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Zero waste - Engagement version

Top­ic: zero waste

Engage­ment ver­sion Novem­ber 2024

Require­ments addressed in this section

Table 1 Inform­a­tion required by the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Scot­land) Act 1997, as amended, regard­ing the issue addressed in this section.

Sec­tionRequire­ment
Sec­tion 15(5)(b)the prin­cip­al pur­poses for which the land is used,
Sec­tion 15(5)(d)the infra­struc­ture of the dis­trict (includ­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions, trans­port and drain­age sys­tems, sys­tems for the sup­ply of water and energy, and health care and edu­ca­tion facilities),
Sec­tion 15(5)(e)how that infra­struc­ture is used,

Table 2 Inform­a­tion required by the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Devel­op­ment Plan­ning) (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions 2023, regard­ing the issue addressed in this section.

Reg­u­la­tionRequire­ment
Reg­u­la­tion 9(2)(e) (vii)The inform­a­tion and con­sid­er­a­tions are-…
The fol­low­ing plans and strategies, inso­far as relat­ing to the loc­al devel­op­ment plan area — …
The nation­al waste man­age­ment plan,

Links to evidence

Sum­mary of evidence

Policy con­text

Nation­al Parks (Scot­land) Act 2000

The Nation­al Park has four dis­tinct aims as set out in The Nation­al Parks (Scot­land) Act 2000). The first and forth aims; ​‘to con­serve and enhance the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age of the area’ and ​‘to pro­mote sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic and social devel­op­ment of the area’s com­munit­ies’. The aims are all to be pur­sued col­lect­ively. How­ever, if there is con­flict between the first aim and any of the oth­ers, great­er weight is giv­en to the first aim (as set out in Sec­tion 9(6) of the 2000 Act).

Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4

The Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 sets out the nation­al spa­tial strategy for Scot­land. Its focus on the three main policy themes of sus­tain­able, live­able and pro­duct­ive places aligns with Scotland’s aim of deliv­er­ing on the United Nations Sus­tain­able Goals. Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4, in rela­tion to Infra­struc­ture and Ser­vices aims to deliv­er an infra­struc­ture first approach to land use planning.

Policy 12 aims to reduce and reuse waste mater­i­als where pos­sible through a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy mod­el. If appro­pri­ate the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan should identi­fy appro­pri­ate loc­a­tions for addi­tion­al waste man­age­ment infra­struc­ture for example recyc­ling and reuse plants.

Policy 18 spe­cific­ally addresses the infra­struc­ture first approach inten­ded to ensure infra­struc­ture con­sid­er­a­tions are addresses at the earli­est stage of the devel­op­ment plan pro­cess. The Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan needs to ensure exist­ing infra­struc­ture assets are being used sus­tain­ably and make pro­vi­sion for pri­or­it­ising low-car­bon solu­tions in devel­op­ment. Pro­posed infra­struc­ture inter­ven­tions need to ensure they meet the needs of the com­munity they are inden­ted to serve. Accord­ing to the policy loc­al devel­op­ment plans must:

  • Reflect evid­ence-based decisions about the cur­rent infrastructure’s capa­city, con­di­tion, needs and deliv­er­ab­il­ity with­in the Plan area.
  • Con­sider the need for addi­tion­al cross bound­ary infra­struc­ture where a need is identified.
  • Put for­ward a spa­tial strategy that reflects the infra­struc­ture pri­or­it­ies, and where, how and by whom they will be delivered.
  • Put for­ward a meth­od of cal­cu­la­tion for the type, level and loc­a­tion of the fin­an­cial or in-kind con­tri­bu­tions required, spe­cify­ing which devel­op­ment (sites) these will be required for.

Plans should align with rel­ev­ant nation­al, region­al, and loc­al infra­struc­ture plans and policies and take account of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment infra­struc­ture invest­ment hier­archy and sus­tain­able travel and invest­ment hier­arch­ies in devel­op­ing the spa­tial strategy. Con­sist­ent early engage­ment and col­lab­or­a­tion between rel­ev­ant stake­hold­ers will bet­ter inform decisions on land use and investment.

