 Welcome to the 14th meeting of this year, the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee. I remind everyone to switch off your electronic equipment that could interfere with the sound system and also the people in the audience too. I welcome everybody and have apologies first of all from Jim Hume. We will also welcome Alison McInnes as the substitute and ask her if she has any things to declare. Ersgwys yna yn ymwneud â chyfodol i'r cyffredineth ziwethaf ac yn fwy mwy o'r cyffredineth. Yr ystod y fwy yw, ond os anghyddiant i fynd i gael euchafod yr hun ym buzzfa ac yn gyfynod i gyfynod iawn i'r cyffredineth a'r cyffredineth sydd ar ei ddiwedd. A Mwneud hynny, wrth gwrs, o'n gwneud i'r asthion, ac mae'r dweud â'r ddweud i'r ddeud i'r ddafnog. Felly, mae'n amser i'r cair. Carr-a-Helton MSP, yr Ardyn Cremlun. Rhaid. Rhywodd ddastyn Benton hyn oherwydd Gwm Gwreinliad. Gŵr bod mwynhau mwyndtiadau gyda Llywodraeth Sgolwyr. Clodiw Bémish, Saskotland MSP a Llywodraeth Sgolwyr for Environment and Climate Change. Gordon MacInnes, Schools Development Scotland. Ewan Menn, Scottish Enterprise. Dave Domson MSP. Alex Ferguson MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries Ian Gullin from Zero Ways Scotland Alison McInnes MSP for North East Scotland Marnon Wakefield from Dryden Aqua Angus MacDonald MSP for Falkirk East I'm Lucy Chamberlain from the Great Recovery Project at the RSA I'm Graham Day on the MSP for Angus South and I'm Rob Gibson, the convener and the MSP for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross. We're quite interested in kicking off on a kind of general note. Just catch my attention. The sound system is automatic. They'll find you. You don't need to press any buttons. Thinking about the paper that we've had from the Green Alliance, we're interested in identifying some themes of a thematic approach to how Scotland can approach the circular economy and how it should be structured and governed so as to meet the challenges that we face. If I can put it in those terms, for those who want to read the Green Alliance's academic words at the top of page 5, it says that the analysis was intended to identify sexual opportunities but was focused more on identifying the thematic governance-focused challenges that Scotland faces in promoting the circular economy across all sectors. We're quite keen on clear and simple English. The problem about the issue is that it's a bit academic in those terms and we want to make it as practical as possible for people. That's one of the reasons why we're picked as MSPs from very varying backgrounds to try and bring that practicality to bear on the subject. What themes should we be focusing on? How should the circular economy be governed? What can be done at the Scotland level? Anyone want to kick off? Just put your hand up. Yes, Dustin. For that challenge, and I will endeavour to be not to academic apologies, it comes from my background and you say you work for a think-take and you expect all this serious wonkery. I guess that what we try to do is to look at what is Scotland as a country, what are its strengths, where are its opportunities and how might that apply to the circular economy. I guess there were three things that we noticed that seemed particularly relevant. One was obviously the scale of Scotland, a relatively small country, and that has benefits and drawbacks. We also looked at Scotland's institutions and looked at how those might differ from other countries that are trying to take forward the circular economy. I temporarily forgot the third thing we looked at, but it will come back to me. Politics and policy, and that we think makes a big difference. Just touching on those three very briefly, looking at other countries in the UK, for example, England, about the policy and politics and thinking about energy policy, where Scotland has been very successful, one of the things that we saw that was really important was a clear direction given by the Scottish Government, in this case in favour of renewables and other low-carbon technologies like CCS. That clear direction enabled investment to happen and gave a sense of possibility rather than perverocation. On the institutions, we noted that Scotland has maintained a robust range of institutions that could help to take technologies out of the lab through the commercialisation process and into the market. Those institutions, having that institutional framework, is really important. When we spoke to a swede investors here in Edinburgh about a month and a half ago, they said to us how important human contact, knowing people, getting interaction with people was, and we think that Scotland's institutions might be able to foster that very effectively. Finally, on scale, and I think that this is really important, Scotland is a relatively small economy in the context of China, India, the United States, et cetera. It doesn't have a lot of material to process in big factories, so that limits the very large-scale reprocessing opportunities. We're unlikely to see a big aluminium spelter in Scotland, for example. However, there are real opportunities in the social connectedness that flows from small-scale. People know each other, you can talk to people, you can get a substantial section of the Scottish business community together and talk as people rather than in big plenary sessions. That human-to-human contact will make a big difference in a circular economy that requires lots of interaction, lots of connection and lots of discussion across supply chains. James Carron. I think that you're right to look at it in those kind of two dimensions at least, maybe more, on the Scottish Circular Economy programme, which is jointly run by Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands, Enterprise, SEPA and Zero Way Scotland. He's actually looking at it in two dimensions, which is evidence-gathering and engagement, and on the evidence-gathering, again, it's looking at a sector approach and a thematic approach. Under the sector-specific studies, it's pursuing investigations on sectors such as oil and gas, renewable energy, aerospace, defence, food and drink, and the opportunities and the mechanisms in there for creating and developing the circular economy. Under the thematic approach, it's more widely applicable approaches like critical materials to the Scottish economy, fiscal measures, eco-design, types of business models, you might look at, extending and amplifying producer responsibility and wider regulatory activity, which is croaking today. Particularly at an interest of SEPA, obviously, and links to the definitions of waste. That engagement, thank you very much, is about identifying those opportunities, as our colleague said. Our initial analysis would certainly lead us to think that, in order to stimulate the circular economy, it probably needs intervention, which is either fiscal in terms of subsidies and other mechanisms for promoting the circular economy, or regulation or standard setting. I think that there's a lot of work following exactly the kind of lines that you indicated. Anyone else want to come in on that at the moment? You and Merns perhaps from Helen MacArthur? If I can support what James has just been saying, we have been taking a Team Scotland approach and I'm not necessarily convinced that we need any new institutions to govern how we deliver on the circular economy. I think that most of the main delivery organisations who are involved in this exercise, so as Dustin has highlighted, Scotland has that small scale. We can make these connections, we can deliver quickly and be agile. The key issue going forward is just to clarify what the particular roles of development organisations are. We have a strong policy lead from the Scottish Government, SEPA lead on regulation, we have the enterprise agencies, we have skills development in Scotland, education in Scotland. Between the partners, we've got the right kind of institutions that are already involved. I realise that you're from Scottish Enterprise when I read my notes. I meant that perhaps Colin Webster might want to come in just at the moment as a commentary on this general level. Thank you very much. To build on the last two points that we've had, one thing that France has learned from trying to instigate circular economy through Parliament is that the first thing that you need to start with is an informed and collaborative process rather than a legislative first approach, which is the route that it went down. As a result, it drew some criticism from some of the corporate partners because there wasn't enough of that business collaboration that it sounds like through Ewan and through James is certainly going on in Scotland, and I know from conversations I've had seems to be the case. Another thing that they found was in France that you have to be careful not to make the circular economy a subset of simply environmental policy or waste policy, that it needs to be a systemic overview of how the economy could work. Again, from the sounds of things from James and Ewan, that seems to be the direction that Scotland is taking that into. Graham Day wants to come in. Thank you, convener. Good morning. I don't want to expand on this scale issue. Two examples that I would put forward, perhaps we could discuss. As I understand it, the plastic bottles, coke, phantom bottles, whatever that we generate in Scotland tend to go to and go into a plant there to be recycled to provide the recycled material for the next generation of plastic bottles. In my constituency, I have an SSE regional centre where they recycle much of the kit that they gather, but that is stuck on the back of a lorry that is taken to Aberdein and shipped across to mainland Europe. I want to explore that. Are we doing that because we do not have the infrastructure and we could realistically have it in Scotland or is it the case that we could not proceed on this in a Scotland level? We might have to look at it at a broader UK level or perhaps a European level. In practical terms, what can we do in Scotland here? Specifically on plastics, there are opportunities for us in Scotland for a number of the materials that we are collecting out of the household waste stream and the commercial waste stream. Obviously, with the introduction of new regulations on the 1 January of this year, there will be more materials coming out of the waste stream. The majority of three quarters of the household waste that we recycle gets exported out of Scotland. Obviously, in terms of the lost benefit to our economy, in terms of reprocessing and remanufacturing of that material, it is lost to some extent. There are opportunities, but our evidence and our work show that because Scotland, and it has been highlighted already in terms of Scotland, is a small country in terms of the amount of resources that we have. It is still quite fragmented how those materials are collected with the respect of 32 local authorities and a number of other businesses. We really need to harness that together and work collaboratively with that supply chain. We would like to know that work is under way, both a joint task force with the Scottish Government and COSLA looking at how the wider public sector can look at the resources that it has and pull them together in a simple language to make those things happen. That is one of the challenges. We are looking at a brokerage model where local authorities might pull their resources together to not only get a better economic price for their materials in terms of scalability in economies of scale, but more practically use that as feedstock for those opportunities. That is one of the challenges that we have in Scotland. If you are trying to land a plastics reprocessing facility in the south-east of England, you can go to 100 authorities and get 10, 20 per cent of them to sign up. To get that kind of volume in Scotland, you need all 32 authorities to sign up to some supply chain. Those are challenges. We are working with local authority colleagues in the wider public sector, because it involves everybody to try to make those opportunities land in Scotland. That is one of the challenges that we have. It is about investment. We work closely with Scottish Enterprise, so it is not just about the supplies. How can we make the funding or the support available to those types of facilities here in Scotland? If we have all 32 local authorities pulling in the same direction, what is deliverable in Scotland in terms of