know carbon within and climate and a really good climate uh circular economy act well crafted could have a transformative effect globally so this is a big opportunity for scotland it really is and there are lessons obviously the references to international uh other european the netherlands uh denmark sweden uh and france there are examples but they actually haven't really weaved it all together in a way that is there's still opportunity to do something brilliant so scotland could do something brilliant thank you well perhaps the bell is brilliant already i don't know we'll see what others have to say so tony um if you can pick up on that yes so in answer to the question of whether in its current form it's significant difference i think i agree with other panel members i think there is a difference but i think there's room to make it significant and i agree in that the balance between residential and commercial is not addressed in the bill enough to support a robust strategy i think even just looking at the basic numbers from what waste comes from scotland 75 percent of that is construction demolition commercial and industrial not household so to go into the specifics of the household and drilling down into things um doesn't really address those and doesn't give opportunities then for that but also i think that what the balance of the bill is more of an improved waste hierarchy rather than a circular economy hierarchy um and being a teacher i brought a handout for everyone so un is going to kindly hand that out to the panel because you already have those in front of you so i think that in order to really improve on the the carbon reduction side of things is really looking at the higher up strategies around actually rethinking and reducing rather than recycling which is at the very bottom of the circular economy hierarchy so i think there's huge opportunities to be able to include that more which means that there's opportunities for supporting innovation and product design opportunities in scotland or a country that's very proud of the things that we invent so let's encourage and go further on that for a circular economy side of things and support that and also looking at where are the opportunities to create more value retention processes so actually creating value out of the waste that we're looking at and where does that recycling actually go and what can we do with that but also much higher up on the hierarchy for circular economy about reducing and creating more efficient ways of manufacturing and reusing and repairing refurbish so we're kind of addressing the lower kind of hierarchies of that but can we look at the opportunities and are there better provisions to be able to create opportunities for behaviour change because a lot of this is what we're talking about is behaviour change but not just for the consumers and the individuals but for organisations and the bigger the more commercial side of things so i think that there are some gaps that we can look at that we can fill with that that can make the bill more robust in that way okay thank you now i believe both alien henry have some particular expertise it might be best for for other questions so go for it henry because i think your question in some ways i'm speculating about what a future historian will say so i'm here as a historian able to look backwards what we're thinking of is in 100 150 years time will people be looking back at this moment and saying that was a decisive step and actually i think i would echo a lot of what previous panellists have said what you have here is effectively a sort of two-part bill on the one hand it's about bringing scotland up to a standard which is currently enforced in other parts of the uk and scotland i think has got some real benefits that some real sort of strengths in the position it's in but there are some things that you're not doing which is happening elsewhere so you're trying to do that but then you're also signaling forward and i think that's where the ambition is i mean the bill does provide a framework through the strategy to actually take this forward and in some ways i think it would be a mistake to place kind of too many concerns on what that will look like at this stage the bill is important because it gets you that it gets that 2016 strategy updated and it gives you the potential to move forward but there is a huge amount of potential here and actually perhaps the bill could be bolder in that taking this whole systems approach so as both Fayette and Tony have said rather than simply kind of reiterating things that we already know let's let's make this bolder let's make it kind of meet that historic challenge okay well maybe stick with you Henry because i'm quite keen to hear what we can learn from the past particularly about our approach to the design and lifecycle of products Tony talked a little bit about innovation everyone's talking about being a bit bolder and how we really get that transformative shift so i want to ask about the importance of design in the circular economy so we can get that shift in focus further up the waist hierarchy so in terms of thinking about sustainable product design and reuse Henry what can the past teach us if we're willing to to learn it's an incredibly difficult question my expertise is more in waste management and i will say actually that scotland has traditionally been a world leader in waste management i mean glasgo is one of the kind of leading cities in the late 19th century in terms of what we would now refer to as refuse collection and but at the time we've seen as this real innovation in public health likewise edinburgh in the 1930s was at the forefront of recycling globally there was facilities here that just weren't available anywhere else in the world so i think scotland has got that kind of story to tell in terms of in terms of product design part of me is quite skeptical and i think again as a historian you learn to be quite skeptical and before i was here i was kind of going back over some nights from edinburgh's archive and in 1950 the person responsible for waste management in this city was lamenting the fact that people were throwing away too many clothes so he was talking about the fact that particularly among social socially deprived groups that there was just a tendency to pick what we would now to in fast fashion so cheap items that then weren't being repaired and were being thrown away