The North region’s spa­tial pri­or­it­ies, which cov­er the Nation­al Park and are rel­ev­ant to this policy area are:

  • Pro­tect envir­on­ment­al assets and stim­u­late invest­ment in nat­ur­al and engin­eered solu­tions to cli­mate change and nature res­tor­a­tion, whilst decar­bon­ising trans­port and build­ing resi­li­ent connections.
  • Sup­port loc­al eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment by mak­ing sus­tain­able use of the areas’ world­class envir­on­ment­al assets to innov­ate and lead green­er growth.

Also of rel­ev­ance to the region and this policy area is Nation­al Devel­op­ment 4: Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Mater­i­als Man­age­ment Facil­it­ies. This nation­al devel­op­ment sup­ports the devel­op­ment of facil­it­ies required to achieve a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy. This sec­tor will provide a range of busi­ness, skills and employ­ment oppor­tun­it­ies as part of a just trans­ition to a net zero economy.

Scotland’s Zero Waste Plan 2010

The Zero Waste Plan sets the stra­tegic dir­ec­tion for waste policy for Scot­land, informed by improved under­stand­ing of the envir­on­ment­al con­sequences of how we use and dis­pose of resources, and by the (then applic­able) require­ments of European legis­la­tion. The Zero Waste Plan is under­pinned by a determ­in­a­tion to achieve the best over­all out­comes for Scotland’s envir­on­ment, by mak­ing best prac­tic­al use of the approach in the waste man­age­ment hier­archy: waste pre­ven­tion, reuse, recyc­ling and recovery.

Cur­rent tar­gets for redu­cing waste and increas­ing recyc­ling by 2025 include redu­cing total waste arising in Scot­land by 15% against 2011 levels; redu­cing food waste by 33% against 2013 levels; recyc­ling 70% of remain­ing waste and send­ing no more than 5% of remain­ing waste to landfill.

Waste (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions 2012

The legis­la­tion intro­duced changes to how mater­i­als are man­aged by the industry and busi­nesses out­lining the fol­low­ing actions:

  • Requires busi­nesses and the pub­lic sec­tor to sep­ar­ate met­al, plastic, glass, paper and card.
  • Requires food busi­nesses to sep­ar­ate food waste for collection.
  • Loc­al author­it­ies are oblig­ated to provide recyc­ling ser­vices to homes.
  • Bans met­al, plastic, glass, paper, card and food from being land­filled or incinerated.
  • Requires incin­er­at­ors to sep­ar­ate metals and plastics before burn­ing waste.
  • Bans bio­de­grad­able muni­cip­al waste from being landfilled.

Waste hier­archy

Sec­tion 34 of the Envir­on­ment­al Pro­tec­tion Act 1990 (as amended) makes it the duty of every­one (with the excep­tion of occu­pi­ers of domest­ic prop­er­ties as respects the house­hold waste pro­duced at those prop­er­ties) who pro­duces, keeps or man­ages con­trolled waste, or as a broker or deal­er has con­trol of such waste, to:

  • Take all such meas­ures avail­able to that per­son as are reas­on­able in the cir­cum­stances to apply the waste hier­archy set out in Art­icle 4(1) of the Waste Directive.
  • Take all reas­on­able steps to ensure that the waste is man­aged in man­ner which pro­motes high qual­ity recycling.

The waste hier­archy ranks waste man­age­ment options accord­ing to the best envir­on­ment­al out­come tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the life­cycle of the mater­i­al. The life­cycle of a mater­i­al is an envir­on­ment­al assess­ment of all the stages of a product’s life from-cradle-to-grave (for example from raw mater­i­al extrac­tion through mater­i­als pro­cessing, man­u­fac­ture, dis­tri­bu­tion, use, repair and main­ten­ance, and dis­pos­al or recycling).

In its simplest form, the waste hier­archy gives top pri­or­ity to pre­vent­ing waste. When waste is cre­ated, it gives pri­or­ity to pre­par­ing it for reuse, then recyc­ling, then oth­er recov­ery, and last of all dis­pos­al (for example landfill).

With the excep­tion of tires, the waste hier­archy rank­ing applies, almost uni­ver­sally, as described in Fig­ure 1. Fur­ther inform­a­tion on apply­ing the waste hier­archy can be found here:

Pre­ven­tion

If you can’t pre­vent, then…

Pre­pare for reuse

If you can’t pre­pare for reuse then…

Recycle

If you can’t recycle, then…

Recov­er oth­er value (e.g. energy)

If you can’t recov­er value, then…

Dis­pos­al

Land­fill if no altern­at­ive available.

Fig­ure 1 Waste Hier­archy. Image redone with Nation­al Park col­ours based on Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment image, 2017.

Stop, Sort, Burn, Bury?: Inde­pend­ent review of the role of incin­er­a­tion in the waste hier­archy in Scot­land (report)

The report (and the sup­port­ing doc­u­ments) con­sti­tutes the Inde­pend­ent Review of the Role of Incin­er­a­tion in the Waste Hier­archy in Scot­land. The con­clu­sions drawn and sub­sequent recom­mend­a­tion are dir­ec­ted toward Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and loc­al gov­ern­ment. As the Nation­al Park Author­ity does not admin­is­ter waste col­lec­tion or treat­ment, there are little dir­ect applic­a­tion or rel­ev­ance to the report with­in the con­text of the work under­taken by the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority.

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity is, how­ever, the stat­utory plan­ning author­ity for the Nation­al Park area, and as such Recom­mend­a­tion 4 of the report can be seen as hav­ing poten­tial applic­a­tion in the Nation­al Park.

Recom­mend­a­tion 4 states that ​‘Effect­ive imme­di­ately, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment should ensure that no fur­ther plan­ning per­mis­sion (i.e., bey­ond that already in place) is gran­ted to incin­er­a­tion infra­struc­ture with­in the scope of this Review unless bal­anced by an equal or great­er clos­ure of capa­city. The only excep­tions to this should be those out­lined in Recom­mend­a­tion 10.’

Recom­mend­a­tion 10 states that ​‘Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment should urgently work with loc­al author­it­ies in remote and rur­al areas of Scot­land without a settled resid­ual waste man­age­ment solu­tion to meet the Ban to explore options that might, if fully jus­ti­fied, lead to the cre­ation of a small amount of addi­tion­al capacity.’

The review also places an emphas­is on improv­ing com­munity engage­ment with regard to improve­ments or reviews of exist­ing waste man­age­ment pro­jects. The Review reports that the stand­ard of com­munity engage­ment by both pub­lic and private entit­ies var­ied greatly, recom­mend­ing the gen­er­al level should be improved. In part, an attrib­ut­ing factor was the poor quant­ity and avail­ab­il­ity of rel­ev­ant data available.

Secur­ing a green recov­ery on a path to net zero: cli­mate change plan 2018 — 2032 – update

The doc­u­ment provides an update to the 2018 Cli­mate Change Plan. Since that Plan Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment have set new ambi­tious tar­gets to end its con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change by 2045. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment have com­mit­ted to reduce emis­sions by 75% by 2030 (com­pared with 1990) and to net zero by 2045. As Scot­land emerged from COV­ID-19 the Gov­ern­ment iden­ti­fied an oppor­tun­ity to rebuild the eco­nomy in a way that deliv­ers a green­er, fairer and more equal soci­ety. This Plan sets out the Gov­ern­ments approach to deliv­er­ing a green recov­ery and sets out a path­way to deliv­er its cli­mate change tar­gets. In line with the 2018 plan, the focus is on the peri­od up to 2032.

