Chamber and committees

As referenced in the answer to question S6W-01360, we had invested £47M since 2014 to assist with the decarbonisation of public fleet vehicles. We have continued to support public sector fleet decarbonisation and the value of support provided is now over £50 million, enabling innovation and trialling of harder to reach vehicles.

A breakdown of this funding (in response to point a) can be seen in the following table.

Public bodies and local authorities will use a combination of vehicle purchase and lease for fleet operations. Vehicle fleets also go through replacement cycles and periods of rationalisation. It’s not possible to determine how many vehicles funded are still in service.

The review of the role of incineration in the waste hierarchy in Scotland will be led by an independent chair who will determine the detailed scope and process of the review. As such, decisions regarding the process of gathering and selecting evidence that is relevant to the scope of the review will be made by the independent chair.

As set out in our 2021-22 Programme for Government, this year we will make our first investments from the £70m Recycling Improvement Fund. This will support local authorities in improving recycling infrastructure and help with aligning recycling collections to the Code of Practice under the Household Recycling Charter and maximise the quality and quantity of recycling.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-04100 on 15 November 2021. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

We have provided over £33 million of grant funding directly to local authorities since 2014 to enable procurement of zero and ultra-low emission vehicles and associated charging and refuelling infrastructure. The following table provides the detail of funding awarded to each local authority in each year from 2014.

In April 2019, we published the Waste Markets Study which assessed the treatment options for Scottish biodegradable municipal waste. The study is available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/waste-markets-study-full-report/

We have also commissioned work to assess the residual waste treatment capacity needs up to 2025, in light of our commitment to end the practice of landfilling biodegradable municipal waste by 2025. This work is ongoing and we will publish it in due course, independent of timelines for the review of incineration.

The Scottish Government launched a consultation for a refreshed Onshore Wind Policy Statement on 28th October 2021 which sets out our ambition for an additional 8-12 gigawatts of installed capacity by 2030. The policy statement also references the potential for refurbishment and recycling of wind turbines, supporting the recent Zero Waste Scotland report 'The Future of Onshore Wind Decommissioning in Scotland'. The Scottish Government are fully supportive of this work and its alignment with our zero waste policies.

The Scottish Government and Zero Waste Scotland introduced a Carbon Metric for waste from 2011, making Scotland the first country to measure the carbon impact of its waste in this way, and delivering on our commitment set out in Scotland’s Zero Waste Plan. The metric measures the whole-life carbon impacts of Scotland’s waste, and is a vital tool in our work to address the climate emergency.

Greenhouse Gas emissions from managing Scotland’s waste have reduced by more than 30% between 2011-2019. As set out in our update to the Climate Change Plan, our aim is to reduce these emissions further to 1.2 megatonnes by 2025, and 0.8 megatonnes by 2030.

As previously set out, we are working with industry, local government and environmental groups to develop a route map to deliver our waste and recycling targets for 2025. This work will be critical in determining how the waste and resources sector will contribute towards lower carbon emissions in the period to 2030 and beyond, including the approach to evaluating progress against our goal to reduce emissions.

Under Zero Waste Scotland’s Revolve certification scheme the number of stores reporting fluctuates year on year which leads to variations in data collated. Zero Waste Scotland do not receive data from all certified stores in a given year.

The data is self-reported by reuse stores, who can update monitoring processes for their unique circumstances over time.

While Zero Waste Scotland collect data on sales income, it does not hold data on the full "economic impact" of the reuse stores which would also include metrics such as other income, services provided, alongside social and employment impact.

Data collected by Zero Waste Scotland is set out in the following table.

How local authorities manage market driven budgets are a matter for individual local authorities who are autonomous bodies, responsible for managing their own day to day business and answerable to their electorates. In view of this it would not be appropriate for the Scottish government to interfere in that local democratic process. Local authorities must use their resources as efficiently as possible and deliver services effectively to ensure taxpayers get the best possible value.

However, the Scottish Government continue to meet with COSLA and local authorities on a regular basis to cover a range of topics, including current and future budget pressures.