and they could see this because they were tracing where waste was rising in different parts of the city now that's 1950 that's a time that we associate with people making to amending it's a time we associate with people being much more thrifty actually what we are talking about here is not just product design this is about a whole kind of social change i mean it's mentioned in the route map large scale and rapid systems change what that looks like is really difficult for me to comment on there is i say a degree of skepticism i think this does require us to be really really quite bold but i'm hoping actually that other panel members might have a bit more hope particularly because they are at the forefront of this okay anyone else wants to contribute on those points Tony i'm happy to come in on design so i think that there's a huge opportunity for not just looking at how we can redesign products but also the systems and because scotland is a small enough country we have the opportunity to be able to do that with the devolved powers that we have and i think it's not only supporting innovation which is a key part of that so allowing for those innovations in materials in rethinking the way we use and make things but also supporting and promoting more of a sharing economy that can tackle a lot of things that we're looking at particularly along the carbon footprinting the stalling we have around transport all of those different types of things we have lots of examples of it happening in small places anything from a tool library to repair cafes but if we can scale that up and go back to being able to reinvigorate the skills that may have been lost through generations then there's a huge amount of opportunity there as well to be able to work up that hierarchy looking at reuse repair refurbishment and changing the mindset so that's all part of that looking about innovative design it's not just how can we maybe replace one material with another but is it actually do we need that object in the first place or are there opportunities to think about multiple uses instead of one thing for this and one thing for that so design has a kind of a more of an umbrella aspect rather than just looking at on a singular level thank you no i couldn't see but i think alien possibly has her hand up so apologies if i missed that it's okay it related to your first question and i was just going to stress the uncertainty the level of uncertainty surrounding the bill because virtually all of it is enabling powers so it's very difficult to know at the moment how this bill how the person the bill will be used and from that point of view i think the circular economy strategy duty is the you know the key to maintaining focus on on how these powers are used in the level of ambition with which they're used the other area of uncertainty in relation to some of the provisions it relates to the interaction with UK internal market act but i think we'll probably come back to that later and the other thing i just wanted to stress is i'm really not an expert on circular economy policy so i will be limited in the contributions i can make thank you no it's great to have you here Aileen for your expertise just while i have you in your mic's on we've had a bit of discussion already about that balance of what's in the bill what will come through targets and strategy from what you have seen so far in the approach the government's taking do you have any concerns about parliamentary and public scrutiny there's obviously a lot of unknowns which is not uncommon in legislation but do you feel that the balance is right at the moment well my first reaction i suppose when i looked at this bill was you know just how much of it is regulation making powers um the question that with regulation making powers of course there is always a question around about the the quality of of scrutiny that that is is possible and the provision that i've particularly focused on is section 9 the charging for stability items um and in relation to that provision um there is provision for a super superaffirmative procedure to be used so there will be a period before regulation you need or draft regulations be linked for the parliaments an opportunity for consultation for committee scrutiny and then a duty on ministers to explain how they've taken account of um any reports or or consultation responses when they make the final the final regulation so that is definitely an improvement in the normal situation and i would say it's appropriate in these circumstances i mean the difficulty with just sticking on that single use items power the difficulty with um putting things on the face of the bill is that it is difficult to um it's difficult to approach this other than on a case by case basis so you end up potentially with a series of very very specific um you primary legislative provisions which we need to be revisited quite quite often so the single use charges for single use items recommendation have made upon which i was a member and we were very very conscious of just how contextually sensitive any regulatory strategy was in this area so you know we focused on that same loose beverage cups but um but in our second report we tried to kind of make some recommendations about how you would approach the regulation of single use items in general but recognising that you know there were the way in which items were used there is a substitutability there is a recycling the quality implications there is you know whether they're essential and all of these would necessitate a case by case thank you aileen i think other colleagues will want to pick those points up and your sound was variable there so maybe that could be sorted out as well um i'll pass back to Cymru about i know that fae has got her hand up so i'll come back to you yeah just coming back on the point about innovation um and tony kind of used the two words scaling up uh innovation happens when there is an opportunity most of the time uh that there is a market opportunity one of the areas within that was identified particularly uh within construction is the driver from procurement so public procurement is a major investor in infrastructure and the built environment so hospital schools and this includes maintenance you know maintenance is actually a very large budget uh in uh construction so introducing um within framework contracts for infrastructure and construction from the public sector and