infrastructure? What could we realistically expect? I could rail off a list of X number of plastics reprocessing facilities and stuff like that, but getting the materials is one thing, but it is making sure that we have the right economic conditions for those businesses here in Scotland. Obviously, the offtake of that material in the plastic bottle is a good example where we have the lights of milk producers in Scotland and Coca-Cola have a factory in Scotland. There are people who are looking for this material in Scotland, so they could provide a closed-loop circular economy for those specific materials. There are huge opportunities for plastics and other materials from the household. There are enormous opportunities for commercial waste and industrial waste, in terms of reprocessing and remanufacturing and looking at our supply chains. It might mean that it is not all circular in Scotland that we add value to it here and then export it at a higher value out of Scotland or bring it back in and add value to it before it goes back into supply chains. So there is a pragmatic view of this, but certainly we could add more opportunities in Scotland. The answer to the question was, if all the local authorities worked together, those opportunities would be more easily realised. Is it on the question of scale, Claudia Beamish, and then Nigel Dawn? I was interested in relation to scale, seeing the Green Alliance evidence about the bio-economy sector and the importance of cross-sector opportunities in Scotland. I wonder whether the Green Alliance or any other of the panel today could comment on how that could be facilitated here in Scotland. Yes, Dustin Bennett. Thank you. Part of the reason why we put in the bio-economy example with which takes in byproducts from the whisky industry and shows how, if you could extract some valuable materials from those byproducts and send them towards both the pharmaceuticals and the salmon farming industry, you would capture a lot more value than we presently capture through either anaerobic digestion or feeding these byproducts, some of them to cattle and sheep, I think. Forgive me for not having all of the detail on that. I guess, just coming back very quickly to the scale question, one thing that Scotland can do is to separate materials more intensively. We know that one of the things that Biffer polymers has done in the north west, I believe, has switched from many different types of plastic to feed into its, I think, 20,000 tonnes per year factory, it's switched to a single polymer type and therefore has made that smaller scale economically feasible. Those are opportunities that could work in Scotland. We know also that very intensive source separation of plastic bottles in Switzerland was key to them having a pure enough plastic stream to be able to send to a reprocessor actually in England. This was boots back about a decade ago, it was developing plastic bottle recycling and had to get a very pure stream so that all the way to Switzerland couldn't source this stuff in the UK. So those are the sorts of opportunities which Scotland might be able to take up. On the cross sector stuff, the idea is that sometimes your material may not be terribly valuable to you. So if you're a waste company and you're collecting plastic bottles, the best thing that you might be able to do them is to sell to China and you might achieve around 300 pounds per ton if you're very good at separating those out. But if you can sell those into a plastics reprocessor different sector they can raise the value of that up to about a thousand pounds per ton which is what we see in closed loop London for example or eco plastics both in England. The making that happen is really a question I think for RDAs and technology development bodies. It's about trying to make links. Regional Development Agency, so the likes of Scottish Enterprise or Highlands and Islands Enterprise, forgive me. It's about making those connections creating enough space to be able to have people interact and say well I've got this problem in my business, I'd really like to be able to get this material but I don't know where to get it and then somebody from across the room says actually I've got this material or I know somebody who does and then you do a deal, that's the way we think these sorts of opportunities might be found. Thank you. Just Nigel John, before we bring in James Curran and Ian Mingus roughly on this area and then Colin Webster and then Alec Ferguson, the looks of it. So Nigel Don. Yeah, thank you convener and I will stay with the subject of materials and what is closer to recycling than remanufacturing. I'm hoping we'll get to remanufacturing eventually but I'd like to come back to Ian Gellan's point about local authorities because they are our primary recyclers as the public see them and simply say and let's assume we could get all 32 authorities signed up one way or another on what kind of timescale can you actually get local authorities to change what they do. Presumably there are some fairly long-term contracts out there, there are some other constraints on what the public bodies can do. Can you give me any clues at all about timetable on which you could actually do something even with the best word in the world? Yeah absolutely, I mean so the work that we're on the way is is analysing I guess the existing contracts local authorities have for for the offtake of resources I guess. I'm trying to imagine that timeframe. Certainly some have short-term contracts, some are tied into longer term deals so it would be over a period of time. I mean in many ways this is them, they would still collect the materials, this is what they do sort of at their boundary in terms of the materials. So we're probably looking at depending when such a brokerage is kicked off more formally probably between three and five years you would start to see a significant move in terms of the amount of material that is available but that does depend on the individual authorities becoming part of it and yeah starting to release come out of other contracts they've got and start to move into this but we're still in the sort of development of that brokerage model in terms of what it would look like, what the sort of governance of that model would be and how it would integrate with the market and there's obviously issues around procurement in terms of public procurement and how local authorities can interface with such a model going forward so there's some interest in that but it is very well received by local authorities in terms of the direction of travel they're very interested in that some have already agreed in principle that this would be something they would like to go. It also depends I guess critically and we'll get into a bit of detail here as you know the first five authorities that came to the brokerage were the biggest authorities with the most materials then that would accelerate that in terms of deliverables you know. People who want to come in just now so Ian Mingus and then James Curran first. Well in terms of education Scotland's perspective it's really about how to be prepared the future generation for the changes that are going to be taking place in the Scottish economy so our involvement began in 2011 when we were contacted by the El MacArthur Foundation in University of Edinburgh and we're really struck by their motto if you like to inspire a generation to rethink, redesign and build a positive future and for us that really chimes very well with the premise of crickling for excellence in terms of giving young people in Scotland the skills for learning life and work making sure that they're prepared thoroughly for a very changing world in the 21st century. As part of the curriculum we're really developing higher order thinking skills in our young people and we're really like to the real focus in terms of the circular economy on systems thinking approach we'll develop which would develop those higher order thinking skills and obviously one of the big context for learning within the curriculum is a bit interdisciplinary learning joining up to different disciplines so we saw this has been a really rich context for learning that could bring together science teachers, teachers from technologies background, from expressive arts, maths, business studies, economics and so on. There's real opportunities there to get strong interdisciplinary learning working in schools and also one of the big things we want to achieve, one of the core skills for our young people in the changing world is for them to be scientifically, technologically, literate citizens you know to really have a real understanding of these issues in order to make informed decisions and then collectively you know in terms of our work and our focus for education in Scotland we're aware that the Scottish Government have identified science, technology, engineering, maths or STEM subjects has been a national priority for us and also learning for sustainability which is a manifesto commitment. So we really saw the circular economy really pulling all of these together in a really exciting innovative way so over the last three years we've been working in close partnership with Elm MacArthur Foundation, we've been very much part of that Team Scotland approach, we're committed to the college rounded table here which we've valued greatly and for us it's really that focus on skills, how do we build these skills in our young people just now? All the way from three years old upwards not just secondary skill, from three years old upwards to make sure that young people are got that creativity, imagination to really develop these innovative solutions for the future to really drive Scotland forward and to better their own lives as well. So you know I really saw an opportunity and I think we've made a really good start over the last couple of years and just this week on Friday actually we're bringing together a group of educators from around Scotland to think about the next steps and what our strategy might be for education in terms of taking this agenda forward. I think we'll try and come back to skills and you know the theme that you've drawn there just in a wee while because we're dealing with materials and scale as well at the moment the practicalities of that just now and there was a number of people I think who wanted to come in on that one, first of all was James Curran and then Colin Webster. Thank you, I wanted to make a fairly general point I suppose to open with thinking back to what the circular economy really is at its heart, it's about biomaterials passing back into the biosphere through composting or other digestions and technical materials being reused within the manufacturing economy but fundamental to both of those a true circular economy must be based on renewable energy as well to drive it which makes me think that Scotland is in a really ideal position to grasp the circular economy and the depth and extent of the circular economy probably better than any other country at the moment so we're not going to do everything I think as Ian rightly pointed out but there are some very good examples I think already developing for example as a company in Dumfries that sources agricultural plastic and the food and drink and agricultural industries in Scotland are pretty successful. It sources agricultural plastic and turns that back into a building material, a plastic based building material very successfully but it's importing agricultural plastic from a lot of it I knew some years ago at least coming in from Ireland. There's also the turning of the old agricultural waste of tallow into a biofuel as well which is going on in Central Scotland so there's some very good examples of targeted interaction cross sector building on some of the strengths that we already have in Scotland and using renewable energy to fuel those or largely renewable energy in Scotland these days and I think as I said earlier there is an opportunity for clever smart regulation to stimulate those kind of activities or smart standard setting and I think there's a great opportunity to do clever thinking about promoting the circular economy but also promoting existing Scottish businesses at the moment and I believe that opportunity lies in section 82 of the Climate Change Act which allows Scottish ministers to determine the recycled content of products used or manufactured in Scotland and to do that smartly and cleverly that will build Scottish