Chamber and committees

I will be brief.

This comment might be as much for the minister as it is for Mr Fraser—perhaps more so—-but I just want to highlight on the record the helpful commitment from Mr Fraser and the minister to having a follow-up meeting and to say that it would be useful and good if the committee could see a note of that meeting in due course.

Good morning to you minister and to all your officials. Thank you for being with us.

I begin by saying that I warmly welcome the bill and the ambition to transition to a more circular economy and to improve recycling. The bill is part of the transformation to a circular economy and to improving our country’s waste management.

The bill as introduced includes a number of measures regarding recycling and the placing of responsibility on individuals and households. Although, like me, the stakeholders we have spoken to have welcomed the bill in principle, we have heard many comments that the bill focuses on the lower end of the waste hierarchy, particularly on recycling and household waste. We have also heard some powerful discourse about the omission of the construction sector from the bill, although that accounts for approximately 50 per cent of Scotland’s waste.

How do you respond to those concerns? Does the bill provide an ambitious enough framework to move us up the waste hierarchy by empowering more reuse and repair and creating facilities for that? If we are asking individuals to step up and do more, we must also think about the construction sector. I would be grateful to hear your reflections on that.

Did you want to add anything, Janet McVea?

Janet McVea talked about the code. Do you appreciate the overwhelming evidence that we have heard that, with due consideration to the geographical differences between urban Scotland and rural Scotland in particular, there is a demand and a need for a more consistent approach to household recycling whereby the recyclate product is at least similar, if not the same, from different parts of Scotland? That will mean that we can bring investment to create the facilities that we need to improve our recycling and that we can communicate with the public in a clear and consistent way in order to help to raise awareness and increase public participation in recycling.

Such organisations are going to have to be funded somehow. They will have in their model a return in terms of sales. For example, the Edinburgh Remakery has a sales revenue stream from repairing and reselling laptop computers.

Local authorities and the third sector are going to be absolutely crucial to delivery, if central Government is not going to do it itself. We need to be very clear about how that is to develop and what it will look like, so that we get buy-in from people, and so that they know where to go and want to go there. I think that people want to do the right thing. If they know about a facility, they will go and use it, but we need to create the facilities and we need to raise awareness of where they are and what they do.

Will it be introduced at a later juncture, after the act is implemented?

Thank you, both.

Mr Fraser has rightly raised concerns regarding rural Scotland. In urban Scotland, the biggest fly-tipping that we tend to see is that of old mattresses and sofas. Mr Lumsden pointed out that the charge for collection can sometimes be prohibitive.

Discussions on extended producer responsibility are taking place across the UK and, together, we will keep a close eye on how that develops. If that does not result in an obligation being placed on providers of mattresses, sofas and other commonly fly-tipped items, would the Scottish Government consider using devolved powers to oblige those companies to make sure that there is safe, effective and appropriate disposal of those items?

To go back to my first question on the bill, considering the cost of collection and the challenge for low-income households in particular, will the third sector or local authorities be empowered and financed to help households to dispose appropriately of items that are commonly fly-tipped?

I am sorry to interrupt, minister—I got the feeling that you were coming to the end of your articulation of those important points. If there is no obligation on the construction industry in the primary legislation in the same way that there is on individuals, I would be concerned about an imbalance. As the bill progresses, I would be grateful if you and your officials would commit to considering the evidence that we have heard on the construction industry and what potential there might be for putting more significant obligations on to that industry, given that it produces so much waste in Scotland.

Sorry, Mr Ruskell. My question builds on Mr Ruskell’s constructive points. If section 8 of the bill were to be passed, that would give the Scottish Government powers to make regulations. However, if we see businesses changing their approach and see behavioural change towards the more circular economy that we all want to realise, those regulations may never have to be utilised.

As you said, minister, we have already seen the changes that Amazon, one of the biggest distributors in the country, is undertaking. The goods that it is sending for re-use are being utilised in parts of my constituency. Without discounting the point that my colleagues have made, this is about getting to a position in which no business lets goods go to waste. Ideally, we would not need to use the law to do that, because it should not be happening anyway.