this isn't this identified in the red map it's been identified in the netherlands in denmark is fostering innovation within construction for things like um items that can be used for disassembly things that use more recycled materials it's recycled content um encouraging smaller medium skies enterprises to be part of a framework contract in procurement and the government can orchestrate it in a way that identify a number of projects so it ffosters innovation over a period of like five years or so you know maybe within a um a material target budget and to sort of nudge and push so innovation is not something that stands outside finland has an innovation strategy as part of their circular economy planning the euu includes innovation within the circular economy plan so it's part and parcel and it needs to be considered in the in the largest of framing of the bill in my opinion thank you i'm going to hand back to you but just to remind the committee of my voluntary register of interests because i am the convener of the cross party group in parliament on construction so because construction was mentioned there i think i just present to you mentioned that thank you marcolyn and it's good that construction has been mentioned because it's a significant a very significant aspect to these considerations and um freya your answer helpfully led on to questions from my colleague Jackie and um bar MSP thank you convener am I am weary that we're getting very short of time so if i'm not going to ask anybody to answer if you could just indicate if you'd like to answer to try and i'm trying to be helpful to you convener when i say that and i'll try and bunch my my questions all together and my question is is basically how can the circular economy strategy ensure that there is coherence between the different policies and the legislation you know how can we bring communities and businesses and policy makers together to embed the the practices and finally what skills and education do you think are needed in the circular economy and how should the bill or the strategies seek or help to support this fair your nod and that means so i'm picking on you okay just briefly again i'll go back to this point that i think this is a moment it's a paradigm shift in how an economy could be structured and so defer to having sort of about this is you know go forward 100 years rethinking our relationship to the material economy so this is a moment but what's different is where we had the industrial revolution and there was transformation but it was rapid and it was cruel and it wasn't thought ahead whereas this is a lot and i would say alongside the trying to move away from the fossil fuel based economy is we're looking forward and thinking okay by 2050 or so we want the economy to move towards something we don't know exactly what it's going to look like but we're going to put in place uh steps to get there so we don't entirely know what the skillsets are going to be that are needed in 2050 but we know that we'll there's a whole bunch of skills that we probably won't be needing and so we do need to invest and you know we're talking not just at university level so we've got a new circular economy masters programme but we need it in schools um you know and we also know that this is running alongside parallel with digital skills circular economy delivery there's a lot of potential with digital infrastructure as well so if we're monitoring and reporting gathering evidence on supply chains feeding that back so there's lots of digital training and skills that will be linked to the employment opportunities so we don't know what it's going to look like but we know it has to change and part of that change is putting something in place that can support that process going forward and that will and what we're so encouraging about the memorandum policy memorandum is the consultation process because to bring it to move forward with targets and such like you need to think about how people will respond because it is about behavioural change and you need to bring people along with you otherwise you end up with a you know dare I say it's sort of ooless situation in in London where you get a backlash you don't want a backlash you want people to come along with you so you do have to be careful about charging for you know placing a criminal penalty on a household that could not that could backlash quite easily so you know where the benefits and burdens lie in this transformation and really thinking about that but there is a recognition of that process in the memorandum and it should be incorporated more clearly I think in the in the bill that the requirement to on-going consultation and you do have a body a little bit like a climate change committee and the proposal is to have zero waste Scotland as the public body that puts together reports and that will be an important body but it has to be a body that everybody trusts yeah later but understand that melissa wants to come in in response to Tony raise their hand to you know melissa do you want to go first and then yes thank you so you ask three questions so in the first question how can the circular economy strategy ensure that there's coherence between different bits of legislation and practices and so on so in this one I think in many ways it would be easier to highlight those interrelationships between different pieces of legislations within a strategy more than within a legislative piece so because then if you just focus on what the circular economy is and you know the handout that Tony brought is about those ours is about reducing reusing re-manufacturing recycling so in a strategy it would be useful to highlight the legislation and the targets and initiatives that relate to each of those principles and perhaps you'd have an area there to discuss how different pieces of legislation come into play and then in terms of how can we bring businesses and people together to create a circular economy in Scotland and for the past five or six years I've been doing a lot of researches and I've spoke to several dozens of businesses in this country I looked into the oil and gas sector in the northeast for example and I talked a lot with re-manufacturing businesses and a lot in the third sector as well and the number one thing that businesses face the number one difficulty is the lack of incentives so I'm not too convinced about the criminalizing aspects of this bill because I