industries, build on some of our strengths and put us in a position that those industries can then go on and become internationally competitive that would be a very good way of using the tools that are already available to us. Colin Webster I'm building on what James has said and going back to the point about scale and materials I think it's important to note that the circular economy isn't simply about dealing with materials at end of life and there's been a lot of discussion about what you might do with recycling facilities and so on. The real savings that we see that can be made are at the start of life at the designers stage so working at how we can design products which don't go anywhere near recycling facility would be economically the wisest move for us to make so how do you do that I guess is the big question it's about setting up system conditions. Ian Menzies talked about some of the good work that we're doing in education and I think that's a really vital part of that so that the designers and the business leaders of tomorrow can actually see that there are benefits of taking this closed loop approach but it's also about I would imagine subsidising those activities that we do want to stimulate rather than subsidising activities that don't fit within a circular economy and the great example of that is subsidies for fossil fuels for example but procurement policies too which James was hinting at by talking about recycled content I guess procurement policies can be there in order to stimulate circular design of products and I think if Scotland's going to scale things up it's about those inner loops that we talk about so rather than recycling it's about remanufacturing it's about repair it's about reuse it's how we can keep things in those loops that's where the real economic benefit is derived from that that's very helpful I wonder if phallic Ferguson's questions are on materials and scale absolutely yeah scale and end date materials as well actually thank you it's actually it's just now because there's other people we want to bring in my question fits in really well to this discussion and it really goes back to something that Dustin Benton was saying which is is that if I if I picked you upright sort of the easy thing to do is collect all your passive bots and send it to China job done but it's probably environmentally rather irresponsible way to go about it and then you went on to say that if you become a little bit more specialist in your approach and therefore you sort of downscale the the size of the scale of the operation you will increase the value and probably achieve a better outcome and is certainly more environmentally responsible in terms of journey time carbon footprint etc and what I the question I really want to put is does does this not all point towards a future where small is beautiful in terms of a certain economy rather what James Curran said about the excellent Solway recycling company in Dumfries which has he's right to say specializes entirely in agricultural plastics turns out a superb building material and I'm aware I'm talking here about recycling rather rather more than perhaps the circuit economy but I've still haven't worked out in my mind where the difference comes actually but I just wonder if we're not looking more at small scale here being efficient and therefore something that fits into Scotland extremely well rather than sort of massive large scale as Graham Day was mentioning with a you know have you got enough plastic to keep a plant going in the whole wing and I just wondered if anybody had any comment to make on that. Right can we see if we can get Dave's point if it's somewhere in the same area and then get some responses to them both. Thanks convener just a couple of points first of all I think there's obviously going to be a problem in terms of our reuse and recycling and so on you know which we've been pushing for some time in the circular economy in the sense that they're going to have to run in parallel but one can militate against the other because for example if you are say say you have an incinerator or better still a pyrolysis plant for instance and you need to keep it going you need a lot of plastics to keep that sort of thing going so if you've got one of these in your area and you're burning up all the plastic that means the plastic is not available for further recycling so that's just a I can a general point about how where are the conflicts going to arise between reuse recycling and the circular economy because at some point they're going to impact quite a major way with each other and the other one is the scale issue and particularly related to the highlands and islands for a number of years I was director of protective services for Highland Council and one of my responsibilities was waste management and cleansing and and so on and lots of issues for us in the highlands because we've got huge distances to travel and we had to close our landfill site in Inverness after a number of years a landfill site that gave us a surplus a half a million a year and then we had to start shipping the waste in lorries either across to Peterhead or down to Perth now there's a big environmental impact in doing that in terms of the transport itself and a cost and I'm not sure what the current cost would be that when I left the council back in 2001 I think we were paying five million a year you know to dispose of our waste whereas before we were actually making half a million now there's a question about that five million quid could have maybe been used this is annually much much better to develop you know recycling and other things locally in the highlands so what I'm saying or what I'm asking I suppose is that you need to look differently in the highlands and islands to how you deal with some of these things because there's no point in taking a plastic bottle from wick you know right to the other end of the country you're far better doing something with it in the north and that might be through a paralysis plant or something else although I know that these things are very very controversial but we've got to look at that kind of negative environmental impact you know that can arise from trying to do these things so just these two points I wanted through into the mix we have a number of people who wanted to come in and I've obviously tried to include as many as possible but Marilyn Wakefield and then Ian Gullallan. Well we're a deal with glass and glass recycling insofar as that we produce and have developed through R&D a product called active filtration media it's used as a direct replacement in filters instead of sand it works better than sand and we've developed the market for this and last year we built a four and a half million factory in order to produce this because we have a worldwide market for it it's self-cleaning and it will last a life of the filter now for this plant at the moment I mean last year we did 2000 tons of glass you reuse recycled glass and this year already up into April we've used 3000 tons and we're still in the beginnings of the stage and still reprocessing things because the plant is new and it's never been done before and we're still developing as we go along now already we have a market for it which we are developing in the States so we're looking now at building another plant now it very much depends on where we build this plant as to getting our raw materials because already we are finding problems in getting the raw materials and we need to get glass which is processed to a certain state so we need to because there's a lot of purities in the paper and the plastics and everything that comes with recycled glass so we need to get it semi processed and our next plant might be able to take the bottles with everything but at the moment we have huge troubles getting paper out so what's paramount to us is that when we get or when you get recycled product and I'm sure it's in the same in every industry whether it's plastics or cardboard is that you want the actual glass you don't want all the other bits that come with it so it's really important that we don't mix our glass because it's we we need green glass and green glasses is the glass which is the least wanted and used and it's the green or the brown not the clear glass that we want because it when you break it down a white glass a clear glass has got flint in it and it breaks differently and it's very important the size and the particle shape it is negatively charged so it actually sterilises at the same time so it doesn't get clogged like sand sand after a number of times of using it coagulates and becomes channels and it doesn't work effectively and then you have to recycle that whereas the actual the AFM will last in life with the filter and even in our next factor we could even when the filter is finished take the sand out and and reactivate it again but it's crucial that we can get supplies already we're finding it difficult getting supplies the supply chain is is quite tied up in so far as it's some contracts with the likes of veridor they have for 10 years they have for 20 years they have for 25 years and it's difficult getting in there and comparatively we're we're small with regards to the remelt industries and they take huge amounts of the glass so there they are they are first customers and we the veridor are building there are only six colour sorts in the UK veridor is doing another one through in Glasgow we've approached veridor and already they're telling us that everything that they make there is emart for england now we import our glass from england if we can't get the proper glass for a new factory we can't build it in scotland we have to go elsewhere we have to find a source of glass but scotland has enough glass for us if we can get it we need about um you know we can do for the present factor we have it now we'll do 40 000 tons a year for the new one we want to build it'll be 120 000 tons and if we can't get it in scotland then that plant will have to go to germany or wherever we can get the wrong materials the practical thoughts about this are precisely the kind of things that we want to dig into um ian gillan just now before we bring in others there's one to the the scale thing and the small scale versus large scale i guess uh i mean the symbol answer is uh yes we can you know it doesn't have to be big you know the the sort of reprocessing that we're talking about uh it doesn't have to be big obviously you know there is an attraction to scale for for the people who are investing on that but i think technology when a number of fronts is changing and becoming much more mobile and adaptable at smaller levels i mean you look at something like anaerobic digestion perhaps uh you know we've invested heavily in that in scotland and that's very good but a lot of the plants the early the early plants for anaerobic digestion have been on quite a significant scale but that technology is advancing over time and you're looking at smaller scale applications for anaerobic digestion new technologies coming on the market some some being developed here in scotland some some abroad and you know they might have applications certainly in the future in rural parts of scotland particularly so that's constantly happening so i think you know we are seeing much more opportunities at sort of smaller scale local level i think it's also one of the challenges yeah are we trying to look after our own materials clearly that's where we're trying to add value to our own supply chain so we're not exporting materials but there is also an opportunity to to bring in materials or products from from out with scotland and you know instead of exporting importing that material to add value to i mean hulord parker of hp run a reuse and remanufacturing of of computers and everything hardware in a factory in greenock i think it's greenock i believe but that's for a whole of north europe they're bringing stuff in from all of those places so that's that's a success story so that's not just looking at hardware from scotland that's looking at beyond it so i think these opportunities exist but it's it's you know both small scale and large scale i think the rural part is very interesting and i think it is about trying to look creatively and i think Ian menzys talked about that as well going forward in terms of entrepreneurship and people thinking more creatively than that i mean i know from previous experience that in shetland they had a particular