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We do not monitor individual businesses readiness to comply with the Deposit Return Scheme. However Zero Waste Scotland, Circularity Scotland, the Scottish Government, SEPA, and Zero Waste Scotland have been engaging with businesses and trade associations to help them understand their obligations under the regulations.

The Scottish Government is considering the recommendations from the Gateway Review into the go-live date for Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme. I will provide an update to Parliament shortly.

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 also be critical in determining how the waste and resources sector will contribute towards lower carbon emissions in the period to 2030 and beyond.

We are working with industry, local government and environmental groups to develop a route map to deliver our waste and recycling targets for 2025 and beyond. As part of this work, local variation in recycling performance and its causes are being carefully considered, building on the work to identify key challenges and lessons through Scotland’s 2019 Recycling Summit. There are numerous factors that impact on recycling rates, including housing stock, social demographics, rurality, service design & delivery and communication to residents.

Waste management and collections are the responsibility of local authorities and they are best placed to make decisions regarding the provision of waste and recycling services in their area. As democratically elected bodies it would not be appropriate for Scottish Ministers to get involved in the day to day running of Scottish Councils.

We continue to work closely with local authorities, COSLA and other partners to support waste reduction, increased reuse and recycling and responsible waste management. This includes making our first investments from the £70m Recycling Improvement Fund to support local authorities in improving recycling infrastructure, and developing a route map to help achieve our 2025 targets and beyond. We are also working with local government to review the Household Recycling Charter’s Code of Practice, to help make it easier for householders to recycle the right things and encourage high levels of citizen participation in waste prevention, recycling, and reuse.

The report Making Things Last: A Circular Economy Strategy for Scotland set out that the reuse economy in Scotland has a yearly turnover of at least £244 million, supports over 6,000 jobs, reuses 89,000 tonnes of material annually, and provides opportunities for individuals to obtain high quality products at considerably lower cost than new. This data came from a baseline report( ) which was used to inform support for reuse.

Zero Waste Scotland operate the Revolve certification scheme for second hand stores and internal analysis by them indicates that, based upon totals reported by the Revolve Network, the weight reused has more than doubled between 2017-18 and 2019-20.

This information is not held centrally and no recent specific analysis has been undertaken.

UK wide analysis was carried out in 2012 by WRAP on the reuse potential of furniture and electrics collected at Household Waste Recycling Centres. The data shows just below 50% of furniture was assessed as re-usable and over 40% of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment collected was assessed as suitable for re-use. This number rose to 60% as suitable for reuse following minor repair.

Through our work to bring forward a Circular Economy Bill and develop a route map to achieving our targets to 2025 and beyond, we are investigating how further reuse and repairs could be encouraged and incentivised, including through more responsible production as part of our transition to a fully circular economy in Scotland.

This information is not held centrally.

SEPA’s website contains data on the amount of waste prepared for reuse by each Local Authority.

Scottish Water is working in partnership with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) in the Chemical Investigation Programme (Scotland). Through environmental investigation this project identified chemicals of concern, their sources and concentrations leaving the sewerage system and how they should be addressed in the most sustainable way. The CIP 2 (Scotland) has provided a clear decision making framework for how compliance with the Environment Quality Standards Directive (2008/105/EC) and the subsequent revision (2013/39/EU) is to be addressed. To support this, an extensive monitoring programme of Priority Substances, substances with Environmental Quality Standards set by UK Technical Advisory Group on the Water Framework Directive (UKTAG)/Scottish Government (referred to as UKTAG Substances), substances of interest to SEPA (referred to as Watch List Substances), additional pharmaceuticals and sanitary determinands was conducted at 20 Wastewater Treatment Works (WwTW) within Scotland. At each site, sampling took place at the inlet to the WwTW, the final effluent discharge, and within the receiving watercourse upstream and downstream of the WwTW. The sampling programme took place between 2015 and 2020.

Pharmaceuticals are considered ‘contaminants of emerging concern’ and monitoring and assessing the risk to the water environment for many of these substances is still in the development phase. 23 pharmaceuticals were investigated during CIP2 Scotland. Following analysis with the PNEC (Predicted no effect concentration) the agreed approach with SEPA for 14 pharmaceutical was no further action. The agreed approach with SEPA for the 9 pharmaceuticals that were identified as substances of concern was to carry out a process optimisation study and to control them through source control. The next stage of this research, CIP3 Scotland, aims to carry out further sampling in relation to emerging pharmaceuticals and process optimisation trials at the WwTW in order to understand whether better treatment can be achieved at existing assets.

Scottish Water is also a member of the One Health Breakthrough Partnership ( ) which aims to reduce levels of pharmaceutical substances in the environment.