think most people in Scotland and most businesses they want to do the right thing and they're trying even if you think about oil and gas they have so many initiatives in place for example they have they're dealing with decommissioning right now they have decommissioned they really try to do the right thing when they can but most of the time what's stopping them is the lack of it's not even profitability but sometimes if they choose the re-manufacturing the repair route they just can't compete with businesses that are not doing that so this is what is stopping people and I think in the general population most people want to do the right thing as well but they don't know what the right thing is they don't know what the right thing is for for the plastics do you recycle film plastics and also I think in many ways I look more forward to the strategy than the enabling the this legislation which enables powers and discusses the strategy I think yeah there there'll be so much that can be highlighted in this strategy and if you just focus on the principles of a circular economy to reduce to reuse and to recycle and if you're focusing different sectors because they'll have different needs as well this strategy can really provide a significant step towards the circular economy thank you I think it'd be most appropriate to answer the second question you had around what skills and education are needed and how can the bill support this and I think that that is a really key part that is potentially missing from this is that Scotland does have devolved powers around education and training and I think there's a huge opportunity there not only at I think the people that I work with that work with young people they get it the concept really quickly so embedding circular economy if we're looking at the long-term historical possibilities of trying to create a systems change within the communities it's just knowing what circular economy means we've created this concept we use it as a concept in some countries particularly in the global south it's just the way things are done we don't have to call it something but we kind of need it here because of the consumption issues that we have so to be able to understand what that is without setting us up for kind of a greenwashing failure I think is a really important part of the education of this but not only education within the education systems but education for businesses and training for businesses seen as 99% of businesses on average are small businesses and we know that the support that they need for that but also education within the public awareness scheme so there's kind of three layers of what are the opportunities that we can embed within the bill or within the strategy those opportunities and it's embeddings this circular economy knowledge not only in maybe those degrees that are around environmentalism but actually where do we make things or where do we learn how to make and create things biology engineering all the places where if right now all the things that we're trying to do are a very reactive downstream way of looking at circular economy but I think as an educator what we really need to look at within our university systems which we have amazing ones in Scotland is how can we actually embed that into the basics that we're teaching because that's we're reteaching the same mistakes the same linear mistakes over and over again because of historically that's how it's always been done or that's how we've always designed things or that's how we's always made things so I think there's a huge opportunity for us as education institutions to look inward and say actually if Scotland wants to move forward we need to move forward with that and start embedding that as well. The university sector has a not only a sector in itself but something that then has impacts on many other sectors which relates to a question Mark Ruskell was going to ask next so I'm just going to bring you in now Mark if that's okay. I'm struck by your comments that your fair and Tony were making relation to the construction sector and in particular the amount of waste and I hadn't actually realised that it's such a significant part of our waste and production. Are there other particular sectors that you think a strategy should zero in on? This is going on beyond household waste treatment, this is looking at industrial sectors and I suppose any thoughts you have around EPR as well so we discussed with the last panel about the kind of aspirations of the UK Government to put in place EPR around a number of sectors but in terms of meshing this together what do you think the priority should be and what are the tools? Just to be annoying, one of the things is to always bear in mind this is a systemic approach so even the fact that there was a highlighting construction, construction is multiple materials so it is steel, it is plastics, it is glass, it is internal fitting so it will be textiles as well as there's different periods of the building's constructionness, the building of the building, maintenance of the building, operationalising of the building, the building goes from one use to another use so over its life cycle all sorts of materials will be part of construction so placing different, I appreciate that when we're thinking about sectors that can help us with particularly the strategy so we can talk about construction, we can talk about agriculture, we can talk about textiles as a whole because textiles vary enormous and gets a lot of attention Chemicals really has got a big CO2 footprint, greenhouse gas footprint, it's also got a big material footprint so the centre up which I'm part of which is the mineral based construction centre it's one of the UKRI funded centres at UCL, Melissa is circular economy and chemical centre, there was a whole plethora of centre mineral based construction materials, critical metals, critical metals for digital economy is an area that receives a lot of attention because of the value and also the value moving forward into decarbonising the economy so that receives a lot of attention and I know that Scotland's got an interest in critical metals and minerals just in terms of the point I just returned as well to Jackie's point about coherence in regulation and maybe picking up on something that Tony said is that the organisation of law itself as well and regulation reflects the linear way that we approach the economy so law in