The Scottish Government published its first Zero Waste Plan yesterday.
Despite significant efforts to reduce the amount of waste which Scotland produces, and greater measures taken to recycle waste, there is still a significant tonnage which is not being adequately dealt with. The Plan is intended to promote a change in the way in which we deal with waste, whether as households, as businesses, or as public sector organisations.
The Plan sets two new targets applying to all waste: by 2025, 70 per cent of waste should be recycled, while only a maximum of five per cent should be sent to landfill.
The plan sets out the arsenal of measures to be levelled at those targets, which includes:
- Landfill bans for specific waste types
- Separate collections of specific waste types to increase reuse and recycling opportunities
- Restrictions on the input to all energy from waste facilities
- Encouraging local authorities and the resource management sector to work together to create consistent waste management services
- Development of a Waste Prevention Programme for all wastes, making prevention and reuse central to actions and policies
- Improved information on different waste sources and types highlighting further economic and environmental opportunities
- Measurement of the carbon impacts of waste to prioritise the recycling of resources which offer the greatest environmental and climate change outcomes.
The Plan is essentially a vision, a strategic background against which to take decisions to implement the numerous actions set out in the Plan. It is intended to create a stable framework to provide confidence for the necessary investment over the next 10 years.
It is certainly ambitious and leaves a lot for the Scottish Government still to do, but the fact that it is committed to doing these things, following a productive consultation process, gives reason to anticipate that the Plan has every chance of hitting its targets.
Disclaimer
The material contained in this article is of the nature of general comment only and does not give advice on any particular matter. Recipients should not act on the basis of the information in this e-update without taking appropriate professional advice upon their own particular circumstances.
