| North East Scotland MSP, Shiona Baird, Green speaker on Enterprise, said, “With growing levels of waste, the poor increase in recycling in recent years is not making any impact on Scotland's waste mountain.
“The Executive's own target of recycling 25% of municipal waste by 2006 is looking increasingly meaningless.
“Zero waste has the potential to benefit all in society. A zero waste approach would boost Scotland's self-sufficiency, economic security and will deliver more Green jobs.”
Zero waste is essentially about using materials and products to their greatest potential in order to eliminate waste.
At the heart of zero waste is a shift away from production-consumption-disposal to a system ensuring all resources are used and re-used until they cannot be utilised any more.
New Zealand, Canada and Australia are all implementing zero waste policies. Canberra aims to have a waste free society by 2010 — since 1994, waste recovery has increased from 22% to 69%.
Ms Baird said, “Last month, Audit Scotland released recycling figures revealing more waste than ever is going to landfill — a waste of resources and posing unacceptable risks to public health and the environment.
The survey showed Scottish councils are making “slow progress” towards reducing the amount of rubbish that goes to landfill sites and increasing the amount they recycle.
Dundee City Council recorded the best performance of the 32 councils. The council dealt with 102,000 tonnes of waste in 2002/2003 and had to landfill just 36.9% of that amount.
That record far outstripped the efforts of every other mainland authority except Angus, which managed to limit its landfill disposal to 48.7% of the 74,000 tonnes it handled.
Ms Baird added, “This issue affects every aspect of Scottish society — it is about cleaning up towns and cities blighted by litter, reducing the number of incinerators emitting toxins, creating jobs and ensuring Scotland thrives.” |