the circular economy will probably have to change as well so the way that we even teach law and regulation there are tools within the legal toolbox but we are going to have to apply them in different ways so extended producer responsibility we there's about 200 different extended producer responsibility regulations in the world it was an OECD study and UNEP are doing a comparative study at the moment United Nations environment programme and they vary you no doubt they vary where the responsibility is placed as it was said in the previous session whether you place more responsibility where the where the fines are placed where the incentives are placed and that determines how effective that scheme can be different sectors different types of extended producer responsibility design works better than other sectors so there's quite a lot of research that needs to be done to develop effective EPR interventions and again that comes down to I think getting going setting up a bill setting up an act with a strategy with targets with a view to getting somewhere by 2050 and learning by doing having a body that informs collecting evidence and learning by doing because that transformation will only happen if we get going you can't have this sort of let the perfect be the enemy of the good etc you need to get going and I think Tony briefly you wanted to come in on these points that Mr Ruskell asked as well yes I think more focusing on what you're asking kind of construction and what other industries and I think that it's looking at the numbers of where our waste is coming from in the country and construction is definitely the highest so construction and demolition so it's all aspects of what we mean by that but also there the kind of second highest was around commercial and industrial so I think it's drilling down into what that means when we're reporting that type of waste and where that's coming from and what are the opportunities then to create a more circular and lower carbon economy around that and material use is obviously a big one I think there's been a lot of work done in housing and in development around the work that's being done in that to make the houses themselves efficient or the things that we're building more energy efficient which is fantastic but actually embodied carbon and the materials that we're using to build them and the luck in that that creates actually isn't very helpful either and not being able to recover those materials because they're built in a linear way so it is kind of re-educating but also being able to set up legislation to require building in a more circular so if that is you know the classic way of doing that is building in layers so you can get to the materials easily if that is you know building passports for the materials that are in that to be able to reclaim those 50 100 years down the line part of that is timescales that makes it very challenging but if we are acknowledging that that with that also being one of the biggest kind of waste materials that we're using again what are the opportunities where is the waste happening there's a lot of examples of building off-site that can in a more modular way that significantly reduces construction waste so there's kind of quick wins in that way but also when I was looking at the waste data there's the second highest thing going into landfill with soils and I was like where where's all the soil coming from so it was like what what how is that happening what is that what is that doing and why is soils the second largest waste product going into landfill and what does that actually mean and what are the uses of that I think from a circular economy perspective I'm always going to ooh what can we do with that what is something that we can invent that's useful around that so that's where it's balancing the encouragement of innovation and supporting that type of innovation of where can we connect the dots that aren't normally connected and I think when it's trying to connect the dots it's actually connecting between industries I think we're not doing that enough so when you're asking what are the industries it's actually where's the value in the waste from one industry that can be a virgin material for another industry that we don't do enough of but there's some really amazing examples in places like Rotterdam where there's connected industries and industry clusters that are creating even if it's waste heat or waste energy not even waste materials where the opportunities that we can connect those industries to create more circular and in terms of how you how you create circular places exactly I mean we took a lot of evidence last session around consumption the impact of consumption is it possible to kind of bring in that you know that that sort of metric around consumption reduction targets into a kind of sector based planning or you know does it make more sense at a national level I don't I don't know where that kind of fits I'm happy to come in on I think it depends on what you mean yeah I think it depends on what you mean by consumption that is where is is it consumers consuming products and there's a huge amount of in the circularity gap report that was material consumption and everyday products that was about 14 reduction can reduce our carbon footprint by 14 percent so it's a huge amount so that is about consumerism in general and are there kind of policies or education things that we can build into this to be able to bring up the awareness of how we consume as a society I think that's part of it and also then procurement so consumption is a big part of procurement of the way that we use things in larger organizations in the government organization so I think procurement has a huge opportunity to reduce consumption there as well very briefly briefly so one of the references in the memo is the sustainable development goal 12 responsible production and consumption and responsible a major part of the circular economy kind of strategy is servatization so moving away from ownership to use so that's a real change in that we don't all have to own a car we can use it and added that creates more value industrial symbiosis as Tony said materials can move around in an organized way in relationship to businesses where they're adding value to secondary materials so this also links up to the definition of waste end of life definitions which is a very contentious and complex that is a major issue around