It sets out a num­ber of out­comes, that are sup­por­ted by policies and pro­pos­als, relat­ing to waste and the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy. These are as follows.

The out­come to reduce waste to land­fill is sup­por­ted by the fol­low­ing policies:

  • End land­filling of bio­de­grad­able muni­cip­al waste by 2025, reduce the per­cent­age of all waste sent to land­fill to 5% by 2025 and recycle 70% of all waste by 2025 by:
  • Devel­op­ing a new route map to reduce waste and meet our waste and recyc­ling tar­gets for 2025 in a way that max­im­ises their car­bon sav­ings potential.
  • Devel­op­ing a post-2025 route map for the waste and resources sec­tor, identi­fy­ing how the sec­tor will con­trib­ute towards Scotland’s jour­ney towards net zero in the peri­od to 2030 and beyond.
  • Estab­lish­ing a £70m fund to improve loc­al author­ity recyc­ling col­lec­tion infra­struc­ture. In line with EU require­ments, fur­ther pro­mot­ing reuse and recyc­ling ensure sep­ar­ate col­lec­tion of tex­tiles by 2025; and ensur­ing that bio-waste (e.g. garden waste), is either sep­ar­ated and recycled at source, or is col­lec­ted sep­ar­ately and is not mixed with oth­er types of waste by 2023.
  • In response to the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change’s latest recom­mend­a­tions, it is our inten­tion to extend the forth­com­ing ban on bio­de­grad­able muni­cip­al waste to
  • land­fill to include bio­de­grad­able non-muni­cip­al wastes, sub­ject to appro­pri­ate con­sulta­tion and work to provide assur­ance around some spe­cif­ic waste streams.
  • Work with the Con­ven­tion of Scot­tish Loc­al Author­it­ies (COSLA) in the com­ing year to eval­u­ate the House­hold Recyc­ling Charter and review its Code of Prac­tice as a key step in devel­op­ing a future mod­el of recyc­ling collection.
  • Under­pin­ning this we will take steps to improve waste data, con­tinu­ing to work with UK Gov­ern­ment, oth­er devolved gov­ern­ments and agen­cies to devel­op elec­tron­ic waste track­ing, which will help deliv­er a step change in the qual­ity and use­ful­ness of waste data for decision mak­ing. This will include tak­ing the neces­sary steps along­side Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency to drive imple­ment­a­tion of the sys­tem in Scotland.
  • Elec­tron­ic waste track­ing fund Improved waste data sys­tem will help drive fur­ther pro­gress to deliv­er on exist­ing waste and recyc­ling targets.

The out­come to reduce emis­sions from closed land­fill sites is sup­por­ted by the fol­low­ing policy and proposal:

  • Accel­er­ate Land­fill Gas Cap­ture and Land­fill Leg­acy Man­age­ment: we will work with Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency and key industry part­ners to scale up the exist­ing land­fill gas cap­ture pro­gramme to mit­ig­ate effects of land­fill and envir­on­ment­al impact of closed land­fill sites.
  • Land­fill gas cap­ture on closed sites: in asso­ci­ation with Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency and the waste industry, double the num­ber of land­fill gas cap­ture sites that under­take invest­ig­at­ive or devel­op­ment work (from 12 to 24 sites) by 2025, in order to har­ness energy gen­er­ated from land­fill gas cap­ture and max­im­ise oth­er cir­cu­lar eco­nomy oppor­tun­it­ies. Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency has already iden­ti­fied 12 sites for poten­tial invest­ig­at­ive work.

