 shortly before we begin proceedings can I deal with an issue from earlier today? The Presiding Officer undertook to reflect on the point of order, which was raised during First Minister's questions by Stuart Maxwell as convener of the Education and Culture Committee on comments made by Ruth Davidson. Mr Maxwell's concerns related to Ruth Davidson's assertion at the education and culture committee had published a report The Presiding Officers have now had a chance to examine the official report of First Minister's Questions. Ruth Davidson was reflecting on a letter from the committee to the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, seeking her views on written evidence received during its inquiry on attainment. In doing so, Ruth Davidson described this as reporting back. She subsequently referred to the letter from the committee and the contents of that letter are not something for the Presiding Officers to rule on. We consider that the point has now been clarified and therefore we consider the matter to now be closed. I now turn to this afternoon's business. The first item of business this afternoon is a debate on motion number 13134 in the name of Richard Lochhead on the circular economy waste management. I invite members who wish to speak in this debate to press a request to speak buttons, and I call on Richard Lochhead to speak to and move the motion. Cabinet Secretary, a generous 14 minutes. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I'm pleased to be able to open today's debate, our first ever debate on the opportunities of a more circular economy for Scotland. This is the first time we're debating this important subject, and I'm certain, however, it won't be the last. In the traditional economy in which we live or have lived in the past, we take, we make and we dispose, we take resources from the ground, air or water, we make products and then we dispose of them. A circular economy is about retaining the value of our primary resources, designing, reusing, repairing and remanufacturing, and exploring new business models that support a more circular approach. We are getting better at disposing of goods in a way that lessens the impact on the environment. We are landfilling less, we are recovering energy, particularly from food waste, and we are recycling what we can. However, I think that we all accept that business, as usual, is not an option. We need to act now to put the value of our resources at the heart of Scotland's economy. Creating a circular economy in Scotland is an economic, environmental and moral necessity. It will create jobs in our communities, improve our quality of life and, of course, it's just good sense. New economic powers are emerging in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Korea and elsewhere. The climate is changing and the world's population is changing. Therefore, our demands for the world's resources are also changing. Globally, by 2030, we may need around 40 per cent more water, 80 per cent more steel and 33 per cent more energy just to give examples, some examples, of increasing demand. Commodity prices are more volatile these days and have increased, as we all know, sharply since 2000. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation identified a saving of £1.3 trillion globally if we move to a more circular economy. We are all politicians and we are politicians with the means to design and influence action in Scotland, as well as the rest of the UK and throughout Europe. Therefore, it is our responsibility to show as much leadership as we can in this important area. Last October, the Guardian newspaper identified five countries moving ahead of the pack on action when it comes to the circular economy. I'm pleased to say that Scotland stands alongside Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Japan in leading that pack. The Green Alliance, the UK environmental think tank, has also said that Scotland is a long way ahead of other parts of the UK in its policy support for resource productivity. We are all too familiar with products that seem to be designed to be discarded after relatively short use. That could be our mobile phones with their sealed casings or a washing machine sentenced to a very short life because the part that you need isn't available any more. Therefore, design for a circular economy is the first step. When a product has fulfilled its first life, reuse is almost always the preferred option. Reusing a product retains the embedded value of materials, the labour and the energy involved in making it in the first place and avoids the demand for new resources to create another new product. Repair is by no means a new concept. We wouldn't dream of scrapping a car just because the alternator goes, but how often have we replaced a TV, a vacuum cleaner or a coat or any other part of clothing because it's too difficult to get it repaired or fixed? Remanufacturer is when we take apart a product and rebuild it to the same or better standard as the original. In that context, new resources are avoided, and remanufacturing can be much less energy intensive than manufacturing a new product. In our traditional or linear economy, there is little incentive to make products reliable or easily repaired or design them so that valuable parts can be salvaged when they can't be repaired. The concept of a circular economy can be daunting, but it starts to make sense once you unpack it into visible, practical things that we can do. In January this year, the Green Alliance I referred to in the Scottish Council for Development Industry published a report identifying key opportunities for Scotland in particular sectors. Those include a potential £140 million opportunity, for instance, from simply converting whisky by-products into feed for the fish farming industry, or reusing steel from decommissioned oil and gas rigs instead of melting them down for recycling and that could cut associated carbon emissions by over 80 per cent. In March, I published a report setting out the potential value of remanufacturing to Scotland. Remanufacturing is already worth £1.1 billion in the Scottish economy, supporting around 17,000 jobs. With potential, however, to grow by £620 million by 2020 and create another 5,700 jobs. I was also privileged to recently open the fantastic New Scottish Institute for Remanufacture in Glasgow earlier this year, established with £1.3 million of support from Zero Waste Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council. That innovative centre will focus on innovation generally within remanufacturing, collaborative projects and establishing a remanufacturing community in Scotland. It is worth noting that it is only one of four such centres in the world, Singapore, New York and Beijing and the others. That is therefore the first in Europe. Scotland's reuse sector is also developing. The Revolve brand sets out standards and quality for reused goods in Scotland and is operated by Zero Waste Scotland with partners such as Community Recycling Network Scotland. Reuse is growing. Many of us will have bought used goods from eBay, Gumtree or elsewhere, so we are familiar with that. My officials do indeed tell me that there is a burgeoning industry in pre-loved luxury goods such as designer fashion and handbags. I take their word for it. It is not something that I get personal experience of, but it is another example of what is happening out there. With our rich heritage and textiles, Scotland is in a fantastic position to support the reuse sector. Only a few weeks ago, my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Eileen McLeod, attended an exhibition in her constituency where small companies, including Hamish Mash, eco-fashion, were displaying some very smart clothes. Whether it be the gear boxes that are manufactured by companies such as Mackey's, a family business in the east end of Glasgow, or computer hardware refurbished for reuse by re-technical bride or textiles up-cycled into desirable clothing in Dolbite, those are credible, sustainable businesses putting quality everyday products onto the market. Of course, they are doing so in a way that keeps materials circulating in their economy, reducing our reliance on new materials and new resources. That all complements the work already under way by Resource Efficient Scotland, bringing together support and energy water materials in a unique approach to help businesses in the public sector in Scotland. That represents substantial progress, which I intend to build upon by publishing a circular economy roadmap, bringing all those issues together in the next few months for consultation. That strategy will set out the opportunities that suit the characteristics of Scotland as a nation, upon which we will focus our efforts. The circular economy is about much more than recycling, but we are all familiar with recycling systems. Scotland, as we all know, has some of the most ambitious recycling targets, not just in the UK but elsewhere, and we are aiming to recycle 70 per cent of our waste by 2025, 10 years time. Recycling quality is as important as quantity, and low-quality, contaminated recycling is sold off cheaply and often abroad, and we have to address that. It becomes low-value commodities, and there is little motivation for householders to recognise the value in the products that they put in their recycling bins. We need high-value, clean recyclyt that can be kept in much higher-value use. One example of what is happening is Dry and Aquar, a small business in Midlothian that makes high-tech water filters from waste glass. I had the pleasure of visiting them, I think that it was about 18 months ago. Dry and Aquar is an amazing innovative Scottish company that has an international reputation, but they face a challenge in getting consistent, reliable sources of glass from our local authorities in sufficient quantities. Simultaneously, they are highlighting the opportunities of a more circular economy, however, and some of the challenges, of course, in making that transition. That is one reason why I recently established the Scottish Materials Brokerage Service. Despite the name, it is quite an exciting idea and will bring stability for Scottish organisations to what can be a volatile market. It is all about bringing together materials and the quantities that are required to attract reprocessing infrastructure to Scotland. Of all our local authorities and everyone else that is collecting those materials, we will go through the brokerage service, increase the volumes and, hopefully, will attract more of the reprocessing infrastructure to be built in Scotland by the commercial sector once they