Meeting of the Parliament 15 December 2016
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests with regard to Zero Waste Scotland and to my being a Chartered Institution of Wastes Management-accredited WasteSmart trainer.
To reflect on the debate, it is positive that there is agreement about the direction of travel on food waste. Gillian Martin did a sterling job; she focused on collections as well as processing and highlighted the good to go doggy-bag campaign. Edward Mountain highlighted a lack of food waste collections in rural areas and the associated costs, and Liam McArthur followed that up by considering potential solutions for Orkney’s island community. Perhaps the commercial feasibility of an anaerobic digestion plant on Orkney would offer one solution, and I urge the cabinet secretary to publish any available information that she has on that.
Mark Ruskell and Elaine Smith spoke about food justice with respect to food waste, and Mark Ruskell followed that up with a substantive point on managing food waste throughout the supply chain. Whole-field purchasing was mentioned by Mark Ruskell and Peter Chapman.
Overall, we support the Government motion. We recognise the ambitious target but feel that reference must be made to innovation and the circular economy—hence our amendment. Over the next four and a half minutes, I will explain why innovation is so important by focusing on food waste prevention for consumers and businesses.
Before that, I note that we require information on how to measure as well as how to incentivise food waste prevention, especially given the perverse incentive at local authority level to recycle waste rather than prevent it. I have sympathy with the Labour amendment and with an assessment of a 100 per cent recycling rate by 2020, although I agree with the cabinet secretary’s point that it probably would have been best to refer to a recovery rate rather than a recycling rate. According to the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management, we would generally not have recycling of food waste in the waste hierarchy, which goes from prevention to recovery and down to disposal. I have a slide on that, too.