Meeting of the Parliament 26 June 2024
The Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill is an important one for the Scottish Greens, because of its significance in changing the shape of the economy in Scotland from a linear economy to a circular one. It is no longer acceptable to casually extract materials to make items that will be used only once or just a few times and then throw them away. The burden of minimising waste, and handling it when it is unavoidable, needs to be firmly placed on the businesses that create it and profit from it.
The Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill is a significant step forward on that journey. I am grateful to the minister for picking up the bill at very short notice at stage 2 and successfully bringing it to stage 3 today. I also thank all the officials who have worked on the bill with me, with the minister and with members across the chamber. A better team of officials you will not find. Working with them was a privilege and a joy. I thank members of this Parliament, including everyone who sat up late last night and those members who took the care and time to suggest amendments to the bill and to collaborate to make it the best circular economy bill that it could be.
The powers that are conveyed by the bill sit in the gap between the powers that Scotland already has but is not necessarily using and the powers that Scotland does not and cannot have because they are reserved to Westminster. Many matters that are critical for creating a circular economy are not devolved to the Scottish Parliament, including matters around consumer goods, labelling, international trade and the design of products. Extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea is a significant contributor to Scotland’s material consumption, but that is not a matter that the Scottish Parliament has power over, so we are dependent on Westminster Governments following our lead and matching the level of ambition that Scotland has shown this week. I challenge the incoming Westminster Government to do that.
The Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill is a framework bill. It empowers the Scottish Government to bring forward measures such as charges on single-use items. It builds on powers that Scotland already has, such as the power to require businesses to take back products that they sell or produce.
The measure of the bill’s success will lie not simply in our passing it but in our taking up the powers that it conveys and putting in place practical actions, such as a charge on single-use cups to motivate consumers to carry their own reusable cup, which is modelled on the successful charge on plastic bags that has led all of us to get used to carrying our own bags to the shop.
The Scottish Government needs to move forward with requiring particularly large businesses to report on food waste and surplus, and to get on with delivering a ban on the landfilling and incineration of unsold durable goods. It is urgent that we move directly to the delivery of those measures and the other measures that are proposed in the waste route map.
When people ask, “What can we do to protect the environment?”, the answer lies here. The answers when it comes to getting plastic out of our oceans, reducing emissions and preventing pollution are here. We need to prevent the waste from being created in the first place, to reduce the use of unnecessary plastics and to design products and businesses for zero waste. I challenge the Scottish Government and members across the chamber not only to pass the bill today but to work together to urgently deliver on the promise that is being made by it.
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