have the proper commercial volumes. That, in turn, would get a good deal in particular for local government when it comes to income. As I said, or as I was indicating, one of the priority materials for that new brokerage service is glass in order that we can support ambitious companies that we have in Scotland, like Dryden Aqua. It does not make sense that we are not having the right collection systems in place for our glass when, at the same time, we have companies in Scotland that want to create more jobs and do more business if they can get their hands on that glass, so that is why we are addressing those particular challenges. In the meantime, of course, there is also much to do to improve householder participation in recycling. I am very encouraged by the work that is taking place at the moment on the zero waste task force, which I co-chair with COSLA, the local government body. The task force has been considering how to reap the benefits of a more circular economy through the services that are provided by local government. It has agreed to develop a charter now for more consistent recycling collections in Scotland to improve participation and recycling rates, but it has also improved the quality of the recycling collected in the first place, the importance of which I indicated before. I cannot say too much more about that at the moment ahead of the final task force meeting in a few weeks' time. I am very hopeful that that will indeed be a very significant step forward for recycling in Scotland. We also have to remember, of course, that we have already picked the low-hanging fruit, and we need to upper game on recycling. Simply more of the same will not capture the recycling that is otherwise wasted. The questions often put to me whether the effort required to improve recycling outweighs the benefits, and whether securing energy from waste, for instance, might be the preferred option in some circumstances. It is quite important that I am clear about that, because where there is generally no better use for materials, using them to generate heat and energy is always better than simply putting those materials into landfill, big holes in the ground. Once we have truly embraced a more circular economy, there may be some materials for which there is really no further use, and the energy from waste will still be the only viable option. However, I believe that we are nowhere near that point at the moment. We do not want to direct materials down the waste hierarchy to disposal. We want to move them upwards towards reuse and waste prevention in the first place. Indeed, I think that we have to make effort to find the game changers that we now require that will create opportunities to do something better with our materials in this country. We have to be creative and we want those ideas to come forward. Recycling targets, based on tonnage, are pretty blunt instruments. Heavy materials score well on recycling rates, but they may not generate the greatest carbon benefits, and Zero Waste Scotland has now done some groundbreaking work on carbon metric for materials to help to shape our future efforts to capture those with the greatest carbon impact. In parallel, Zero Waste Scotland is also assessing the scale of carbon savings that a more circular approach in our economy could achieve, and we hope to publish that work in due course. We need to get the principles of circular economy out to a much wider audience. The Scottish Government is working with Young Scot, for instance, to organise a weekend event in June for young people to explore the concept of a circular economy. I am very much looking forward to hearing what our young people say and what comes out of that discussion. If anyone is going to come up with ideas and out-of-the-box ideas and game changers, hopefully it will be our young people. However, what will engage the public to the same extent as, say, the carrier bag charge that came into force last year? That is a question that we have to ask ourselves. The five-pence charge was the subject of a conversation up and down the country that affected everyone in this country, and we are now seeing between 80 and 90 per cent reduction in bag use in some stores in Scotland. The carrier bag charge is a small example of action towards a more circular economy. People are now reusing bags, rather than demanding a new one. Of course, they are recognising the value of the bags in the first place and the impact on both their pockets and the environment. What is the next big thing that will help us towards a circular economy? What will engage the people of Scotland in action? I do not know whether that is the answer, but this morning Zero Waste Scotland published a report on the feasibility of a deposit return scheme for Scotland. A deposit return scheme where you put in something that you have used—a bottle perhaps that then goes for recycling and then you get some of your money back—is deposit return perhaps the next thing in Scotland. It makes sense that we should consider those ideas. Deposit return schemes have worked in many countries throughout the world—Norway, Germany, Sweden—and even some schemes in Canada, the United States and elsewhere. Some of the benefits that we should consider seriously about deposit return schemes is the fact that it tackles litter as well as improving recycling, because the bottles and cans that we see in our streets and communities and our wider environment attach value to those, so that people can get money for them and then that will clear up Scotland's communities at the same time. Jamie McGregor Secretary for taking an intervention on that. Where is fisheries at? Is the oncoming question of discards coming in from the fishing industry going to add an extra element to the recycling issue? Our fishing industry is involved in a number of initiatives, particularly fishing for litter, which is not so much discards, but discards and the discard bans and the landing obligations that are already begun to come into force in Scotland pose challenges in dealing with the fish that is landed ashore that has to be dealt with that cannot be sold commercially, but I am confident that we will find sustainable good uses for that. That is certainly a waste issue, and there are wider waste issues in many of our industries that we have to address. The circular economy is a bit of an approach and a concept, and it is having an overarching approach to everything that is happening within Scotland's economy at the same time. The deposit return scheme, however, may be one big idea that we want to take forward. We will consider the outcome of the report that has been published this morning, and we will consult with business and the public, environmental organisations and others, as we decide how to take that forward. It may even be worthwhile, of course, as I plan to do speaking to the rest of the UK. Perhaps we should take a leap in Scotland and try and persuade the rest of the UK that if we do indeed decide to take this forward, we should do so in conjunction if we can persuade them to do so with the rest of the UK, which will help to address some of the big issues and some of the costs at the same time, so I will certainly open up those conversations with UK ministers elsewhere. The other ideas have been brought forward by people. The Spring 2015 edition of Zero Waste Scotland's excellent newsletter, Towards Zero, has a whole lot of ideas within it, line banks from WWF, moots whether we can do more with concepts such as universal adapters to help to avoid the mounting of useless cables and chargers that we all have at home, and there are many other ideas that have been brought forward as well. In conclusion, I encourage everyone in this chamber and in the Parliament, as well as, of course, the public and the rest of Scotland, to participate in this debate, hopefully recognise its importance, the future of Scotland's economy, to the environment and, indeed, Scotland's global role. I want to encourage the debate on social media to flush out ideas, and, of course, I want to find those game-changers speaking to people that can help to transform Scotland's traditional economy into a circular economy. I very much look forward to constructive and hopefully creative contributions from members across the chamber today. I now call on Claudia Beamish to speak to you and to move amendment 13134.2, please. Ten minutes or so. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I move our amendment to my name. I'm pleased that the Scottish Government has called this debate and that we will thus be able to focus on how to take forward the circular economy, identifying opportunities and how to break down barriers to progress. A debate such as this is an opportunity for members and others with an interest to learn from each other by listening as well. That should lead to a further clear action by the Scottish Government, local authorities, businesses and consumers. Scottish Labour is supportive of working towards a circular economy. We have been determined to address the challenges posed by waste and resources for many years. We bought in the first recycling targets in 2003, when Scotland relied on landfill for 91 per cent of its municipal waste, with deplorable levels of recycling at 4 per cent. In that context, I particularly look forward to the findings of the task force later on about the issue of recycling, which the Cabinet Secretary raised today. Working towards the circular economy is key to dealing with a number of imperatives that must be addressed here and globally, concerns about climate change and the contribution of methane from landfill, the increasing scarcity of resources and the need to preserve them and share them justly on a global and national basis, and energy-gaining, which we are recovering from waste food, as the Cabinet Secretary mentioned and in other ways. We will be supporting the Scottish Government motion today, and I look forward to the circular economy road map in the autumn and hope that people from across this chamber and across Scotland and beyond can contribute to that. Focusing on our amendment, before contributing to the exploration of the way forward, I want to highlight concerns about workers in the present waste and resource use industry, as expressed in Unison Scotland's survey of waste management staff, entitled Dumpton. Unison highlight the regulatory framework governing waste management in Scotland. It's paper notes, I quote, the amount of waste which will be required to be reused or recycling will continue to rise, particularly in relation to moving towards the circular economy. Concern is expressed that the concept of the circular economy on top of existing regulations will see budgets coming under further stress in the immediate future. Unison states, I quote again, that councils are already struggling to balance their budgets as they bear the brunt of cuts overall in expenditure. Within local government budgets, there is little sign—this is in the view of Unison—despite increasing regulatory pressure that councils seem in any way inclined to protect waste management spending. Waste management staff, they go on, are vital to any kind of civilised society, which I'm sure we all agree with. As we become more aware of the need to conserve resources, their functions are becoming more of a social and political issue. This is not being reflected in how they are funded or treated and most definitely not in how they are paid. That's the quote from them. I also want to highlight the present recycling targets. 23 councils in Scotland failed to meet the Scottish Government target recycling 50 per cent of household waste by 2013. Can the cabinet secretary explain ways in his closing remarks in which the Scottish Government is supporting the requirements placed on local authorities now for waste management and, as we move towards a circular economy, both to better support workers in the industry and to achieve targets that necessitate a shift in operational practices? In the Rural Affairs Committee, starting in October of 2013, we have given attention to understanding the circular economy, which I admit I had no idea about until that time. Leading to a letter and a response from the cabinet secretary last year, we heard from Professor Stahl of the Product Life Institute about a new economic model. He gave the example of Rolls-Royce, which I quote, changed from a model of selling engines and spare parts to selling power by the hour. Under the new model, you could make profits by prevention. Basically, you could keep engines running so that you ensure that you have the lowest possible repair and maintenance costs. Once you have done it, you are much better off, but the changeover is difficult. That is where Government's advice and support is essential. Scotland's zero waste safeguarding Scotland's resources blueprint for a more resource-efficient and circular economy will be helpful in this regard, and its 20-point action plan must underpin the way forward. Then, in May of last year, our committee focused on stakeholders, and this further informed our understanding and thinking. To focus on one of the issues raised, we heard evidence that, I quote from our own report, public procurement offers a good opportunity to stimulate the design of the circular products and support the uptake of different approaches to the provision of services, for example, through leasing, lending, repair and remanufacturing. Now that the Procurement Reform Act has been passed for many months, it would be helpful to hear from the Cabinet Secretary about the development of the work of the Scottish Government's procurement professionals and waste policy team, as he stated in his letter to our committee in August of last year. That, I quote, they will work closely together to examine opportunities and support the application of relevant sections of the Act of Future Procurements. The circular economy has also been taken forward by the catalytic work of organisations and groupings beyond government, such as the Aldersgate Group and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The Foundation has made a significant contribution to the way forward and the analysis of that way in a series of papers. The paper Towards a Circular Economy, Economic and Business Rational for an Accelerated Transition provides in real terms an exploration of how to achieve this change in perspective for businesses and consumers. Calling the next five years the pioneer phase, it dissects the circular economy success stories to find their common enabling factors. Under the current linear model, businesses are at risk of supply disruptions, soaring resource prices and volatile levels of demand and competition. A circular economy paints a much more promising picture for both businesses and the consumer. Change in design will result in an increase in product choice and convenience and a reduction in material and warranty costs, and, of course, the environmental benefits. Scottish Enterprise has a strong role to play in helping Scotland to become a world leader, and the committee heard from them as well. The economic opportunities are irrefutable, as evidenced by Ellen MacArthur Foundation's circular economy 100 members, which include many big household names in retail, the automotive industry and design. The importance of support for product development cannot be emphasised enough. Around 80 per cent of a product's environmental impact is decided by its very design. We must move away from technological obsolescence. Designing for regeneration will require new materials to be used, such as biological ingredients that can eventually return to the biosphere. Otherwise, products must be developed with increasing modularity, optimised for a cycle of disassembly and remanufacturing. This step and shift towards selling performance is an exciting opportunity for innovation. Studies show that taking up this opportunity could be financially worthwhile. Waste prevention charity, WRAP, states that a rapid development of the circular economy activity could create around half a million jobs and reduce unemployment to around 120,000 by 2030. Furthermore, those jobs were geographically spread across the country, particularly in places where higher numbers of unemployed people are living still, where manufacturing industry sites once thrived. Our amendment emphasises also that new skills will need to be developed and innovation is already happening in Scottish further and higher education, I'm pleased to say. The University of Strathclyde's new industrial biotechnology facility is leading the way in research to innovate in industry and invigorate it in manufacturing. To ensure continuing professional development for designers, Education Scotland aimed to provide design residencies. Designers will gain understanding of the challenges of waste recovery and to embed the circular theory into their work. That knowledge will assist in designing products to be resources, rather than to throw away goods. Education Scotland is also working with the Allen MacArthur Foundation to ensure that the necessary skills are identified for the curriculum for excellence in our schools. That will link with eco schools. I hope that there will be new projects for the circular economy even in our primary schools. Primary and secondary schools are engaging with renewable technologies, and STEM subjects are being encouraged by the Scottish Government and others. Professor Stahl told the rural affairs committee that the problem is partly one of education and values. We come to the philosophy of how we should educate young people to define their basic needs and to focus on quality. Support for behaviour change on a society-wide scale and to develop community commitment and consumer awareness is essential if we are to succeed together to develop the circular economy with all its benefits. That is one of the 20 actions in the Scottish Government's zero waste plan. If we can all work together to implement them all, we will indeed become a world leader in the circular economy, and that will be to the benefit of everybody. Thank you. Thank you very much. I now call on Jamie MacGregor to speak to and move amendment 134.17. I am pleased to take part in the debate, and I thank those organisations for their useful briefings in advance of the debate, including Viridore, the Scottish Retail Consortium, Sainsbury's and the Packaging Recycling Group of Scotland. I think that all of us can agree fully with the concept of a circular economy and the simple common sense of the idea that products and materials should be kept in high value use for as long as possible. The whole developed world must reassess how it uses our planet's resources and look again at our culture and attitudes towards waste. As Sir John Beddington, the chief scientific adviser to the UK Government, talked about a perfect storm coming in relation to demand on energy and water and food security. The current reality is that if everyone on the planet lived like the average European, we would need three planets to live on. Our earth's resources can only be expected to be under greater pressure in the years ahead as the global population rises. Developing countries become more developed, and we see a continued growth in the international middle classes who want the most modern consumer goods and an ever higher quality of life. Indeed, it is estimated that there will be three billion of those new, wealthier consumers by 2050. That is an incredible thought. We recognise the work being done by the Scottish Government to develop the circular economy and the good work being undertaken by many Scottish businesses, charities and individuals, including in my region of the Highlands and Islands. We also recognise the potentially significant economic benefits to Scotland of moving to a circular economy. DEFRA, for example, has estimated that the rolling out of an anaerobic digestion technology to treat food waste in the UK could create 35,000 jobs. There is also considerable scope for job creation through the re-manufacture and refurbishment of goods. The decommissioning of oil and gas installations in Scotland has the potential to create a substantial number of jobs as well. The Scottish retail sector is to be commended for the real progress that it is making in improving resource efficiency, reducing waste and moving towards a circular economy. We recently debated the SRC's excellent, a better retailing climate, driving resource efficiency in Scotland strategy in this chamber, and it seems clear that other sectors can learn from its good practices and its examples. Sainsbury's briefing for today has talked about reducing waste in the home through their improvements in packaging, for example introducing resealable packaging to reduce food waste and improving labelling guidance for home freezing, advising customers to freeze as soon as possible up to the use-by-date instead of freeze on the day of purchase. There are also both current pressures and real challenges ahead for businesses working within the waste management sector and barriers that prevent other companies being able to take actions that are part of the circular economy. I am delighted that Veridor, which works with 96 per cent of Scottish local authorities, has announced £357 million of Scottish investment in the last 18 months as part of an overall investment package of £500 million in Scotland. Veridor is however quite correct to warn that the declines in the value of commodities on global markets presents a very big challenge for sustaining progress made to date and achieving the 2020 sector targets. In addition, they highlight that the UK's recycling technology and systems are ageing rapidly and that a new economic realism is required if we are to make further progress. Ministers need to heed the stark warnings from Veridor and address those concerns. On the subject of the Scottish Government's recycling targets, I am always reminded of an Invernesha constituent, who was also a councillor at that time, who was to scream at me, no targets without markets, because he made the point that it was all very well wanting to recycle, but you had to have somewhere you could recycle things. I do have some sympathy with that. I think that economic realism is also necessary when these thoughts are being had. My amendment simply seeks to put down a marker that seeks to avoid any additional excessive regulation and costs falling on to the private sector. Efficient regulation is also something mentioned as being very important by Veridor, and the SRC refers to a number of regulatory barriers that can preclude innovation. We need to avoid any more regulatory barriers and costs, so I hope that all MSPs can support my amendment on this. The recommendations made by the Rural Affairs Committee to the Cabinet Secretary last May are useful. The committee was right to highlight the challenges in developing a collaborative approach when we have 32 local authorities and numerous businesses and third sector organisations involved, many taking very different approaches. Support for partnership working and co-operation is important. The Cabinet Secretary talked about UK co-operation. That would be good. The committee is also correct to highlight that the skills development is vital, which Claudia Beamish's amendment rightfully focuses on. To suggest embedding the concept of the circular economy within the school curriculum and the university sector as part of the necessary overall raising of public awareness of the circular economy is a brilliant idea. Again, the Scottish Conservatives welcome the debate, and I move the amendment in my name. At this stage, we have some time in hand for interventions. I can also give members speeches of up to seven minutes. Graham Day, to be followed by Clare Baker. Jan Patocknick, the European Commission for the Environment, I think set the scene for the move to a circular economy perfectly when he observed, the soft laws of economics are coming against the hard laws of physics as we hit physical resource restraints. We are beginning to see tomorrow's growth will depend on making the environment part of our economic policy and making the transition now in a managed way rather when we hit limits, tipping points and catastrophes. Against that backdrop, surely it is therefore welcome that Scotland is recognised as being at the forefront of the circular economy movement in the UK and recognised internationally as one of the early movers. Dustin Benton of the Green Alliance, which earlier this year published a circular economy, Scotland Report, put it, Scotland is a long way ahead of other parts of the UK and its policy support for resource productivity and is in a strong position to develop the technologies needed to capture high value, innovative manufacturing opportunities in the circular economy. However, in a global, never mind UK sense, given how far we have to go and the obstacles to be overcome, it would be realistic to acknowledge that we are still at the baby step stage in terms of progressing to having a truly circular economy. Although it is a quite exciting prospect lying in front of us, the Rural Affairs Committee, during its extended and extensive evidence gathering on the circular economy, heard of the opportunity for different approaches to the provision of services, for example, through leasing, lending, repair and remanufacturing, all of which were very interesting. I was particularly struck by the leasing option, not least of all because, in some regards, it would represent a return to a bygone era, rather like the cabinet secretary's mention of a possible bottle deposit return scheme. I recall as a youngster in Aberdeen in the late 1960s that my parents leased their television set. It was quite widespread practice then. Compare and contrast that with nowadays, when many households have purchased widescreen TVs, littering multiple family rooms and, in many cases, bedrooms, then think of the recycling centres full of the scarbrid sets as we move on to the next craze. A major cultural change will be required to turn the clock back, as it were. I suspect it absolutely. I am grateful because this extends the conversation. Mr Don, we cannot hear you unless you face your microphone. I am sorry, Presiding Officer, I must turn to you with the member behind me. This extends the conversation that I had over at the lunch table, because my recollection of those early TV sets was that they were leased, because buying them would have been silly because they were so unreliable. Interestingly, we have now got to the point where we want to send them back, because we want the latest version. I think that the model has changed. As I said, it is a major cultural change that will be required to turn the clock back, as it were. There will be resistance, no doubt about that, but we absolutely need to pursue that. In terms of repair and remanufacturing, there are certainly merits, but again, challenges. We will need to get supermarkets and high street electrical retailers to buy into that concept in order to reverse an ingrained attitude. They would have to be prepared to provide good-quality products that last longer and are easy to repair rather than the bargain deals that they currently offer on certain appliances. If they do not, what motivation is there for the public to change behaviour if they can replace items ranging from large kitchen goods down to microwaves, kettles and so on, for relatively little? I highlight those points not as a discouragement to the concept, rather I am noting what steps will be required to bring about a major but necessary cultural change, because acceptance of the concept of technological obsolescence, or it would be cheater just to buy a new one, pervades our daily lives. Look at the scramble for the next smartphone or tablet device. How many of us actually have repair contracts on our kitchen appliances or when the TV goes on the blink, do not just instinctively say, we will just need to buy another one. Zero waste Scotland has estimated that within the 150,000 tonnes of potentially reuse of items that are currently going to landfill, 9,800 tonnes of that is made up of washing machines, and overall 51 per cent of items at recycling centres could be reused after only a minor repair. That shows just how ingrained in our society the premise of buying sometimes only to replace items when they break down or when a new model comes along actually is. It was good to hear on the committee of the Hewitt Packard factory in Scotland, which is designed to reuse and remanufacture computers and hardware from Northern Europe. It was also welcome to learn of the £3.8 million loan fund jointly managed by Zero Waste and Scottish Enterprise to support circular economy businesses. Companies and projects such as these are one of the ways Scotland is leading the way in the UK in terms of circular economy, as I mentioned at the beginning of my speech. However, there are other developments. The Scottish Government was the first national government to be a member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's circular economy 100 programme. In October of last year, as we have heard, the 5P plastic bag charge was introduced, and indications are that that is proving extremely successful. As we have heard again in January, the cabinet secretary opened the Scottish Institute of Remanufacture, which is only one of only four in the world in the first in Europe. It is actions such as those that have led to Scotland being described as a long way ahead of other parts of the UK. We already have a reuse and remanufacturing sector that employs 23,000 people all told. The remanufacturing industry is worth £1.1 billion to the Scottish economy alone, and by 2020 it could grow by up to £620 million, adding another 5,700 jobs to the mix. There are scopes to exploit the wider sector of opportunities that exist. We have established industries such as oil and gas and food and drink, whose by-products and waste provide great opportunities to reuse and recycle. For example, the circular economy Scotland report identifies a potential £150 million business opportunity in converting whisky by-products to fish feed. It also suggests that carbon emissions from melting steel, from decommissioning gas and oil rigs could be reduced by 80 per cent if the steel is reused. We hear that an estimated £50 million worth of gold could potentially be wasted in Scotland through the disposal of electronic items such as computers and phones over the next five years. There is another opportunity to make progress, so we are well placed here in Scotland to move to a circular economy. However, whilst Governments can drive, incentivise and encourage change, we as individuals have to buy into this and deliver a societal shift. To secure buy-in, we need to raise awareness. If nothing else, I hope that there is something to raise awareness of a necessary step that Scotland and the rest of the world has to take. Presiding Officer, I am pleased to speak in this afternoon's debate and to be part of the move to promote and build a circular economy. This commitment has been developed over the years of the Scottish Parliament, starting with the national waste strategy in 2003, with a focus on increasing the levels of municipal recycling and waste reduction. We have moved increasingly from targets to the introduction of regulations to act as levers to deliver more progress. We are now seeing an increasing focus on a circular economy that presents big challenges. As the cabinet secretary said, it does also present many opportunities. Scotland has done well in many of the domestic targets, the behaviour of many households has changed for the positive, supported by local authorities waste management plans. Although 23 local authorities did not manage to meet the Scottish Government target of recycling 50 per cent of household waste by 2013, we need to consider what the reasons were for that. We have seen progress. We are seeing more and more businesses driven by demands on their energy and their production costs, making positive changes to their use of resources. Other members might have received an email from Sains Bidys and we also had a briefing from the Scottish Retail Consortium, which would demonstrate their commitment to a circular economy. We have seen fantastic effort from many of our supermarkets in accepting their responsibility to address some of those challenges. There are substantial economic and environmental gains to be got from the promotion of a circular economy, but it requires much more collective action from all the partners, including our HE and FE sectors, as we improve the design and make sure that we have the right skills base to deliver. I will recognise progress, but I believe that we need to have a more honest debate about what the options are going forward if we are to achieve a circular economy. To return to the council targets, I had a round-table discussion with council leaders a while back and I was amazed at the complexity of waste management, the contracts that local authorities are already tied into, the waste that was high value that could sell, combined with the waste that they are having to pay others to take away. The economics of waste is not something that we fully appreciate. I welcome the cabinet secretary's comments today about a new brokerage service as I step in the right direction, but I also heard Jamie McGregor's comments from Vidador and the concerns that they are raising around infrastructure. The responsibility for a lot of that going forward lies with local authorities and they are facing substantial strains on their funding over the next five, a few years, leading to the kind of tensions that are described in the Dumpton report from Unison. Of course, a fully functioning circular economy gives greater value to waste and some of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation report starts to recognise this and suggest ways forward. If we look at the infrastructure that everyone is working with, I would like to ask the Government for assurances that we have this right, because I am not sure that we do. As an example, two years ago, Avondale advanced waste treatment closed its state-of-the-art recycling facility. It was officially opened the previous year by the cabinet secretary. At the time, the company director said that the decision was taken in light of the weak economy, increased operating costs, the reduction in volume and market value of recyclates and the lack of strategic fatalities to handle the refuse-derived fuel. That was from a sector magazine that you could probably tell about the technicality of the language, but the stress is that that was a state-of-the-art that was open for a year and it had to close because of problems with economic problems, as well as the availability to feed the centre, even though it was a state-of-the-art centre. That situation does not seem to be changed because that centre has never reopened. A few years ago, in 2002, when the committee took evidence on RPP2 on the zero-way strategy, progress was reckoned, but a number of issues were raised, some by James Curran, who then was the chief executive of SIPA, who argued that there was a need to take a more national and strategic approach to the development of infrastructure to support the zero-way plan. There is a tension between the desire for small-scale infrastructure and a drive towards reduction, which is favoured by many, and the sheer scale of the national waste challenge that we face and the lack of a national infrastructure to manage it. The Government set the targets and the regulations, but it is local authorities, businesses and communities that are trying to deliver, and other countries have taken a much more national approach to their infrastructure needs. I would like to know more about the Government's view of that. Another example, the Coca-Cola bottling plant in East Kilbride is a zero-waste to landfill site, and it has a good UK record. To achieve that, it had to invest heavily in its own recycling infrastructure and equipment, as neither the public or the private sector could meet their needs or standards. Currently, waste from the Scottish plant is taken to a central plant that is owned by Coca-Cola in England. Are we confident that the recycling and waste industry in Scotland is of a high enough standard to raise the value of waste, which is key to that effective circular economy? It is one of the most difficult sectors for SIPA to monitor, and the UNISN report that was dumped on also talks about being one of the most hazardous occupations in the UK. The cabinet secretary might want to say a bit more about what they are doing to raise standards in the sector to support the circular economy. I would also like to say a bit about a social enterprise called Castle Repaint, which was based in Glenrothes and Fife. Castle Repaint diverted water-based paint from landfill, turning it into a top-quality emulsion and a range of colours. Each year, over 300 million litres of paint, retail and trade, are sold in the UK. Of this, it is estimated that 50 million litres are unused, either stored in homes or garages, or just thrown away. Although there are opportunities to reuse or donate paint, there are still gallons that are going to landfill and through the waste management centres. The repaint project was then able to remove paint from this linear journey and turn it into a new product. It was an excellent example of a circular economy. They were creative and innovative descriptions that were valued by the cabinet secretary. They also provided training and skills opportunities to previously unemployed young people benefiting the wider economy. It was then so disappointing when the enterprise had to close due to the lack of viability of the project. There were a few reasons that were identified for that. One was the constraints of public procurement. As a small social enterprise, they were not in a position to bid for the big public contracts. While they could have provided for our cluster of primary schools, for example, the volume required to meet public contracts excluded them. Although the driver for the value of our money for the taxpayer is important, the bigger contract gives the best deal for local authorities, and public bodies are often collectively bidding. However, that does not recognise additional value that something like repaint could provide its contribution to the circular economy, its training and skills opportunities and its ability to support the regeneration of communities. They also talked about the difficulty of achieving something like if 10 per cent of the paint needs to be recycled and built into a public contract. I feel that public procurement needs to deliver more in those areas to support those kinds of enterprises. Also, in the case of castle repaint, it was difficult for them to be commercial. A commercial contract with any of the big DIY companies would have left them vulnerable. It was so frustrating because everyone recognised that they had an excellent project. They were here in the Parliament for a week on a stall, and in so many ways what they were doing was fantastic, but they just couldn't get a break. That project failed because the systems were operating against them. This afternoon, I am sure, will be a very interesting debate. We have and we continue to make progress, but in many ways the earliest progress is the easiest, and we need to have a much broader debate about how we achieve a truly circular economy. I thank you very much, and I call Dave Thompson to be followed by Cara Helton. What an opportunity, a chance to talk rubbish. Indeed, some may say that that is my norm. I have always been a fan of the circular economy, and when I was director of protective services for Highland Council, one of my responsibilities was waste management. My head of waste management was Hendy Pollock, who happens to be in the public gallery today, along with fellow environmental colleagues Andy Little, Brian Donut and John Herman, who have travelled from the north, especially to listen to this very exciting debate. Actually, they were here already for a long-established lunch with me, but while at the truth, spoil a good story. It was Hendy who drummed into my head the three ars, reduced, reused and recycled. He and his colleagues have all been recycled into retirement, where I must admit that they add great value to their local communities. The modern notion of the circular economy has deep-rooted, difficult to pinpoint origins, but it is not really new. When I was alone in Lossy in the 50s and 60s, we wasted nothing, and I still hate waste. Food scraps went to the hens, and what the hens didn't eat went into the midden, and this, in turn, went into the ground as compost. Wrapping paper and string were carefully preserved and used again. Clothes were patched and handed down. Rags went to the raggy manny who gave a balloon or toy to us loons and coins in exchange. Everything was repaired and reused, if at all possible. I made my first bike from bits that I collected from the local dump. Only problem was that I could not find any brakes, so I used the sole of my shoe against the front tyre. That taught me about friction and rapid wear, as the sole of my shoe soon had a hole in it. My mother was not too pleased. Either about the shoe or the fact that I had been scavenging in the dump. It is just as well—she did not know that I also collected lemonade and beer bottles from the dump—washed them in the River Lossy and redeemed them, deposit return, at the local grocers. The grocer must have thought that my father was a secret alcoholic, as I told the grocer that I got all the bottles at home. After the golden era of the original circular economy, we arrived at the disposable economy and built in obsolescence. My first experience of that was in the 60s with a small, cheap but excellent camera. After a good bit of usage, the button for the shutter jammed. I took it apart, and I found that the part of the button inside the camera had inbuilt serrations, which were designed to damage the body of the camera and make it jam after a certain amount of use. That taught me that capitalism has only one overriding purpose—to make a profit. Therefore, if we are to get capitalists to embrace the circular economy, we must show them that it is more profitable, as legislation forcing change will never succeed on its own. The general principle of a circular economy is one that is restorative by design and which aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times. There are different schools of thought, such as regenerative design, performance economy and the blue economy. It all sounds good, but what does it mean in practical terms? Significant amounts of fossil fuels are used in fertilisers, farm machinery, processing and through the supply chain. A more integrated food and farming system would reduce the need for fossil fuel-based inputs and capture more of the energy value of byproducts and manures. The circular economy would also increase employment, which would help to fast-track use of more circular business models and assist with our use of renewable energy in the longer term. The World Economic Forum's circular economy initiative has outlined three programmes to accelerate transition to a circular economy and involves more than 30 global companies. Focusing on plastic packaging, paper and paper board and asset tracking, they aim to advance collaboration across major supply chains during 2015 in order to address current bottlenecks and leakages. For instance, annual material demand for polyester, which is used in plastic bottles in the textile industry, totals about 54 million tonnes, of which roughly 86 per cent leaks out of the system. It is estimated that nearly £2.8 billion in value could be created from better use of polyester alone. In addition, the total annual production of paper and paper boards will amount to about 480 million tonnes in 2020. Some 130 million of those tonnes leak out of the system, which the mainstream programme wishes to address, and would amount to a value of around £7 billion. Asset tracking is very interesting and seeks to develop a design and implementation toolkit that includes technology choice, consumer incentives and collaborative information sharing to address the information gaps. It prevents better decision making on what to do with a product when a first user is finished with it. Globally, consumer electronics and household appliances, with a cumulative value of roughly £270 billion, reach end-life each year. Asset tracking could help unlock a potential value of about £37 billion annually in these sectors alone through more reuse, remanufacturing and recycling. Jamie MacGregor mentioned anverness councillor, and I know who he means, who told him that there should be no targets without markets. He was not actually from Inverness, he was from the west, Kyle, I think. However, his point was this. When I took over as director of protective services with Highland Council, we were collecting paper separately from the main waste collection to go for recycling ostensibly, but at that time there was no market for paper. What was happening? We were spending a huge amount of money separately collecting paper to take it down to the local dump and dump it. Myself, Hendy and his colleagues put a stop to that, because it was a gross waste of money. In conclusion, we have much to gain, both environmentally and economically, from the circular economy. I hope that the motion and the amendments get a unanimous support this evening. I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to today's debate on the circular economy, in particular to speak in support of Scottish Labour's amendment. There is absolutely no doubt that exploiting the opportunities of the circular economy could present a tremendous boost to both our local and national economies, to job creation, to our environment and to our wellbeing. At a time when we face huge environmental challenges, Scotland's future has got to be a sustainable one, and the principle that resources and material should be kept in use for as long as they can must be central to our thinking and to our practice. Maximising the value and sustainability of our finite and precious resources and ensuring that goods and products are designed with this in mind and other members have highlighted some good examples here—repairing, reusing, remanufacturing and recycling. We support the move towards a circular economy because, quite simply, the current model of resource consumption is simply unsustainable. However, Scottish Labour's amendment today also highlights some of the pressures that are being experienced by those working in waste management services, and those have been highlighted, too, by Claudia Beamish and Claire Baker. As we move towards a more circular economy, I think that it is important, too, that we think about the knock-on effect on the people on the front line working to help make that happen. Unison Scotland's survey, which was dumped on working in Scotland's waste management services, tells us a story of increasing work pressures as council budgets have been squeezed and the demands of the job changed and grow. Many working in the sector are quite simply working harder for less, but the new initiatives that are being embraced are making their jobs more demanding than ever for less reward. On top of that, to quote the Unison report directly, rubbish is a risky business. The health and safety executive report that, between 2004 and 2012, 97 workers and 19 members of the public lost their lives and almost 4,000 employees suffered major injuries. Working in waste management and recycling is one of the UK's most dangerous occupations. The health and safety executive themselves have said that the action is needed to address, and I quote the terrible toll of death, injury and ill health in the waste and recycling industry. It is a huge concern to me that, at a time of rapid change in this industry, very little accounts have been taken of the health and safety risk. I would echo Clare Baker's request for the cabinet secretary to look at this area a bit more. Today's debate is certainly much wider than recycling and managing waste. I think that we should really need to look at the knock-on effect of people working on the front line. Ambitious targets will be difficult to reach if they are not properly funded and if staff are demoralised, if they are not properly valued and rewarded for the vital work that they do. I hope that members will be supporting Scottish Labour's amendment today and that we can look further at this area, because staff working in waste management are providing an essential service to us all. I think that it is time that they had the recognition that they deserve. Members, I have referred to the numerous briefings that we received for today's debate, and I was really impressed by the work that Sainsbury's has said that they are doing to drive change in this area. Sainsbury's have highlighted that they do not send any waste at all to landfill as part of the 20x20 sustainability plan, which commits them to putting all waste to positive use. Initiatives such as that from retailers are extremely welcome, not just encouraging customers to reuse and recycle by providing recycling facilities for a wide range of household goods from batteries and light bulbs to books and even Easter egg packaging, but looking at all the materials that are used in their operations right throughout the supply chain, refurbishing furniture and shop for shelfing, shopping trolleys and food crates, all positive steps to address waste and resource efficiency and help to progress and drive the circular economy. I am not going to use up all my time today, so in summing up the harsh reality in Scotland and across the world is that there is ever increasing demand for what our finite resources are. While embracing the circular economy will make Scotland more sustainable and it does offer us significant opportunities, I think that we have also got to recognise too that it is not a miracle solution either. If everyone in the world consumed natural resources at the rate that we do in Scotland, then we would need almost three planets to support us and not just the one. Yet from the food that we eat to the air that we breathe, the shopping that we do, the fuel that we consume, the water that we drink, we rely on a healthy planet to lead our lives. So I think that it is absolutely vital that, as well as embracing the circular economy, the Scottish Government considers to what more can be done to encourage Scots to consume less, to consume better and to reduce their impact on the planet and ensure that it has a sustainable future. I think that it is well recognised that Scotland has already recognised internationally as an early mover towards a more circular economy. I would like to look at some of the issues that are deep in the root of that, particularly because it is about reducing the amount of energy that we use and it is about making sure that we carry out the activities of recycling and the circular economy at a scale that will allow it to be efficient. Clearly some of those are much more local than others and it interests me in the kind of debate that we have had already with people that we are concerned about the local authority workers who are working in the areas such as this and in private firms. I wonder whether local authorities, as such, could take a leaf out of those in countries such as Norway where they have their own companies to make their own electricity from hydro, in most cases, with an income from that. However, why cannot local authorities in this country undertake commercial activity such as anaerobic digestion? We have various aspects of that in trial in the country, but it is usually on-farm anaerobic digestion. It would be far more easy to do that, much like it is to recycle the waste from gardens at a municipal level. I believe that there could be firms to do that if it is possible under the powers of general competence for local authorities to take that approach. I think that that would be a very good thing indeed. At the present time, the circular economy report that shows why Scotland's an early mover has given us the opportunity to assess what it is that we need to do to take that forward in a more general sense. When we have heard previous speeches about remanufacturing activity in Scotland, that is perhaps one of the most exciting and early ones. I understand from reports on that that the best areas for recycling and remanufacturing are in energy issues, in automotive, in ICT, in mobile electronics and in medical equipment. We can see that those are products that are shared around the world but which are possible to recycle here and that we have the technology, as they say, to do that. Remanufacturing in Scotland is dominated by the aerospace maintenance, repair and overhaul sector. In addition to this sector, the top four sectors include energy, rail and automotive, as I said. Those are considerable opportunities that I do not think we should pass up the opportunity to deal with. When I look at the way in which recycling has operated, and then on to remanufacturing, we realise that when people assess what we are doing, the carbon trust and the knowledge transfer network published a report in March this year pointing to the Scottish Institute of Remanufacturing as a model of good practice for the UK, stating that the rest of the UK is lagging behind on remanufacturing. When the cabinet secretary talked about us working with partners beyond those shores and in our neighbours to the south, for example, he is talking sense. In some respects, there are particular elements that can be recycled properly in that fashion. It is also a fact that we have the European Union looking at a recycling policy at this present time. Indeed, their original policy was not backed by people because it was seen as being too unambitious. The commission is due to publish a new approach later this year. The scenario is that ambitious member states could and should work together to make the most of the opportunities from a more circular economy so as to give others a lead. It does not mean that you have to approve of the concept of Europe, although I understand that most parties believe that the market is something that they would wish to be part of, but agreeing those Europe-wide measures would deliver economies of scale and support the remanufacturing repair and recycling markets. Guaranteing a supply of suitable products for a circular economic system increases financial returns from collection systems and gives businesses the confidence to invest in remanufacturing and reprocessing infrastructure or to use second-life components or materials. Those were arguments that were originally produced in April earlier last month in business screen, but they are part of that view in Europe that sees Scotland in a clear leading position. We already have excess of the European requirements in several of the areas of recycling. The landfill ban on biodegradable waste in Scotland has that and the separately corrected recyclates. By comparison, the UK Government has no recycling targets apart from the EU 2020 target. That is one of the issues that crops up again in terms of the constitution, because there are reserved and devolved issues that affect us. On traditional waste management issues, most devolved powers are devolved to Scotland, but as policy broadens into the circular economy, some reserved areas become more important. EU negotiations are of course reserved, and Scottish ministers can assist, but Whitehall calls shots and has not ever put this cabinet secretary into a position of taking a lead on Britain's behalf. Perhaps that is something that could change. At most national taxation reserves, Scotland could not create a carrier bag tax but was able to require retailers to charge. Product standards are reserved. Scotland cannot require particular products sold in Scotland to have a set recycled content or minimum guarantee period, but it could require public bodies to set such criteria in their procurement. Product labelling is reserved. Deposit return studies identifies that this is an issue that we would need to resolve with the UK as part of any future scheme. We can see that there are issues that we need to have good intergovernmental co-operation on. I believe that that is the kind of practical things that new discussions about the settlement that is being worked out for, the devolution of Smith powers, should be looking at as well, because they actually are ones that are quite easy to agree and have a tremendously beneficial effect in terms of the development of the circular economy. I welcome the opportunity to support the Government's motion this afternoon in the hope that this debate increases awareness of the circular economy throughout Scotland. We can see that, as a society, Scotland is becoming increasingly aware of our impact on the environment and the need to look after the finite resources that we all depend on. Every day, at home and at work, we all use and dispose of those resources, and too many of those resources end up being sent to landfill. In my constituency alone, an estimated £500 million is spent every year by Falkirk Council on sending resources to landfill that could have been recycled. I use the word resource deliberately to highlight that Scotland needs a cultural change to achieve a circular economy. It is not waste or rubbish or excess packaging that we throw away but a valuable resource that takes time, energy and money to recreate. I believe that more can and will be done to bring Scotland closer to a zero-waste country with a circular economy. Credit must be given to the Scottish Government for the huge progress that it has made towards its goals to date. The Scottish Government's focus on the economic and environmental opportunities of better resource management has, as we know, led to the creation of a national waste brokerage service. It has also highlighted the importance of international co-operation as a circular economy requires changes to the material supply chains of national as well as multinational companies. The use of Scottish Enterprise and Zero Waste Scotland to support a wide range of companies in development of new markets for waste materials and products and the use of public procurement as a tool to increase the market for refurbished and re-manufactured products all clearly indicate that the Scottish Government's approach to the circular economy is much more than just domestic recycling rates. The leadership that our Government has shown in this area has led to the international community, recognising Scotland as being at the forefront of the circular economy movement in the UK, as the cabinet secretary alluded to in his opening statement. I am delighted to hear that the Scottish Government will continue this leadership and share its hope for the forthcoming more ambitious European Commission's revised proposals for an EU circular economy strategy later this year. Within my constituency, the amount of waste collected has decreased over the last five years, and of the waste produced, more than 50 per cent of it is now recycled or composted, so we have met our target. That has dramatically cut the amount of waste that we have thrown away into landfill sites. However, we must continue to improve on this and work towards a truly zero-waste country. I believe that it is the job of the Scottish Government and all of us as MSPs, as well as our local authorities, to show leadership in this area and continually provide pragmatic solutions to improve waste management. I welcome and support the Scottish Government's progress with a circular economy. I believe that, at the moment, there is a limited connection with the local authorities process of collection waste and the process of remanufacturing those resources to create a circular economy, although my own local authority very much has the circular economy on its radar. Above all, we have to make the connection at a cultural level and recognise that everything that we use and throw away is a resource that has a value. We must introduce into the mindset of every citizen that we must preserve, capture and use resources wherever possible, which makes both environmental and economic sense. It is hoped that those points will form part of the Scottish Government's plans to move away from the traditional linear economy of make, use and dispose to an economy that recovers and regenerates products and materials at the end of each service life. Simply put, an economy where resources are used for a short term, disposed of and new resources introduced, is completely unsustainable. We must address that through greater resource efficiency where waste is minimised and by reusing, repairing, remanufacturing and recycling products and materials again and again. We can ensure a more circular economy, which my own local authority Falkirk Council rightly acknowledges in its zero waste strategy for 2012 to 2022. That has long-term benefits for business as well. It is recognised that Scottish businesses can save over £1.4 billion simply by being more resource efficient. We have to make sure that Scotland gets its fair share of the £1.3 trillion global benefit that the creating of circular economies can bring. The Scottish Government has set out its zero waste plan, which establishes a vision for a zero waste society and aims to bring a step change in the way that we use resources in Scotland. The zero waste plan is supported by ambitious climate change legislation and I hope that equally ambitious legislation to promote a circular economy and support action by businesses, householders and local authorities, not just to recycle and reduce waste but to improve their efficient use of resources. The materials captured from recycling offer many business opportunities from recycling, reprocessing and manufacturing, but to achieve a zero waste country needs commitment and resolve from each and every one of us. Already in our communities, people are taking action to prevent waste and use resources more efficiently. These are the champions of change and I am convinced that we as MSPs must lead the way forward, supporting those in our communities willing to take on the zero waste challenge. In closing, I welcome and support the Scottish Government's action to date. I believe that a circular economy as a zero waste economy is a realistic and achievable goal, but more than that it is a fundamental requirement and obligation of our generation if we are to give the next generation the same quality of life that we enjoy. It is an undeniable fact that the majority of resources that we use are not renewable and we are increasingly at risk from resource scarcity and price volatility, which ultimately affects the poorest in our society, the worst. Over the past 10 years, we have seen a dramatic shift from access to cheap raw materials to restrictions on raw materials such as rare earth metals, a doubling of food prices, a trebling of metal prices and a quadrupling of energy prices. With the continued expansion of the global population and the development of the brick countries and other newly advancing economies, we cannot meet those growing resource demands in the same way that we did in the 20th century by simply expanding extraction. Let's make sure that everyone shares the Scottish Government's enthusiasm for the circular economy, let's support those in our communities willing to take on the zero waste challenge and let's embrace Professor Walter Stahl's cradle to cradle approach, designing goods for reuse, remanufacture and recycle as part