Scotland’s Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead has launched a consultation on creating a more circular economy in Scotland. The consultation, which will run until the 30th October 2015, is the first step in preparing a circular economy strategy for Scotland - targeting significant potential benefits for the economy, through using resources more efficiently, creating new markets and improving resilience; for the environment, through cutting waste and carbon emissions; and for communities, with lower cost ways to access the goods we need.

The Scottish Government has developed its circular economy consultation by working with partners including SEPA, Zero Waste Scotland and Scottish Enterprise, to be at the forefront of action in managing the country’s resources more effectively.

The consultation will explore the priorities for building a more circular economy – where products and materials are kept in high value use for as long as possible. It builds on Scotland’s progress in the zero waste and resource efficiency agendas, with a new focus on a much broader set of business and industry opportunities through reduced reliance on virgin materials.

This consultation explores the priorities for building a more circular economy – where products and materials are kept in high value use for as long as possible.  It builds on Scotland’s progress in the zero waste and resource efficiency agendas, with a new focus on a much broader set of business and industry opportunities.

This matters because of the significant potential benefits:

 

The consultation sets out the Scottish Government's ambition and seeks views on potential actions in the key areas of design, reuse, repair, remanufacture, recycling, and recovering value from biological resources.  It also puts forward proposals to support change in these areas through communications, skills and measuring progress.

The proposals have been informed by a period of debate in Scotland in the first half of 2015.  Together with the partner agencies, they have published a number of reports for discussion, organised workshops and events with groups as diverse as biotechnology industry bodies and Young Scot, and most recently their social media campaign #makethingslast.  The Scottish Government also intend for their proposals to contribute to the EU’s consideration of its own circular economy plans.

Scottish Government want businesses, councils and households to work together to make recycling routine, more consistent, for every household to have access to a food waste service and to improve the quality of recyclate. The proposals include:

Scottish Government want Scotland to be an international leader in the efficient use of biological resources. They are proposing a number of actions to maximise the value from biological resources which would otherwise end up in lower value uses or as waste. These include: