Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Email An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Google An icon of the Google "G" mark. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Logout An icon representing logout. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Tick An icon of a tick mark. Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Quote Mark A opening quote mark. Quote Mark A closing quote mark. Arrow An icon of an arrow. Folder An icon of a paper folder. Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Caret An icon of a caret arrow. Clock An icon of a clock face. Close An icon of the an X shape. Close Icon An icon used to represent where to interact to collapse or dismiss a component Comment An icon of a speech bubble. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Ellipsis An icon of 3 horizontal dots. Envelope An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Home An icon of a house. Instagram An icon of the Instagram logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. Magnifying Glass An icon of a magnifying glass. Search Icon A magnifying glass icon that is used to represent the function of searching. Menu An icon of 3 horizontal lines. Hamburger Menu Icon An icon used to represent a collapsed menu. Next An icon of an arrow pointing to the right. Notice An explanation mark centred inside a circle. Previous An icon of an arrow pointing to the left. Rating An icon of a star. Tag An icon of a tag. Twitter An icon of the Twitter logo. Video Camera An icon of a video camera shape. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo. Information An icon of an information logo. Plus A mathematical 'plus' symbol. Duration An icon indicating Time. Success Tick An icon of a green tick. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Facebook Messenger An icon of the facebook messenger app logo. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Facebook Messenger An icon of the Twitter app logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. WhatsApp Messenger An icon of the Whatsapp messenger app logo. Email An icon of an mail envelope. Copy link A decentered black square over a white square.

JAMES MACKENZIE: A total waste? Scotland’s circular economy bill is weak and unambitious; we deserve better

The Scottish Government has just launched a consultation on a circular economy bill and also on a route map intended to meet 2025 waste and recycling targets. Picture: Shutterstock.
The Scottish Government has just launched a consultation on a circular economy bill and also on a route map intended to meet 2025 waste and recycling targets. Picture: Shutterstock.

When we talk about waste and recycling, packaging comes to mind first.

It’s understandable: it’s not the product you wanted, just how it gets to you.

And it’s so often obviously unnecessary.

The tiny data card arrives in a vast cardboard box, surrounded by bubble wrap. The wee cakes, wrapped individually in plastic, sit in a hard plastic tray, all wrapped in a third layer of plastic, with a cardboard box around it.

Some of this is improving. Without endorsing the big online retailers’ other practices, they now tend to ship in appropriate cardboard-only packaging that can be recycled anywhere.

But the crisp packet and the coleslaw tub will keep being buried. Or they will get burnt (aka “landfill in the sky”).

New incinerators are to be banned, but the existing ones will operate for decades more.

Packaging is just the tip of the landfill iceberg, though. What happens to your toothbrush when it gets a centre parting? What’s that marker pen’s ultimate destiny? When you finally accept CDs are dead, where will they go?

These things cannot be recycled now, no matter how keen you are.

The Scottish Government has launched a consultation on a circular economy bill

So most products are just landfill in waiting. Our economy follows a linear structure, an almost uninterrupted line running from production to landfill.

Companies continue to shirk responsibility for the end-of-life costs of their products and packaging. Those costs instead fall on us, on the environment, and on local government waste and cleansing services.

The linear economy wastes valuable resources, and gives incentives to manufacturers to work out the cheapest way to make their products our problem – while aggravating climate change.

Plastic pollution in ocean. Photo: Shutterstock

With this in mind, the Scottish Government has just launched a consultation on a circular economy bill and also on a route map intended to meet 2025 waste and recycling targets.

The bill of the same name proposed before the last election was one of the weakest and most unambitious pieces of legislation Scotland has ever seen.

It included charges for coffee cups, which had already been agreed with the Green MSPs – but it could have kick-started the kind of reusable drinks cup system starting to be used in Germany.

There were tepid proposals to ban the disposal of unsold clothing, and make businesses report on unsold stock.

The carrier bag charge has been 5p since 2014, and so it went up to 10p, just as other countries were starting to ban plastic bags outright.

And there was one total distraction: tougher fines on those who litter from a vehicle.

Fines do not build circularity

Flipping back to the new proposals, the rhetoric remains excellent.

And the context has become trickier for Scottish Ministers: the 2020 UK Internal Market Act may act as a limit on what can be banned in Scotland alone.

But these proposals are still essentially tinkering, alongside some of the civil service’s trademark substitutes for action.

As with the Good Food Nation Bill, another contender for the Most Feckless Legislative Proposal Ever, ministers would be required to produce a strategy. Why not just produce the strategy anyway?

It has targets, another classic diversion tactic.

They rarely deliver: the only exception that comes to mind is the early devolved administrations’ renewables targets. Mostly targets get missed.

Or, on climate change emissions, they measure the wrong thing. And then get missed anyway.

 

The ban on destruction of unsold goods is back: which is fine, but will not change what those goods are made of, or how they get recovered.

Charges for single use items appear again, alongside waste reporting, and again fines on litterbugs. Fines do not build circularity, and instead blame the public for a problem the producers cause.

At best a tiny amount of waste might shift from litter to landfill.

What’s proposed isn’t even a baby step towards a circular model

So, starting from scratch, what should be done?

Ministers need to look at what products can be sold in the first place, what materials they use, and how they’re packaged. If they continue to let “anti-circular” products pour onto the market, everything else is inevitably window-dressing.

Scotland already has surprisingly wide-ranging powers here.

The bans on plastic-stemmed cotton buds and microbeads in cosmetics used a piece of legislation from 1990 which gives the power to “to prohibit or restrict” the use of “injurious substances or articles”.

We now know much more about what is environmentally “injurious”, so those powers could and should be used far more widely.

Anything which cannot be reused or recycled should be banned or phased out, except essential items with no current alternative. Even there ministers could give incentives for alternatives and help drive innovation.

Rubbish and discarded clothes. Photo: Shutterstock

Producers should then be required to accept their products and packaging back, and show it’s all being reused or recycled. This needn’t happen overnight: businesses will need time to adjust and prepare.

The UK Internal Market Act complicated things, but Scottish ministers can always set out what they intend to do, and if it creeps beyond the devolved powers, they can always ask Westminster for permission.

What’s proposed isn’t even a baby step towards a circular model. It’s a flurry of distractions and the odd half-hearted attempt to pick up some of the pieces of detritus from the linear economy.

Ministers won’t get another shot at circularity for a decade or more. So make the case. Set out what you really want to achieve. Be ambitious.


James Mackenzie is a freelance media and public affairs consultant and former head of communications for the Scottish Greens.

Conversation