Meeting of the Parliament 02 February 2016
I thank Cameron Buchanan for raising the issue of litter on our streets in the Scottish Parliament, as many members have done over the years. I can see that all the members who have spoken tonight feel strongly that litter is a blight on our amazing country and that those who continue to litter in Scotland are highly irresponsible individuals.
Litter affects the way we feel about where we live, work and spend our leisure time. That, in turn, has a huge impact on our health and wellbeing. The numbers involved are truly jaw-dropping, with more than 250 million items of easily visible litter being dropped every year. That is 26,000 tonnes of littered material. High-value littered items, such as plastic bottles and cans, would be worth more than £1.2 million if they were recycled. More than £53 million of public money is spent every year on tackling litter and fly-tipping. That is money that could be better spent on other important services in our society.
Of course, items that are littered or fly-tipped also pose a health hazard to humans and animals alike. We all know about the impact that marine litter can have on marine wildlife.
Recognising all those negative impacts, the Government launched our towards a litter-free Scotland strategy in June 2014. It was our first national litter strategy since devolution and, as was mentioned, it was only about 18 months ago; 18 months is not a long time to properly evaluate the success or otherwise of the strategy, given that the issue is about cultural change in Scotland and, as I said, it is the first ever national litter strategy in Scotland.
As part of the strategy, we ran a national media campaign against littering behaviour across television, radio and social media. As was also mentioned, we increased the fines for littering from £50 to £80 and for fly-tipping from £50 to £200 after the consultation that we held a couple of years ago.
In October 2014, we introduced a charge on single-use carrier bags—a highly visible form of litter. So far, that has resulted in an 80 per cent decrease in the number of bags distributed in the first year of the charge, as Kenneth Gibson mentioned. That is 650 million fewer bags being taken every year by shoppers in Scotland, which is good news in anyone’s book.
We have also committed more than £575,000 towards Keep Scotland Beautiful’s clean up Scotland campaign from 2013 to 2016. If members in the chamber have a view on whether that organisation has delivered the goods for that resource, we should hear it. We are still hearing about problems with litter in Scotland, yet Keep Scotland Beautiful and other organisations are being funded to make sure that a lot of activity is happening. To be fair, a lot is happening and we all know that from activity in our own communities.
From April 2015, we introduced powers for the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority and other public bodies to issue fixed penalty notices.
We are also continuing to explore the role that deposit and return could play in Scotland to reduce littering and improve recycling quality. I certainly agree with many members that we need to find a fresh approach where necessary for some of the topics within the litter strategy. We also need to learn from what other countries are doing successfully that perhaps we are not doing in this country. Deposit and return is not a new idea; it is new to Scotland and indeed the rest of the United Kingdom, but it works well in other countries and the Scottish Government has put in a lot of effort to ascertain whether it would work in Scottish circumstances.
Zero Waste Scotland was commissioned to carry out that work and we are now undertaking further research to look at issues such as the impact of deposit and return on smaller businesses—corner shops, small grocers and so on—because it is likely that they would have to take back the returned cans or bottles and be part of that arrangement if it was to go ahead. We would have to make sure that we understood exactly how that would work in Scottish circumstances.
The system works in other countries and, if we attach a value to cans or bottles, people are less likely to litter them because they can go and get their money back. Indeed, others are incentivised to go and collect them from our streets and our communities because, in turn, they can raise money from doing that. That is certainly the experience in other countries. If we decide to go for deposit and return in this country—that decision is yet to be taken—it could be part of our litter strategy as well.
As members have said, tackling litter is about behavioural change, and that is a core part of our litter strategy. We are working with our partners to provide information, improve infrastructure and make enforcement more of a deterrent. We are encouraging people to take responsibility for their own behaviour. In addition to the national campaign mentioned earlier, Zero Waste Scotland has developed a toolkit of signs that organisations around Scotland can customise and use free of charge.
We have improved the infrastructure throughout our communities by funding the installation of more than 3,300 “recycling on the go” bins since 2011, so more of them are now present in our communities. We are supporting their use with the “Recycle for Scotland” branding.
Work is on-going to update the code of practice on litter and refuse, which covers the various ways in which local authorities in particular can intervene. We are bringing that guidance up to date to ensure that it supports our wider litter strategy.
We know that real change will take time, innovation and commitment from everyone involved. Since 2014, another £0.5 million has been invested in supporting innovative projects by local authorities and community groups, with the aim of moving away from simply cleaning up to a focus on prevention. Those groups are helping to drive the behaviour change that we need. That work has included the Scottish Waterways Trust, which is working to develop a crowd-sourced approach to monitoring litter and raising awareness through schoolchildren.
Other initiatives that are being funded are Greenspace Scotland’s work with three communities to tackle litter and fly-tipping problems through a range of community-led green space and street improvements. A range of actions are under way. As I said, we know that littering behaviour costs Scotland £78 million in direct and indirect costs to our society and economy.
A bottom-up approach is important. Cameron Buchanan’s motion talks about the Leithers don’t litter initiative. I commend Cameron Buchanan for bringing that to our attention, and I commend the people behind that fantastic initiative, which Malcolm Chisholm also spoke about. I personally congratulate Mr and Mrs Farrell, who founded the initiative. From looking at all the actions that they have undertaken and from hearing about them today, it is clearly a fantastically successful idea. I hope that it is an example for other communities across Scotland to follow.
I should mention Pete Miners in my constituency of Moray, who tirelessly patrols the Lossiemouth river banks and collects lots of coastal litter in the area. He gets a lot of press coverage for doing that. It is the kind of activity that we love to see, as it involves local people volunteering. We owe them a huge debt.
Last week, a young man called Joe Pirnie phoned me at my office as he is starting up, with some others, the Forres community clean-up group. Because he feels so strongly about the issue and he wants to clean up the streets of Forres and elsewhere, he has started a campaign in the town. I of course told him that I look forward to working with him in doing that.
All members will be able to give examples from their experience of people at grass-roots level putting their effort where their mouth is and going out and cleaning up streets in their community. We have to do a lot more to encourage and resource that in the years ahead, so that we have a national voluntary effort across every town, village and city in Scotland. I believe that that will take us far along the road to having a much cleaner Scotland, which is something that we all want.
I thank members for their contributions. I will certainly take away the good ideas that I have heard about during the debate.
Meeting closed at 18:37.