As part of Recycle Week, Iain Gulland, Chief Executive at Zero Waste Scotland, explains what he thinks the future of recycling should look like in Scotland, and it’s not what you would expect.
Recycle Week (14 October to 18 October) is upon us again, returning for its 21st year, which really brings home to me how much the landscape has changed in that time.
Back in 2004, recycling was considered solely a waste management issue. Over 20-odd years that narrative has evolved – first towards a focus on maximising resource usage, and on to a more sophisticated understanding of recycling’s place as the bedrock of a properly functioning circular economy.
It’s tempting to look back and reminisce at this evolution and celebrate the increase in recycling in Scotland over that time, from 12% in 2004, to an all-time high of 62.3% reported earlier this year, based on the 2022 data.
But what I think is a much more interesting and exciting thing to focus on than the recent past is the complex and shifting future landscape which promises to bring all manner of further leaps.
This will start to take us towards a system that genuinely prioritises waste reduction and reuse, before considering recycling as the last positive option.
Strap in, because there’s a fair amount of change afoot…
The Circular Economy Act
I’m still slightly pinching myself that we actually have an Act of parliament in Scotland for creating a circular economy.
A commitment to circularity enshrined in law is such a huge step for our country, and when we first started really pushing what was a relatively unknown concept back in the early 2010s I would have struggled to believe we’d be at this point in 2024.
But of course, the passing of the Act is just the start.
In the recycling sphere, the Act has powers to create a new code of practice for recycling, which will be co-designed with local authorities and seek to ensure the greatest amount of consistency, quality and capture for recycling collections.
I’m still slightly pinching myself that we actually have an Act of parliament in Scotland for creating a circular economy.
There are also new powers for councils regarding duty of care for householders, which allows councils to impose penalties for residents who consistently use their recycling services incorrectly.
Further up the hierarchy, there’s also exciting moves happening to reduce the amount of unrecyclable material to deal with, such as measures to reduce hard to recycle items by imposing a charge. A plan to apply a charge to single-use cups is out for public consultation already.
Most significant of all will be the creation of a circular economy strategy, and the statutory requirement for ministers to review this at regular intervals to capture evolving thinking, set short-term and stretch targets, and prioritise key sectors.
Circular economy and Waste Route Map
The final route map is due soon after several rounds of consultation from Scottish Government, and when published it will form the blueprint for Scotland’s progress around recycling, food waste reduction, reuse, and waste reduction.
We are hoping that the final route map will set out plans for tackling food waste, introducing construction reuse hubs, modernising recycling through improved data capture, local targets for recycling and reuse, new measures to assess compliance and improve performance in commercial recycling, and plans to decarbonise disposal.
Extended Producer Responsibility
EPR reform has felt like a long time coming for many of us in the industry, but changes are now on the horizon.
The “producer pays” principle, which has existed for years but in a somewhat imperfect form, will now see major revamps relating to a range of different products.
Waste electricals, batteries and packaging will soon all be subject to new rules that place the responsibility for the costs of waste management onto the producer, and most importantly, will do so in ways that incentivise increased recyclability of the items, as well as increased reuse.
Product Stewardship
Broadening out even further than EPR is the wider world of product stewardship, with a range of measures in the pipeline in this area too.
Forthcoming product stewardship plans will go beyond the requirements from EPR to pay waste management costs, and look at areas such market restrictions for some items, deposit return schemes, taxation measures, better communications and campaigns, new reporting requirements, greater reuse and repair opportunities and more.
It will represent a further shift from the “use once and recycle/dispose” model and towards greater circularity and strong links between different policy measures.
Deposit Return Scheme
The UK-wide deposit return scheme is expected in 2027, and promises to the be the key to higher capture rates for single-use cans and bottles, with the deposit element forming the all-important incentive for individuals to return items for recycling.
It’s been a rocky road for getting a scheme off the ground in Scotland, but it will make a vital contribution to increasing recycling rates, reducing litter and driving behaviour change.
Emissions Trading Scheme
Landfill tax has played an instrumental role in driving up recycling rates, but with an incoming landfill ban, residual waste is increasingly moving to incineration.
Taking landfill tax’s place as the fiscal incentive to maximise recycling is the Emissions Trading Scheme, a UK cap and trade scheme that limits the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted by businesses.
A higher price will be paid for higher carbon items, and this will be key to creating a financial incentive to not just maximise recycling overall, but to increase the focus on the most harmful materials and drive a greater decarbonisation of waste overall.
So what does all this mean collectively?
These measures, taken together and when all in flight, will create a policy and delivery landscape for circularity of a sophistication and maturity that will stand Scotland shoulder to shoulder with some of the most advanced nations in the world in this area.
These new measures will also help incentivise and target our efforts as a nation in the places they can have the greatest effect.
They will move us towards a nation that uses fewer single-use and more reusable items, makes the single-use items we do use out of lower carbon easier to recycle materials, and captures as many as possible.
Over time, I’d love to see us marking Recycle Week by celebrating the amount of items that were prevented from needing to be recycled, as well as our success in recycling what we couldn’t avoid using.
These changes will all take time to take effect, but it’s exciting to see so much evolution and change coming down the tracks.
While the picture looks complicated when looking at these as individual measures, when viewed collectively this systematic and ordered programme is a pathway to navigate people, businesses and society through that complex journey to a circular economy.
