SCOTLAND is winning the war on waste, according to environment agency bosses.
More rubbish was recycled than sent to landfill in 2019, new data shows.
Changing consumer habits mean less than one million tonnes of household waste were sent to landfill for the first time.
Statisticians at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) yesterday published official statistics on household waste across every council area.
The average household generated the equivalent of 0.44 tonnes of waste per person last year, according to the findings.
Of this, 0.2 tonnes were recycled, 0.11 tonnes were disposed of through incineration or anaerobic digestion and 0.14 tonnes were sent to landfill.
Overall, Scotland’s household rubbish total went up by 1% during the 12-month period, hitting 2.42m tonnes.
Jo Zwitserlood, head of materials at Sepa, said: “Recycling is a real Scottish success story and is a simple daily step we all can take to build a more sustainable Scotland. Reducing the amount of waste we generate, and keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible through re-use and recycling, will help Scotland tackle the climate emergency. This is reflected in the household waste data published today, that shows the reducing carbon impact of our waste.”
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The volume of plastic recycled rose by 1% to 57,379 tonnes as an 80-year upwards trend continued.
Paper and cardboard remain the largest volume of material recycled at 192,562 tonnes, according to Sepa.
But the move from print media to digital formats has decreased the use of paper amongst the public and a drop in the volume of paper-only collections. That move to online has not had the same impact on cardboard volumes, with more packaging from web purchases now making its way into reprocessing centres.
At 107,000 tonnes, glass remains Scotland’s second most recycled material.
The nation’s overall household waste recycling rate was 44.9%, up just 0.2 percentage points from 2018 but a 5.4 percentage point jump from the 39.5% achieved in 2011.
Zwitserlood went on: “The most successful countries in the 21st century will move from a traditional “take, make and dispose” model to a resource-efficient, circular economy where materials that would have been waste, are now valued as a useful resource.
“It is therefore extremely encouraging to see a continued increase in the amount of household waste recycled, and the amount of waste going to landfill at its lowest since records began.
“With its globally ambitious circular economy strategy and investment in infrastructure that will extract maximum value from materials through remanufacturing and recycling, Scotland is well placed to realise the environmental and economic opportunities for our nation and its people.”
But the LibDems said the results were rubbish, with the party’s environment spokesperson Rebecca Bell commenting: “A 0.2% increase in recycling will be a drop in the ocean of this waste management crisis. We can’t afford to wait for granular progress like that. The pandemic has also introduced a whole new swathe of disposable waste into the system. Single-use face masks are adding to a mountain of waste.
“Recycling is on everyone’s radar, but good decisions are much more difficult to make if the infrastructure isn’t there to back people up.”
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