liberating waste to become a resource in the economy that can have value and finally on soils the soil it's because of construction and it's to do with the definition of waste soil as a waste when actually a lot of the soil shouldn't be defined as waste it and also construction methods as well there's lots of issues around that and one of the challenges with the construction industry is that it's overlaps between devolved and reserved areas which takes me to some questions from Brian Whittle MSP thank you good morning to Paul yes i'm going to try and dip my toe into the murky waters that is the difference between devolved and reserved areas and how they how they could interact with this bill because we want to try and avoid some of the troubles we've had in the past and trying to develop policy here so i'm assuming here my question will be to aileen and fair but if i'm wrong in that please please tell me so i'm i just said that there's a real complexity around interactions although that waste is devolved policy areas that area it will inevitably interact with the with UK reserved areas such as where the epr and as we've seen most recently UK internal market has raised its head so i suppose i'll ask a few questions here if i could what the key challenge is navigating that that sort of complexity that complex environment especially in the back of the early rounds we heard divergence in policy is not necessarily a bad thing in that one devolved nation can lead the other into you know by highlighting good practice so how do we use the common frameworks to support that that policy coherence i suppose and you know as i said that there's been those different experiences you know with the UK internal market act most recently with drs and single use plastics buying and all of that so how do we avoid how do we utilise both of these these sort of opportunities and avoid you know some of the some of the if you use a technical term bun fighting that happened most recently i'm going to come to you first if i may if i'm going to the wrong people here please let me know i'm sure aileen can throw a lot more light on some of the technicalities with the UK internal market act i don't want to throw that well i think it has to be thrown in because it's happened so the retained EU law act and how that actually manifests what actually emerges by june 2026 and the impact that they may that may have on not just environmental law but other areas of of law within the UK and the impact that that may have on the devolved administrations is something to bear in mind as this act goes forward so i i'd be interested to hear what aileen has on that as well i think some of the points made earlier about divergence by the representative from rapcom rhai uh were salient in terms of there are areas of devolved powers that can easily be dealt with with it within um within the remit that you have and they tend to be recycling in the lower end of the waste hierarchy so it it um it has i think the way that the UK internal market act is framed currently can have a chilling effect on more ambitious regulatory framing in the devolved administrations i participated in a policy forum of wales a couple of weeks ago and that was a point of view by a few of the participants that the UK internal market act is having a chilling effect on ambitions within within wales to take to set more higher targets around reuse for example and that was in construction um and i think one of the difficulties is this is a legal issue but it's a legal issue that is interpreted within a political context um and that's really very difficult because the reality is it's things could be interpreted in a very supportive way between Westminster and the devolved administrations to take forward a more ambitious circular economy across the union where there was complementary regulatory framings of circularity but that doesn't that's not the political context now and so with Scotland at the moment uh you do have to work within your the powers that you have but there are clearly opportunities to place uh a target and a strategy that doesn't conflict because you're place basically saying this is a goal and an intention but the specifics aren't there and the specifics can get worked out uh in due course and they vary for each sector so once again going back to construction there's different methods like you you have control over procurement for example but there's aspects of construction which aren't don't come under the devolved powers the market uh whose providers you've only got one cement factory i think in in Scotland um so you'll be dealing with uh suppliers from um down in England so there's issues about standards and standards generally are UK wide or European wide or international ISO standards so there's all these different aspects i think that would be a good time to turn to Professor Eilid MacArthur thanks thanks for your so just to clarify that there are two separate issues here one is is that certain powers are reserved Westminster and the other issue is about the impact on devolved competencies of the UK internal market because UKima doesn't make it unlawful so actually a way that is incompatible with its market access principles it just means that any regulation that is adopted may be ineffective or less effective and i stress maybe because there is a good deal of uncertainty not just around the actual operation of UKima we're still actually fairly early days there's uncertainty around about the possibility of negotiated exclusions but there's also just uncertainty um around about their impact their practical impact in any particular sector so it's it's difficult to say sort of things in general about the effect of the UKima um it goes the way around this and when the way around it obviously is is co-ordination and the common frameworks um process was intended to promote cooperation between the four governments in areas where you had um either um interesting competencies or um where there might be external effects external market effects or effects on um internal trade unfortunately the effect of UKima has rather been to undermine co-ordination um through the common frameworks process because what it does in practice is to privilege decisions made by the UK government um particularly from England so the UK government has less incentive because of UKima to cooperate with the 12 governments might be because it can de facto