focus on glass instead of shipping glass all the way to the central belt they developed decorative slabbing and stuff like that and created a small business on shetland which actually started exporting these decorative slabs so and that's a snack i know it's a small example but that's where particular focus is on specific materials and i think that's something that you know i know from from previous work that i've been involved in is it's very obvious to the rural economies and certainly our programme is keen to help those types of things so it's not all about let's you know get everything into the central belt or let's get something to the bigger markets overseas is trying to get that kind of mixed economy and i think technology is helping now we are seeing much more dynamic solutions around local you know local delivery but yeah it's a different mindset i guess in terms of the more traditional put it in a big container truck and ship it to somewhere else it is looking trying to somebody else talked about separating the materials out more creatively and trying to understand we could do something with one type of plastic not all plastics in the rural parts of scotland so how do we actually separate that out sticking with materials and scale and before allison leads on skills and that sort of thing for the benefit of those things i think to come in on that lucy chamberlin on this point yeah i just wanted to echo something that walter style said to the committee last october about scale which was the importance of embracing both the global as well as the local and regional scale in terms of circular economy obviously scotland is never going to be manufacturing everything itself within the country but it is very important i think for scotland to look at the waste hierarchy carefully and to look in terms of reuse and repair because repair and reuse are things that should and could happen within a scotish context and within a local and a regional context and and for that to happen it's important that manufacturers release the manuals the design manuals for their products so that local small repairers are able to to repair the products at a local level in a very safe way so so that's something that we would advocate to dustin and james and collin on this set all right yeah just to pick up on some of the points particularly i was taken by the question is small beautiful and for certain things it absolutely is but for other things it absolutely is not so let me give you a couple of examples autocatalists they're filled with platinum palladium gold all these very exciting materials they're collected at a european scale 10 of them get processed in a factory in Gloucestershire they get remelted and then the melted stuff gets shipped to the united states to be refined back it and very finely back into and to the particular material types they then get shipped back to europe for manufacturing to stick back into cars there's nothing that we're going to do about that that's a global system because gold platinum palladium are worth so much money plastics are something that as as was said if we source separate to particular material types it would make more sense to do them at a local to regional scale rather than shipping them across the world on a carbon footprint basis food anything that's organic and wet that naturally wants to be at a very small scale for remanufacturing this is really sector specific i think the example of hps facility is a good one we know that remanufacturing could happen in scotland but scotland will be competing with other countries across europe because as you raise the value of whether it's a material or a product you can pay for more transport so it's about getting a factory wherever you want it and then pulling in materials and products to scotland and then exporting that's a circular economy that can work at a regional scale and that's really a question of both industrial policy and how do you get factories built which is not my area of specialty reuse is also something that can happen at a really small scale because demand and supply is very locally correlated so there's no point in sending it around even if it's worth a lot i'd just like to also pick up on this point about material constraints and lock in we do know that there are there is a risk that we end up using materials for something which is relatively low value when we could be using them for higher value so let me give you an example of some technology scales we know that oil refineries or if you wanted to do biofuels in a really in a really sort of cost effective way you need to do it very large scale so five megatons of material per year and just to give a sense of scale there was an analysis done for scotland looking at how much organic material is potentially available it's about nine to 13 megatons so if we collected everything from food waste to agricultural materials that are byproducts or waste to forestry byproducts you might be able to support one maybe one and a half big biofuels plants in contrast if you feed that material into a bio refinery and ferment it to get lactic acid which you can then turn into polylactic acid which is a type of plastic you can do that we reckon this is more technologically uncertain but at a scale of perhaps 50 to 100 000 tons per year so you could potentially have many more and that is likely to be a more valuable product as well so in effect you end up with a trade-off between quite certain but really very large scale things recycling process is big scale things and more technically uncertain but potentially more valuable and potentially smaller scale things and this is why in our in the submission and in our work we focus very much on the opportunity for scotland for innovation policy we think that if scotland can develop some of these exciting new technologies protein extraction from pothail syrup as i mentioned before those are the areas where scotland might be able to get factories that work for scotland scale we're not coming to the skills and education but just you know very soon but taking on the theme still and materials and size i think James Carron and Colin Webster wanted to come back in thank you yeah i'll just pick up on three elements very briefly i promise you from the earlier discussion i think it's very difficult to be prescriptive about the scale of the potential scale of the circular economy either in time or space because one example that springs to my mind is the imminent decommissioning of many enormous installations from the north sea oil and gas fields and it just seems to me that that there must be a business opportunity and perhaps scotland should look at it as to recycling again using renewable energy that the steel embedded in those installations back into the into the wider economy and to release that low embedded carbon steel back into the economy here in scotland might be a very good idea there were earlier questions about flow of some materials and particularly plastics into pyrolysis plants and so on and two things occurred to me there one is that we shouldn't forget we actually have millions of tonnes of available plastic in scotland but they're buried in landfills at the moment and we shouldn't forget there's actually a buried resource there and at some point in the future those could be mined for the materials that are stored in those landfills which would be a good thing environmentally and and hopefully economically and the final thing is on on understanding where waste is coming from the point I think made by Dryden we have we are currently developing a bid with other partners to put into the European life fund to to provide real-time information on waste transfers whenever anybody transfers waste from organisation to be or whatever they have to submit waste transfer is a very kind of old-fashioned system at the moment to get that online real time would then allow everyone to understand where wastes are flowing and to make the best economic opportunity of them so Colin Webster yeah again on on the on scale size and cross border opportunities just a point to make for anyone who's unaware that the Scottish Government was the first national government to become a member of our circular economy 100 programme which is a programme which brings together corporations emerging innovators and geographic regions to look at the circular economy to see how it can be scaled up and a collaborative approach and other geographies that are part of this now include Wallonia, Central Denmark, Bavaria, Amsterdam so this is growing body of geographies interested in this and I know that from discussions I've had with some of the members of the Scottish government who've been part of all those talks around the circular economy 100 that already collaborations are starting up which are of great interest and a couple of other things one is we're running something called project mainstream which is looking at pure material flows and this is something that we're doing with a range of CEOs across Europe to see about how you facilitate effective flows and of course we're looking at the cross collaboration approach the cross sector and cross chain approach to see where the potentials are there to scale up the circular economy very quickly and another point to make is that it would be worth keeping an eye on the European resource efficiency platform it's a platform that we're part of and we think that's interesting because it's likely that industrial policies in Europe will follow from the recommendations of the resource efficiency platform and a couple of points that they make which are relevant to the discussion we're having is one is that the EU waste policy should promote benefits of cross border flows which is the kind of thing I guess we've been talking about around the table and the other is that we need to create a pan-European network of industrial symbiosis initiatives so there's again opportunities for one person's waste to become another person's food and I do think that we need to move away from the talk of waste because one of the key goals of the circular economy is to eliminate that concept of waste so there's no such thing as waste it's simply food for secondary cycles or subsequent cycles perhaps a better way to put it in. We'll just finish up this section and move on to another theme. Just picking up on James Curran if I may, talking about the oil and gas industry, it's obviously been highlighted as well as a possible opportunity just to really flag up because there is and again to reinforce there is a lot happening in this space already that actually as today we're working with the Decom North Sea trade body for the decommissioning of North Sea companies there's an event in Aberdeen talking about this opportunity looking at the circular economy, what the opportunities are around the decommissioning of North Sea looking at reuse and it's not just about clearly the recycling of the metal infrastructure is obvious to many but it's also about the valves, the kit that's on those rigs all the subsea infrastructure as well and how that could be reused and some of it remanufactured within the supply chains or the resupply chains here in Scotland and then possibly exported to other oil installations around the world and it is a huge opportunity in terms of, for Scotland, really the forefront of this because it's the first, as far as I'm aware, the very first sort of oil field that's going through this phase in the world so people in the sort of Chinese sea and the Gulf of Mexico and stuff like that are really looking at this and saying how can you go through a kind of decommissioning phase like this and ensure that you're looking at the recycling, reuse and remanufacturing of the kit in terms of just disposing out so I think that it's an event on today that obviously is starting that kind of conversation. Alison McInnes likes to kick us off on skills and stuff. Before I kind of, I just want a brief supplementary to Mr Curran on what he just said there about waste transfer. It seems to me that with public sector sharing information not just across agencies but with the public and an open source way would surely spark quite a lot of new initiatives if entrepreneurs had access to that sort of information. Is that something that's been considered? Yeah, I agree absolutely and I can't promise you that it's in the life bed but if I'm allowed to check up I'll get back to you on that. Something Colin Webster said which was we need to look at the design industry and we need to skill up the design industry to look at new ways of remanufacturing so the role of design at the very early stages. We've talked about education at secondary school level but we've not talked about the role of universities, colleges, research institutes in opening that up and the role of I think perhaps another skill is the new business model so the role of Scottish enterprise in helping businesses look at new business models such as leasing or servicing rather than encouraging everyone always to buy and be interested in perhaps hearing some of the panel's views on the area of skills and design. Don't know whether Gordon wants to come in just now for a... Come in. I think it's kind of a good example there that didn't refer to it as the circular economy when we're talking about oil and gases around decommissioning so I think there's a lot of activity actually in their way and it's maybe badged or branded as other types of activity whether it's low carbon or working at that area. I think in terms of the universities I think we need to look at investments that have been made through the funding council in terms of innovation centres so if we look at the new industrial biotech facility that's been led by staticide university it's taken on a leading role of 11 of Scotland's universities and I think in those areas it's the combination of the linkages and knowledge transfer back from universities back into industry where we'll get the innovation and where we'll get the kind of key economic steps that we need to make in this area. In a practical sense and the point that's made earlier on around renewable energy we've spent a lot of time in the work that we undertake with the industry leadership group around energy developing the workforce around Scotland's renewable sector and obviously perhaps the growth in that hasn't been just as we anticipated but we feel as if we've built a real strong infrastructure across both universities and the college sectors so the colleges have formed an energy skills partnership with the strategic hubs around the development activity so we know where the connect expertise is and we can connect up colleges so some of the work that we've done around say like winter buying technology we've connected up in vernais and five which was the kind of pioneer for this work but then into Ayrshire college in Dumfries and Galloway so I feel as if we've made a good foundation for that for that work if we look broader than that into the wider STEM agenda and Ian touched on it earlier a whole range of activities within both schools and colleges just now a much stronger focus on the science sectors and trying to grow and develop that further and I think we've made good progress particularly in the kind of gender related issues but just making science more accessible so I think the kind of good work done there we're doing more in schools and again perhaps not badged up under circular economy but I think if you look at it and around it certainly fits so we've been working with the SCDI in Scotland around the Saltire Foundation we've got somewhere in the region of 180 schools this year competing for the Saltire award which is a school-based project around wave and wind technology and the finals are coming up soon at Murray Field and I think it's a good example of taking the kind of concepts of the type of activity that we're trying to create through curriculum for excellence but to take it into a very very practical way also doing some really good work in the schools in East Ayrshire probably leading around primary engineering and just taking engineering related disciplines into the school and making it accessible and then where possible and we're looking probably off the back of the review of Scotland's young workforce that's been led by Serene Wood to how we can engage businesses more effectively in this area and probably a good example for us is the Scottish leather group in Bridge of Weir who have followed a very aggressive zero waste campaign within their own factory but they've got a very deep school engagement programme across Renfisher and Inverclyde in terms of taking the schools in showing them well many of the locals will know what the smell comes from the process by actually showing them how the factory have advanced they've got virtually self-sufficient in terms of their energy production but how they've extracted a lot of other materials such as collagen and others from the cow hides before they go for processing so I think a good story to tell we can always do more we're doing more with Education Scotland wanting to do more with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation as well and just to bring a bit probably branding around the concept of the secure economy it's heard enough thing for businesses to get the head round about when you take it into primary schools it's a bit more complicated as well just to just explain that process. Ian Mingus want to say a bit more about that just now there. I mean yes and you're also working with Scales Development Scotland and other partners to really take forward that science, technology, engineering, math agenda so you know as we say grow those different strategies and really support the development of those aspects of the curriculum then I think you know we can really look at opportunity to bring the circular economy into that. I mean one of the things we talked about is about bringing it into primary schools that's our ambition you know there's young people in primary schools do a really good understanding a really good connection to these issues and really the initial phase of a phase of our work has been really around secondary schools but we really think there's real scope to bringing the circular economy into primary schools and nurseries as well because they are really engaging in issues around waste and eco schools and that type of stuff and we really want to challenge them more and bring more challenge into learning and develop those higher order thinking skills at younger age so there's real opportunities all the way through instead of the school years have you liked to do that. Lucy Neewins. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to highlight the importance of creating a very strong design network in Scotland. Obviously as most of you probably know 80% of the environmental impacts of a product are embedded at the design stage so it is a really really crucial phase for intentional design for a circular economy to happen and it's also something that really connects the arts and the sciences I think so you talk about STEM education while I think that the arts side is also important especially in terms of things like communication. When it comes to behaviour change for instance lots of people talk about behaviour change and the difficulties of behaviour change for a circular economy while design is one of the major influences on behaviour change not just product design but also service and system design which is crucially important. I just wanted to give the example of Gothenburg, a city which has transformed the way it deals with its waste, its civic waste amenity centre is now called an amusement park and it incorporates a shop, a restaurant, it has an art exhibition last year, it has a turnover of about one and a half million and it employs local people and I think that should be the vision for redesigning our waste centres. One of the things that the Great Recovery has produced over the last two years has been our four design models which is a very simple and engaging diagram showing these four models of longevity, of leasing or service, remanufacturing and finally material recovery or recycling. So recycling is really a last resort because in most cases it's downcycling and it involves a loss of energy and a loss of value so we need to be thinking about design for longevity and design for leasing or service first and foremost. One of the issues that we have with designers is that there's currently no provision for continuing professional development CPD for the design industry so that is available for waste industry but not for the design industry and we would like to see that change so that designers can take time out to learn about circular economy design. One of the things that the Great Recovery will be working on over the next year or two will be design residencies so setting designers up rather like artists in residence at waste recovery facilities, engaging them with the waste processes, with the challenges of waste recovery so that they engage with those problems and are then able to go back to the drawing board and redesign the products so that waste is less of an issue, ultimately designing waste out of the system. We would very much advocate, you have here a remanufacturing innovation hub that Zero Waste Scotland is working on and we would very much advocate a design innovation hub for Scotland along the same lines. Dave Thomson wants to come in and then Colin Webster. Yeah just on the point of design convener, I mean it's a very interesting point and what is the position now through in terms of built-in obsolescence? I mean I came across this first I don't know over 40 years ago you know with a wee camera which had a bit in it which was designed to make the whole thing fail after a relatively short time the camera would have probably gone on for years and years. That's been going on there's all sorts of ways that manufacturers can make sure that things or components you know fail which means people have to you know buy new ones quite often. How do we get that message across is the message that the circular economy will make them money going to overrule their desire to make money in the short term maybe rather in a medium or longer term by building in obsolescence and there are so many things that we use these days that we have to throw away and it really goes against the grain. When I was a boy everything was recycled you know and I hoard things in my garage much to my wife's annoyance but I always find a use for it eventually so how do we deal with this built-in obsolescence thing that I'm sure is still there to a great extent? I agree that it's a huge problem. I think one of the things we have now is more kind of technological obsolescence as well so people have a mobile phone for a year and the expectation is that after a year, a year and a half they throw away and get the newest model. People are conditioned to want the latest model. One of the things that a few companies are looking at is the idea of modular design so that you can have a new model by changing perhaps the cover of the phone, the colour, the outside so it looks like a new product but actually the inside of mobile phones haven't changed that much in a few years and you don't really need a new circuit board when you have a new phone you just want something that looks new so I think the idea of modularity, design for modularity is a very key one to look into here and also I'd go back to my earlier point about repair. Things are not designed to be repaired, they're designed to be thrown away and I think that's really key to make sure that we are putting pressure on manufacturers to ensure that their products are repairable. You might like to look at the restart project which is engaging a lot of communities in England at the moment around repairing their own electronics and doing that very much from a bottom-up approach but it is about engaging with manufacturers over the design manuals, the manufacturing manuals and actually having a right to repair so in the US the right to repair for automobiles is a right for everybody. There's no right to repair for home electronics and I think that's something that should be looked at and should change. Just one more thing about obsolescence, it's often a very few number of components that break in a particular product and it's always often the same components so I think if a product is designed for repair those things can easily be replaced but it is about working with manufacturers on design, on modularity and on those repair and manufacturing manuals. We've got Colin Webster, Ian Gillan, James Curran and Nigel Dawn and then Ewan Burns after that on this theme. First of all Colin Webster. Very much on the point of design for obsolescence and skills, I think what's really important in our work is that we get across this point in our work in education. We get across this point that design for obsolescence lives in a particular context and a context that perhaps isn't there any longer and this is a real key part of what we do in education is getting people to understand the whole systems complexity of why things are the way they are and how things could be so what's the context that's missing the context that's missing is there's no longer cheap and falling prices for materials or for energy and when those conditions are in place just those two by themselves it's likely that manufacturers will design for obsolescence because it's cheaper to produce next year therefore they want to keep this flow of income coming in and that flow of income is important too there's another context that's missing is that the public doesn't have the income it used to have manufacturers are finding that there isn't the market for their stuff in the west any longer in the way that they used to be so without those three factors in place design for obsolescence actually is perhaps not the wisest business move and I say this in order to to make the point about whole systems design that when you take on the circular economy to education or even to business of course what's really important is that people understand all of the implications that this isn't a model for environmentalism it's not a model for reduction of waste it's not simply a model for redesign it's not simply a model for business for how we could run our businesses but rather it's for all of these things and more it's the energy it's the ultimately it's the economics and that's the point we're always trying to get across in our education work and we think it's really important that you share a compelling vision of how the economy could be and that compelling vision is based around abundance it's based around potential it's based around positive growth and the opportunity for people to get involved in it and whenever we talk about the circular economy those are the messages that we always want to get across and I completely agree with Lucy and a lot of what she was saying about how you develop that sort of designer culture and I see that in Scotland the Mac lab which is a facility for people to go to and repair goods or even to design some of themselves they're launching in five cities across Scotland so that that certainly helps with this whole design culture and equally I spoke recently with Codebase who do something similar in IT I believe so there's certainly the seeds of things happening in Scotland to help with design for the next generation. I was actually going to pick up one Alison to my left was talking about in terms of supporting new business models in Scottish businesses but first of all I just would like to emphasise from our point of zero with Scotland how important investment and skills to the future is it really is fundamental in this shift in selfishness as well because others around the table will be the same when we engage with businesses currently you know particularly SMEs it's the absence of knowledge and awareness of many of the things we're talking about not just circular economy but resource efficiency waste issues and energy and stuff like that you know and that you know and I think that you know and getting everybody you know through schools through the curriculum through university regardless of their career choice and more of an understanding of what this is all about is going to build that foundation going forward so absolutely investing in the future is paramount but I think that the issue about business models and I think you can pick up in this as well because this is about this is different from going into a business and talking to an environmental officer about how do you with every speck change the light bulbs or put some insulation in the building and stuff like that this is about going into a boardroom and having a conversation about the business model you know the fact that they might be selling stuff in a set way to the market or taking a product to the market or making the product out of specific materials this is asking them to change that business model and they need to have obviously a credible business case for doing that but they need to be confident and they need to see signals from both the marketplace or through procurement or through materials and stuff like that that this is the right thing to do and obviously through their sector so it's about you know highlighting where people are doing this both in terms of Scotland both in terms of the UK and in Europe where businesses are leading on this so business you know chief execs etc or boards of companies are thinking yeah this is the direction of travel so there's a lot of engagement that needs to happen at boardroom level but it's giving people the confidence and it's sending the signals out we've touched upon already about you know is there sort of fiscal incentives to encourage this because I think that's really one of the challenges for businesses is a business making this decision to change its business model you know it's a leap of faith for many of them particularly SMEs and you know I think they're looking for some you know some support in that through that transition it's obviously very easy for some of the bigger companies to kind of go off and have a have a product you know it doesn't really interfere with their main business and sort of float that in the market and see how it goes but for SMEs in the supply chain in scotland that you know it's just we're obviously just we're obviously working directly with Scottish Enterprise on that we have a project ago we've talked about Europe collaborating with Europe to look at how we promote business models look at particular types of business models and then working with Scottish Enterprise and their account managers on trying to how we could support businesses who are who are thinking about changing their business model or certainly looking to move forward so there is support out there but it is about working directly with the business sector raising confidence procurement we've talked about that signals from the from within the public sector about the direction of procurement how these products and services might be might be the future will give confidence to people in scotland particularly that there is going to be a market for those services so there's there's a bit of work there that's obviously started but certainly you know we really do need to to build a confidence in our business community I know it's a circular economy and it's a circular set of issues that will make it work but it's difficult to keep to themes that allow people because someone else wants to ask questions some of us want to answer them if we could get James Curran on this matter I think it was skills what we're kind of going around well was it that you were going to throw into this no no it was actually picking up very much on what Ian was said about the business model for the circular economy because I think part of the business model when we pick up some of the earlier comments as well part of the business model for the circular economy must be about developing the the consumer because what does the consumer actually wants the consumer wants the service not particularly a product so the consumer maybe once chilled food doesn't actually want to fridge and already one of the most sustainable companies in the world I believe is is providing carpets that companies can rent rather than buy for carpeting their offices so that is the kind of model we need in the future and then the the provider of that carpet takes it back and either refurbishes it or or recycles it into a new a new carpet in the future that is part of the circular economy business model and I think elements of that are already embedded within our regulatory framework because the waste electrical and the electronic equipment directive and the end of life vehicle directive both require the provider of the product to take the product back at the end of life now there is an incentive in there we could go much further I think but there's an incentive in there to make that product such that they don't have to take it back as often but also if they do take it back then they can either refurbish it or maintain it and then reissue it or at the very least completely disassemble it and use all the embedded materials indeed um Nigel don yeah thank you that's a very useful introduction because I think that's that's what I really wanted to pick up on and something that I think lucid jimblin said about the right to repair because I'm hoping by the time we finished we'll have a few clues as to what we as legislators might be wanting to do eventually uh and and picking up on what James Cohn has just said about fridges I I'm going back to my first industrial experience actually my second industrial experience um of washing machines and thinking nobody wants to buy a washing machine what they want is a machine that will wash their clothes you'd much rather rent it you'd much rather that it was supplied by somebody that when it broke down simply came and repaired it and if couldn't repair it they took it away and replaced it with another one and that seems to me to be a very good business model and I'm just wondering whether that has some consequences first of all it does encourage people to make them last a while because as James Cohn has just said you know you you actually don't want to come and repair it you want it to work um but it also perhaps does something for standardisation the last time I did break down the man said well I think I've got one of those seals in the van I go and look and most fully he did but surely if all washing machines were on this kind of will rent you rent it will keep it running then people would pretty quickly standardise on everything they've already standardised on the size they would pretty quickly get to the point where actually it just became a commodity which is what it frankly should be and I'm wondering whether some of the branding would disappear and we'd actually get more functional goods and it seems to me that's actually a good thing and that's a part of the model I just want to sort of throw in there as a thought is that where we should be going right well as we go on through this discussion we've got Ewan Mearns Ewan Mingus and Ewan Gilland and Lucy wants to come back in as well that right okay well quick answer to it then okay um I believe that already happens in Germany um with I think it's Mielle um they provide high class washing machines and they provide the service along with them so you essentially buy a machine for life and it lasts many many years back on that very briefly Mila always did make the best washing machines actually it was well known in the industry um and it's not at all surprising that they're the ones who've actually developed that model because they were clearly in a class of around 25 years against it after that short advertising break um Ewan Mearns thank you I just wanted to kind of pick up on many of these points and we're talking about design business model innovation skills for the company perspective this is about innovation this is what the circuit economy is really about doing new things or doing things differently but you need to position innovation within the context of the business strategy um and you know to want to mention this morning you know the circuit economy is about an economic opportunity for Scotland that also has environmental benefit so I really wanted to to kind of state the importance of looking at this as an economic opportunity and then taking it down to a practical level working with companies the Scottish Enterprise and the Hanson Islands Enterprise do so we're working with our account managers to enable them to understand where the opportunities lie and then to be able to best advise companies so starting with this demand-led approach and thinking about how we can best support companies to to take that leap of faith as as Ian was saying how to reduce the risk for them to innovate to to do things in in new ways there are also other other benefits to companies if we wanted to take this down to a more a more practical level we've talked about resource efficiency but in terms of the scale of the the savings that could be made through remanufacturing we're talking about potential potentially 50 or 80 percent savings in energy used to to repair to remanufacturer product you know this