THE Scottish Government is absolutely right to look at introducing legislation which will require businesses and public bodies to provide recycling facilities. Tackling waste is a key component of reducing Scotland's Ecological Footprint – the tota
l amount of earth's resources that we consume.
If everyone in the world consumed the resources that we do here in Scotland, we would need three planets to survive.
While Scotland is making good progress at improving our rate of recycling, we still lag a long way behind many European countries, which are recycling and composting up to 70 per cent of their domestic waste. Here in Scotland we are yet to reach a recycling and composting rate of 30 per cent.
WWF Scotland welcomes the proposals to ensure that businesses and public bodies provide recycling facilities. We believe this can help transform our recycling track record. With widespread public support for recycling, providing improved facilities to enable public participation really is an easy win.
Improving our recycling is, of course, only one part of a bigger strategy that will be required to help realise a zero waste Scotland. If we are to make Scotland a truly zero waste nation, we need to look at the whole picture of where waste is generated in Scottish society.
Much of the focus to date has been on domestic waste, which is only one part of the total waste we generate. Scotland also needs to tackle its commercial and industrial waste, with a similar emphasis on reduction and recycling if we are to drive down the amount of waste dumped in landfill sites or incinerated.
No
ANDY WILLOX,
Scottish policy convener, Federation of Small Businesses THERE is no question that we need to put the waste we produce to better use – and to reduce the amount we generate in the first place. But is there a need to force businesses to recycle? Speaking to small business people, many tell me they are more than keen to dispose of their recyclable waste in a more environmentally friendly manner – but find it unfeasible if not impossible.
On the one hand, the amount of waste they're producing can be too small to be of interest to the commercial recycling companies. But, on the other, not all local authorities offer practical recycling to business customers.
Surely, as a simple first step, it would make more sense to let us use – for an appropriate fee, of course – the municipal facilities which are there already? With all new regulation, the government has to be wary of the law of unintended consequences. Too often, we have seen one-size-fits-all legislation which unfairly discriminates against Scotland's smaller firms.
They can't make the same mistake with these new proposals and it is encouraging that the consultation document makes reference to appropriate exemptions, such as business size. After all, small business is Scottish business – 98 per cent of businesses in Scotland are small, with fewer than 50 employees, and 93 per cent employ fewer than ten. Any business legislation, then, needs to make this fact its starting point and not treat our SMEs as an afterthought.
Businesses can and do recycle when it is practical and where the facilities are there to let them. Is it not therefore better to give us the facilities and let us prove our commitment, before imposing a blanket duty on everyone?