The out­come to reduce food waste is sup­por­ted by the fol­low­ing policy:

  • We will lead col­lab­or­at­ive efforts to deliv­er Scotland’s land­mark Food Waste Reduc­tion Action Plan. To reduce food waste by 33% from the 2013 baseline by 2025. Actions include:
  • Improv­ing mon­it­or­ing and infra­struc­ture by con­sid­er­ing a man­dat­ory nation­al food waste reduc­tion tar­get and man­dat­ory report­ing of Scotland’s food sur­plus and waste by food businesses.
  • Con­sult­ing on the cur­rent rur­al exemp­tion and food sep­ar­a­tion require­ments for food waste col­lec­tions, to help break down bar­ri­ers to food waste reuse and recycling.
  • Sup­port­ing lead­er­ship, innov­a­tion, effect­ive­ness and effi­ciency in Scotland’s pub­lic, private and hos­pit­al­ity sec­tors by expand­ing pilot pro­grammes across the edu­ca­tion sec­tor and pub­lic sec­tor buildings.
  • Sup­port the devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of an NHS Scot­land nation­al action plan on food waste.
  • Devel­op best prac­tice guid­ance for pub­lic sec­tor pro­cure­ment teams to drive new ways of work­ing and more trans­par­ent sup­ply chains.
  • A sus­tained approach to pub­lic engage­ment and com­mu­nic­a­tions to enable the pub­lic to make changes in their choices and beha­viours around food and food waste, in part­ner­ship with Zero Waste Scotland.

The out­come to reduce waste and estab­lish a more cir­cu­lar eco­nomy, where goods and mater­i­als are kept in use for longer, is sup­por­ted by the fol­low­ing proposals:

  • We will work with loc­al author­it­ies and the future Depos­it Return Scheme administrator(s) to explore options that will unlock repro­cessing invest­ments, includ­ing pri­cing and incent­ive schemes, to cre­ate jobs and a ready sup­ply of recycled mater­i­al for new packaging.
  • Meas­ures to encour­age more sus­tain­able con­sumer pur­chas­ing, includ­ing plans to take fur­ther steps to con­sult on a charge on single use dis­pos­able bever­age cups and to increase the car­ri­er bag min­im­um charge from 5p to 10p in this par­lia­ment­ary session.
  • Ban­ning pri­or­ity single use items: We will con­sult on ban­ning a num­ber of prob­lem­at­ic plastic items iden­ti­fied in the European Union’s Single Use Plastics Dir­ect­ive (with a view to intro­du­cing legis­la­tion in 2021) and out­line how we will give effect to the wider require­ments of the Dir­ect­ive before the end of 2020.
  • Imple­ment­a­tion of our Depos­it Return Scheme for single use drinks containers.
  • We will also work col­lab­or­at­ively across the pub­lic sec­tor devel­op­ing tools and guid­ance and a prac­tic­al approach to influ­ence and empower buy­er, sup­pli­er and key stake­hold­er com­munit­ies to use pub­lic pro­cure­ment to sup­port a green recov­ery and our wider cli­mate and cir­cu­lar eco­nomy ambi­tions through pro­cure­ment, embed­ding cli­mate con­sid­er­a­tions in organ­isa­tion­al pro­cure­ment strategies by 2021 and report­ing pro­gress in annu­al pro­cure­ment reports.
  • Reform­ing exten­ded pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity schemes: We will con­tin­ue to work with the UK Gov­ern­ment and oth­er devolved admin­is­tra­tions on reforms to the pack­aging exten­ded pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity régime, which we expect will deliv­er improved fund­ing for loc­al author­it­ies in the future.
  • We are boost­ing our com­mit­ment to build­ing a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy, where goods and mater­i­als are kept in use for longer. We will deliv­er this by embed­ding cir­cu­lar recov­ery prin­ciples in the wider green recov­ery. Through Zero Waste Scot­land and
  • Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency, we will intensi­fy our work with industry and busi­nesses to address emis­sions asso­ci­ated with pro­duc­tion, con­sump­tion and waste of products / resources; and to pro­mote resource efficiency.
  • In the con­text of the latest Cli­mate Change Com­mit­tee recom­mend­a­tions and build­ing on pro­gress already made by the sec­tor, we will con­sider meas­ures to ensure new energy from waste plants are more effi­cient, and ​‘future-proofed’ for Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age technology.
  • As part of our work on devel­op­ing a route map to 2025, we will
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