is a radical it takes us into the realm of radical savings and business model innovation might seem a a big step but already there are companies who are doing this you know in agreco we've got the global leader in heating and temperature control solutions they lease out their equipment globally minetti in in the borders again is changed from manufacturer of plastics manufacturer of coat hangers into a logistics and recycling company that completely changed their business model late they now supply almost half the coat hangers in in high street retailers up and down the UK so there are good examples and we need to promote that but in addition there's benefits in terms of collaboration for companies both up and down the supply chain and also with with customers we've touched on it before so the old linear model is about throughput it's about turnover and volume but perhaps in the future the value is created through the depths and the quality of those customer relationships where you can go back and have that customer loyalty and that's what creates a value got a product which is then upgradeable rather than just disposable at the end of it so you know part of the challenge is saying to companies there is a different way there's a different way for you to to operate your your business so what we're doing is taking an evidence-based approach we've James described the the work that's underway at the moment just to understand all of these issues included business model innovation design but also opportunities across different sectors so we just want to be clear where we think the greatest economic benefits are to Scotland and then to pilot projects hopefully they'll work we can refine them if not and then scale them up to give the benefits that we're looking for I think Graham Day had a question that relates to the work that you're doing just now a practical point yeah yeah if I may zero a Scotland and Scottish Enterprise are jointly managing a £3.8 million loan fund I just wonder if you could give us examples of what sort of demand that's attracting and perhaps examples of where investment is being made I'm particularly interested in James Curran's point earlier on about the possibility of mining plastics from landfill sites for example is there any sign that somebody is looking to do that perhaps Ian I'm looking in here perhaps you would have more more current information I mean the the loan fund was previously just focusing on plastics and then was relaunched at the I think the beginning of this year to broaden it out to a much wider range of materials as well as remanufacturing I'm personally I'm not aware of any awards which are being made under that fund fund since it's been relaunched unless you've got any other information here yeah to be fair I don't think there's been any awards since it was launched at the beginning of the year I think it was February time we have a number of projects in the pipeline we obviously still have some plastics projects in the pipeline as well but yeah there are a number of obviously the expansion of that getting that message out to businesses there is a there is a mechanism to support the shift to infrastructure or development of infrastructure and even business models is there I guess this morning times well it's still a bit early to to report on any successes I guess within that but there's a lot of interest in it but yeah there's a promotional piece for us and scotty's enterprise to ensure that businesses understand that it's shifted away from plastics so to speak the question you asked about mining we did a report last year actually as we've gotten to look at landfill mining as it's technically called not just for plastics but for a whole host of materials particularly precious metals you know the idea that there's more gold in our landfill than you know we'd be able to think about in terms of the value there is some issues around it as all of you can probably imagine practically and socially as well in terms of getting that stuff out and unfortunately the challenges you can imagine all of the precious materials are all scattered about the landfill or not you know so actually you end up with a lot of other stuff that you potentially isn't of value in the landfill or as of value in that landfill so there is some challenges but it is something that is certainly others we're interested in looking at from a scotty's perspective but also across Europe about the technology of how that might take forward I don't think it's as practical at this moment in time in terms of the cost against the benefit but yeah I think as technology expands and the price of those materials goes up I think that there's something that will be looked at again I'll take it when we're talking about a fund of 3.8 million we're looking at some fairly small scale projects by and large that would be supported yeah I mean I mean for instance on our plastics you know you could be looking at a facility of 10 20 000 tonnes of plastics depends on the type so that's off the scale so we're not yeah I think we're that's the kind of interventions that we're looking at in terms of the loan fund but I mean obviously that fund has specifically aimed at the work that we do but more broadly you know Scottish Enterprise have access to other funds more considerable in terms of scale to support business development in Scotland so we're trying to use this as a kind of bringing people to the table and getting things started but bigger prizes I guess there are other mechanisms within the Scottish Enterprise budget to support that going forward so if I may find we can hear can you give us an indication of the interest you're getting so far as a good geographical spread across Scotland the more you take account to some of the challenges that my colleague Dave Thompson had highlighted in areas like the highlands to be honest I'd have to come back with that I don't I mean I know of the kind of number of types of projects but I haven't I haven't got the information about the geographical if you could in any way you know help us with that yeah and I think one of the key things that also my team in conjunction with Scottish Enterprise is promoting the fund it's not just about say it's there and stick it on the website so I know that we've been doing some work with particular Highland Islands Enterprise and the promotion of it as well to ensure that you know businesses up there are aware of it so but I'll get back to you on the geographical I've got some governance issues to sort of come back to in a minute or two but I'd like to just now just bring in Ian Mingus and uh or is it Menzys I can never remember you can say Mingus is Mingus yes okay and Dustin uh Dustin Benton as well in this section so Ian first I was just picking up on the skills agenda because it's something obviously that we've got a real role in and Gordon mentioned the importance of the wood commission agenda and we're developing Scotland's young workforce so we think there's a lot of really exciting opportunities coming through particularly in relation to science, technology, engineering and maths we've now got much more flexible approach to the senior phase in secondary school so we could be looking at things like modern apprenticeships and a circular economy and and so on for young people so we think there are some real exciting opportunities a much closer working between schools and colleges and universities for instance so you know young people are developing HNC's in some of these relevant areas before they leave before they leave school so we think that's real potential there the other big challenge for us in terms of skills of teachers because they obviously have responsibility for a future generation in developing these skills and we know from all our evidence teachers across Scotland do you need a lot of support particularly in the primary sectors and other sectors we're looking at building their confidence in terms of science, technology, engineering and maths so through the partnership with the El MacArthur Foundation you know we've reached out about 64% I think of secondary schools in Scotland engaged with about 700 teachers but early discussions were very much about scaling up and those are the challenges that we face as well when there's 51,000 teachers in Scotland so you know we've been engaged in a lot of different professional learning events for teachers we've supported them as I mentioned this week we're really trying to establish us a practitioner network one of the things we did early on in partnership with the El MacArthur Foundation is take a group of teachers on an international study visits in Ireland is to see desol carpets that James had mentioned is doing so really we're leading work in this area so you know we're really into things deeply about the skills of teachers and how we build them and I think one of the really exciting opportunities we've got just now particularly with this Team Scotland approach and discussions we had trying to say what to do because a lot of this innovation emerges in Scotland and we hear about these small companies all over Scotland and other companies engaging with agenda like Dryden as well is that how can we provide opportunities for teachers to engage with those industries to get in to see what they're doing for young people to get into the board rooms to share ideas as well because one of the premises of Cricklem Freglands is about making learning relevant and it becomes relevant when young people get a chance to see it in their own doorstep in their own area and impact it's having on their own communities and they're really pleased to hear about the Scottish Library group I know they're doing really good work you know about the schools and membership but I suppose that's one of the big challenges is how do we extend that develop these partnerships so industry are really taking responsibility for ensuring the future generation and our teachers are developing the necessary skills Dustin? I just want to come back to this idea of built-in obsolescence and I think that we struck on something really important here when the comment was made it goes against the grain to get rid of things I think there's something quite important in here about what consumers want thinking about the drivers behind some of the things that the circular economy might be able to do and coming back I guess to the question can what can legislators do slightly anticipating where we're likely to go I don't have a clear cut policy recommendation here but I think that it's useful for legislators to understand some of the reasons why businesses might be interested and to possibly enable some experimentation here so what thinking about mobile phones green lines is running a project with Google on how we get more circular electronics devices including mobiles consumers want certain things out of them so they want things like battery time they want them to look attractive they want them to load web pages in a certain period of time so why couldn't you design a business model and there's really no reason why you couldn't that gives you a phone for a fee or perhaps part of your network fee that guarantees you eight hours of talk time it guarantees you web page loads within I don't know 10 seconds or something like that and it enables enough modularity that you can change the way it looks to suit whatever fashion you choose this is the sort of thing that is interesting to businesses because they think okay I can see how in a world where the mobile market is shifting from expensive devices 600 pound iPhones down to the latest one the Moto E which will sell for less than 100 pounds how can I maintain value in this market because there's a sort of remorseless drive to cheap in in these sorts of devices we've seen it over the last decade and manufacturers that are thinking how do I keep my profit margins on a device that's worth 100 quid versus a device that's worth 600 there's a real challenge there but if I can sell a service and disconnect what's going on with a physical device from the service that I get you that's an opportunity for value now this is pretty radical stuff I mean nobody's really doing this at the moment and that raises the question how do we get this testing to happen how do we enable Scotland for example and it might not be in mobile phones it might be somewhere else to be a testbed for these sorts of these sorts of activities part of it is about having the