impose its regulatory choices um for England on the other other relations or through the exclusion processes as we saw with DRS because um if it decides that a co-ordinated approach would be preferable um then it can refuse to grant an exclusion or grant a very narrow in the case of DRS a temporary exclusion um in order to in effect force the 12 governments to cooperate with the UKima policy. Thank you. Do any subs? Okay I've got two other members who want to come in with supplementaries first Bob Doris and then Mark Ruskell. Okay thank you thank you convener um I think the evidence is quite clear about the chilling effect of the internal markets act that the UKima has passed I'm not going to draw any politics of it that's not the purpose of this question it's to highlight that in October so just last month um a significant amount of environmental organisations of Scottish NGOs wrote to the UK Government uh deeply concerned at the implementation and operation of the UK internal markets act they've made a suggestion that in relation to public health in relation to public health and the environment that there should be a qualified automatic exemption for those two sectors in other words they should not have to go through the current processes under the UK internal markets act would that seem a reasonable adjustment to be made in relation to empowering the Scottish Government and this Parliament and doing some of the things that we'd all like to see I don't know if I would like to to respond to that to Aileen McCarg please thanks I mean yes I think one of the problems with the UK internal market and one of its key differences from the EU internal market rules that it replaces is that there are very very narrow exclusions from from the market access principles on the face of the act and very very limited opportunities to be able to argue that first the market access principles might be engaged in principle nevertheless they're outweighed by some public interest objectives so I think one thing that would certainly at from the devol's point of view would make the make the effects of the UK a more palatable would be to expand those opportunities to argue not necessarily completely exclude regulations that have an environmental purpose but at least increase the opportunities to be able to argue that the environmental objective or the public health objective is actually already one of the few areas that is actually infringed on the face of the act at the moment but to be able to argue that in a particular circumstance these public interest objectives outweigh any adverse effect on competition I should say that there is obviously a huge amount of uncertainty around the acema not just because of the uncertainty about how it operates at the moment but as you've indicated the uncertainty about how it might evolve particularly if there's a change of government at Westminster after the next general election we might see reforms through the act I would hope that they would but at the very least we might see a different approach to the agreement of ad hoc exclusions you know so for instance in relation to single use plastics one of the objections there and two objections there one it was the the exclusion that was agreed was narrower than the one that was requested so it was limited to a specific list of single use plastics rather than the concept of single use plastics or the concept of single use items in general and also it was a very slow process and then we saw in DRS of course the process itself became highly contested by the legislation and there was a lot of clarity there about what exactly was required in Android 4 and exclusion to be agreed so I think we might see I wish that we would see a different approach to the exclusion process even if there's no amendments to the act itself I just follow up briefly on that because I was deliberately trying to do all the politics out of this so I'll ignore whether or not a future UK Government might be more sympathetic to the aspirations of the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament in relation to circular economy and environmental aspirations but do other witnesses believe that there should be a qualified automatic exemption in relation to internal markets act irrespective of who's in charge at Westminster in relation to public health and the environment that would be quite helpful to know because if we've got environmental groups in the Scottish NGO saying that not the politicians but others saying that would witnesses here also agree to that with any kind of briefly if there's any specific position you want to put on that okay I would say with any exemption is the operationalisation of that exemption and how it's interpreted because that reminds me of the the chapeau 20 in the world trade organisation which is a health and environment for a country to take action to prevent the for example GMOs and that's how the EU prevented the import of GMOs using the chapeau 20 and it's all about the interpretation and how it gets interpreted and this would be quite an issue as well because circular economy kind of is broader than health and environment with some people's perspective other people would say it's all about health and environment wellbeing etc everything so yeah it would be a can of worms error and I agree with it I think mr doris other NGOs in scotland have will have heard what you've said today and may want to give their own reflections in a similar way to those that you cited Mark Ruskell MSP do you have a a substance yeah I mean I think sort of beyond you know that discussion around a specific exemption I'd be interested in alien's perspectives on how that common framework process can be included to provide that kind of certainty with the process that as policies are being developed that there is that certainty that businesses can can invest and I suppose it comes back to the context you laid out that you know the UK government is in a position where it is effectively sort of overseeing an internal market for the UK but it is also acting as the government of England a part of the UK and so there's a kind of constitutionary symmetry there in the way that those powers are used but but but in terms of how do you get a fair process given that's the constitutional settlement that we've got I'd be interested in your thoughts on how it could be improved or codified or whatever I mean that's that is difficu