skills base to enable people to be in Scotland who can think of these sorts of things there's also something here about enabling experimentation creating the institutions I don't as I said I don't have an answer on what the policy is to make this happen is but I think it's important that when legislators think about the interactions things that they can do they're informed by that by this idea of future opportunity in a decoupled resource world well it leads us on I think probably to thinking about you know what should the role of the Scottish government be you know in the next few years in supporting the move to the circular economy and one of the things that's been suggested is that and it was James Curran who mentioned this earlier the fiscal and regulatory levers or something that government has and procurement levers as well so what do you think about that question because it seems to be you know from us politicians point of view something that we can report upon as well as some of the details but we have to have that governance issue in mind how do we first of all engage in the role of actually leading towards circular economy how do we track progress how do we apply the levers or what levers should we apply so anyone want to kick off in that way Ian yeah I mean another aspect of it from the governance point of view is his leadership you know that I think we're all welcome that certainly the government across parties support for the zero waste ambitions of Scotland I mean that that has that has writ large in terms of you know bringing people to the table not just in Scotland but across the UK and Europe you know people are very well aware of of of that direction of travel so there is a point about you know government saying circular economy that's for us and I think you know we're going in that direction you're obviously the Scottish government have signed up to as we've said the Ellen MacArthur Foundation C100 we're first country to be involved in that this is about demonstrating leadership as well I think my bit always come back to when I get asked this question is around procurement I mean there's obviously some of us around this table have been involved in the the procurement bill that's going through Parliament and looking at that in terms of how that could shape both resource efficiency and zero waste ambitions but now circular economy reuse repair and I think that's a place for me that we could really make a difference how could we ensure that that bill encourages, facilitates more smarter procurement so we can actually see some of the things we've talked about today different service types leasing lending repair remanufacturing coming through the system because that will demonstrate that will create a market for not just Scottish businesses but other businesses across Europe to come to Scotland to to sell their way or sell their new business models because they'll see that this this is this is a serious place to do business and so it's how we can do that and I think I'll go back to your point about piloting things how do we stimulate the innovation so yeah there's things that we could we could do I mean my example and I'm sorry to labour the point I mean people have heard me talk about before street lighting with huge opportunity at the moment because we're about to refurbish nearly all the street lights in Scotland over a set period of time in conjunction with the local authorities and that's really about it as we know putting the LED lights into all the replacing the sulfur things and obviously having a huge economic saving in terms of the price of electricity but that's an opportunity a massive infrastructure project there's recycling opportunities in the in the stands that are coming down the lamp stands are coming down what we're going to do with that material what are the new materials what are the new stands going to be made off in terms of metals and alloys and and stuff like that but more fundamentally it comes back to the point that Colin was making about business models there's and it's always we always start mentioning companies but Phillips are one of the companies who are now not just selling lamps and not just renting lamps but they're selling light lux that's what their business model they want to move to a point that you know we don't actually want lamps we actually want light and so much of it so we can see what we're doing so they're now developing a business model around selling of lux so is there an opportunity there within our refurbishment of street lights in scotland to pilot some of this thinking you know to to get local authorities to to carve out a bit of this maybe not all of their their infrastructure to start saying how could we actually work with these companies to develop a new business model and the other thing about that is it creates innovation and that's the point you was making the business because actually if the Phillips are selling the light at a fixed cost to the local authority or to the whoever and then they start to work out they could actually do it cheaper if they start to innovate the the infrastructure they will do that they will start to innovate so it's not just having the thing for 15 years they will constantly be innovating to make sure that you are getting the the light that you want at a cheaper rate both for their point of view in terms of a business but also for the customer so there's real opportunities if we could use public procurement shaping the public procurement bill that enables this type of thinking across the piece. Arlan Whitefield you know you're in a position where you've got an innovative process how can the government help you know focus its attention for firms like you that are in the stage of developing something that's innovative like that? We've always been very focused on R&D and we've developed the AFM and we're looking at developing it further and targeting what we activated with so we can target certain minerals or arsenic taking out of the water but we need the raw materials and that's really important so we need to look at I mean Edinburgh Council at the moment separate their glass but I have heard that they are going to mix it now that creates a problem we don't want to mix glass so it's vital that we look at how we collect the glass because there are only six colour sorters in the UK we have to there's not enough so we need the clean material a lot of the remelt companies as well they need the clear glass material so it's important that we do what's the point of mixing it when we collect it to buy a machine which costs a fortune to then separate it all again and for us to do that would cost a fortune for the company it wouldn't be viable to put one of these colour sorting machines on to our company so we're looking in ways of perhaps councils working together we talked about us 32 councils if they could formulate some sort of plan and in Freeson Galloway at the moment they have a colour sorting machine and we have tendered for their glass and if we get the tender it will be 1000 tonnes a year which isn't going up to 10 000 tonnes which is great but it's not enough for us we need other councils to get together and perhaps buy or collaborate together and formulate a way of collecting the glass of colour sorting the glass and it might be too expensive for one council but if a few councils get together they can share the resources and it's a very interesting you know point that's a good one for us thank you very much James Caron wanted to come in at the moment thank you I think Ian made some some very good good points earlier and if I can maybe just take that a little bit further I think it is sensible for us to use the tools that are already available to us as we said earlier before we look at being more radical maybe in the future in terms of legislation here in Scotland and being a regulator you would expect me to talk up the value of regulation but I think one of the main values of it is the interventions through regulation can can stimulate very rapid change and we know that China Japan and Germany have actions in place to try and move them rapidly towards more circular economy so and as I said earlier we are in such such an advantageous position in Scotland having very significant amounts of renewable energy that I feel as though we should move as fast as we can towards a more circular economy so what about the tools we have and those regulatory tools first but we need to use those in a smart clever way again as we said earlier we need a good evidence base in order to make those regulatory interventions and those interventions should deliver multiple benefits and from the business perspective should stimulate creativity and innovation but also remove business risk and if I can just give one tangible example and I'm not I'm not claiming this would be the right one but just to give a feel for how it might be used I was in San Francisco recently and they have a by-law they don't that's not quite the right technical word that any takeaway packaging needs to be compostable immediately made me think well could we do something similar in Scotland and insist the whole takeaway packaging in Scotland be made of recycled material and or compostable and it so happens we do have an award winning company in Scotland I would imagine absolutely ready and I would imagine willing to supply that market so using as I say section 82 of the climate change act which is ready and waiting there we could easily put that kind of regulation in place it would stimulate other businesses no doubt to be creative but we already have a business there that would increase its market and increase its home market on which it can build to be more internationally competitive clever regulation could as I say deliver multiple benefits and Colin Webster and in some way James has made some of the points I was going to make so just very quickly when we speak to legislators some of the key points that we get across number one is is that you need to understand thoroughly what the circular economy is and that seems like a rather obvious point but we have seen examples where where legislatures have rushed in perhaps a little bit too quickly second is that rushing to legislate too quickly might be a mistake but finding mechanisms to foster pilot projects to learn from is a good start and obviously given what you and Mayor's has said that's that's precisely what's going on through um scotsia enterprise thirdly is about listening to business partners and getting them on board and obviously having dried in aqua here today is a demonstration of the the government's desire to do that and finally it's carefully reviewing policy review documents and james referred to to china to japan to germany and the directions that they're moving in but also to go back to the resource efficiency the european resource efficiency document that referred to because this is going to be seen i think as a driver for for legislation in the circular economy across europe that's given us a lot of food for thought i think most of you have had a good input to our thinking we're very keen to try and make sure that we can lead we can track we can you know encourage and we can use the levers that we have and the climate change act obviously is one of our responsibilities in this committee and you know looking at that more carefully it would be really useful as well so i think at this stage it would be a good idea that we stopped the conversation at the moment if there's other things that any of you wish to tell us in writing as a follow-up that would be very welcome and in our deliberations we'll be writing to the minister in due course i think that my colleagues agree and that we'll try and capture some of these things just now so working with the different parts of government already engaged we've got to try and get the idea out there talking about circular economy and obviously in the fields that you have covered from business through skills through economic development through research we can see a clearer picture than when we come in this morning so i'd like to thank you all for that and we'll end this item of business just now just before we go and close the meeting the next meeting of this committee is on the 21st of May and we'll take evidence from the cabinet secretary on single-use carrier bags it's a instrument and from the chair of the scottish government's wild fisheries review so i've finished the meeting now