of a strategy to improve resource efficiency and create jobs. Thank you. Many thanks. Before I call Jane Baxter to be followed by Nigel Dawn just to let members know that there's quite a bit of time available this afternoon to allow you, as in the past, to develop your thinking and your thoughts as you go along. We're grateful for contributions in that regard. Jane Baxter and Nigel Dawn. Waste affects every one of us in Scotland. Every day, at home and at work, we acquire, use and dispose of resources. As individuals and organisations, we are becoming increasingly aware of our impact on the environment and the need to look after the precious resources we all depend on. Most people in Scotland will be aware of the mantra reduce, reuse, recycle. Many of us will have taken this to heart and will be thinking global and acting local by recycling as much of our domestic waste as is possible given our local circumstances. In a domestic setting, we can also all do our best to buy fewer heavily packaged goods, avoid the two-for-one offers that see too much food wasted, reuse plastic carrier bags and learn to switch off lights, walk to the local shops and use public transport. We can recycle food waste to the compost heap and recycle old clothes and household goods to the charity shop. We might have cut back our air miles by having stay occasions or reduced our business miles by videoconferencing. With all this going on, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Scottish Government and the Scottish people are doing enough to protect the planet. Scotland has already made huge progress on waste. We have cut dramatically the amount of waste that we throw away in landfill sites and recycling has soared. However, when the Scottish Government published its first zero waste plan in 2010, it recognised that everything we use and throw away is a resource that has a value, a value that we should try to preserve, capture and use again wherever possible. To do that, we have to tackle all of Scotland's waste, not just the waste that local authorities collect and manage, which is in fact less than a fifth of all Scotland's waste. In any case, there are many councils that have failed to meet their landfill targets. There are all sorts of reasons for this, mainly through the challenges of raising public awareness and commitment, contamination at the point of collection, the increased cost of collection and the cost of dealing with the methane gas produced at landfill sites. So we need to seek commitment and resolve to a zero waste Scotland from every one of us, and that commitment needs to extend beyond the domestic and public sector context, take a strategic perspective and adopt a whole system approach that of a circular economy. A circular economy is a system whereby materials are retained and used for as long as possible, thus practically eliminating waste. Materials and energy are optimised, and goods and components are reused, repaired and remanufactured. That will protect the supply of key materials, support sustainable raw material supply and boost resource efficiency and recycling. I have first heard about the concept of a circular economy, when, as a member of the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, we had an evidence session with the European commissioner, Janis Potocsnik, who usedfully set out the broader context. He told us that the transition to resource efficiency and a circular economic model is inevitable, particularly for Europe. He also said that developing a new economy that has sustainability at its heart and is based on the more efficient use of our natural resources will create jobs, support competitiveness and cut costs whilst preserving the health of our environment. Frankly, there is no reasonable alternative to that approach. Considering that, he recommended a change now, before our environment is even more limited. As part of that same evidence, we heard from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that a policy on circular economies should not be a subset of environmental policy, but should sit at the heart of the development of sustainable economies and communities. That Scotland, with a small, adaptable economy, was well placed to adopt this approach. Such a change in perspective would, in my view, radically shift the thinking on economic development at every level. I was pleased when, in January 2015, the Green Alliance published Circular Economy Scotland, commissioned by Zero Waste Scotland. The report highlighted the opportunities for creating circular economies in two sectors—oil and gas and food and drink—and it outlines a series of measures that players in each of those sectors can take forward. They illustrate a move away from the make-use-dispose to one of extracting the maximum value from resources at each stage of the process and then recovering, regenerating products and materials so that a continuous look is created. That change in attitude and approach will have implications for how we think about design, what the skill requirements of such an economy might be and what the implications are for Scotland's future workforce. Clearly, as the report rightly highlights, the finance sector and government policy relating to finance has a major role to play in enabling this change of emphasis. Attitudes to how we, as a society and as consumers and producers, perceive, define and quantify value and how we measure return on investments will have to change. Those are, of course, concepts that the third sector and the social enterprise movement have been championing for many years, so it is reassuring to see them being brought into the mainstream. In the course of preparing for this debate, I have been reading the many briefings that MSPs have been sent. I am struck by the efforts that have been made across Scotland to put into practice the principles of circular economies, and it is clear that long-lasting change can only be achieved if we adopt the whole-system approach and examine in detail the overall process, no matter the type of business. Therefore, there are challenges for all sectors in taking this forward. How they will develop sustainable business models, which maximise the potential of every resource at their disposal and, of course, that includes their workforce and their customers. In conclusion, I cannot do better than quote from the report of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Scotland and the Circular Economy. The world is undergoing an unprecedented period of resource stress, driven in part by the scale and speed of demand growth from emerging economies and a decade of increasingly constrained commodity markets. Doing nothing is not an option, and I commend the work that has been done. I look forward to seeing what unfolds as this moves forward. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I have to say that this is a fascinating debate for those of us who, like myself, have been worrying about waste for a very long time as a chemical engineer in a first existence. The proper use of materials and, in particular, of energy was something that was on my timetable at college, never mind in my working life. We have quite rightly started with waste management because that is the very obvious place to start. From waste management, we then get into material recycling because that is very obviously the thing to do. I was grateful to Angus MacDonald, although for pointing out, I think, for the first time in the debate, that these really should be regarded as resources. We shouldn't actually regard anything as waste until we can think of absolutely nothing else to do with it. So what we are really talking about is limited resource use. For example, there are some things that are not limited. We are not actually short of water. We're not actually short of sunshine, although on days like this you can't see it. But almost everything else that looks solid is actually a limited resource, and those are the things that we need to use properly. I welcome, of course, the Scottish Government's zero waste task force, and I recognise that it's industry you had to be nudged in the right direction because whilst public bodies pick up the bits, it's industry that manufactures the goods which need to be zero waste, circular from design. Materials brokerage is, of course, absolutely fine. It's where we must be and it's where we must go. But with rising world population, rising energy costs, and reducing raw material supply, especially if we're talking about things which are already rare, then we can see that we are first approaching the point where actually we must reuse. We won't have any option. And I think Jane Baxter eloquently made the point that we don't know quite when that is, but we may as well start now. Dave Thompson, I think it was started out by pointing out his days as a lad, and I will remember though in a very different part of the country, the things that we used to do. And, of course, food is an absolute classic case of something which is already a cyclical system, isn't it? Because everything we eat will, one way or another, finish up back in the grounds to grow the next lot that we'll eat. And the only energy input you need and energy input is a theme which I shall keep going out because it is the basic thing that you cannot avoid. The only energy you need for that is actually the sun. And that's why the planet is green and carries on and will. Production, of course, can be enhanced if you can find another source of energy. And again, I think I forget who was discussed it, but of course we can manufacture fertilizer. Curiously, it's actually the nitrogen from the atmosphere and water which you turn into ammonium nitrate, which is the principal fertilizer. And all it needs, again, is some energy which, if it was renewable, comes from the sun. So that part can be enhanced by totally renewable and natural processes. And in that context, I can't avoid the fact that phosphorus, which is the other material which farmers as the Presiding Officer will very well know, do need as fertilisers, is currently concentrated in the ground and has to be mined, which brings its own economic problems. But of course, once it's out there, it does actually stay in the ecosystem. I looked, Presiding Officer, and nobody has yet mentioned it perhaps because of the lists. But as a chemist, I'm not worried by them. At the lists of the raw materials, which people have already decided we're short of, at an international level, they are all metallic elements, with the exception of fluorospar and graphite. At the Scotland level, that was the European Union study in 2010, I think. The Scotland's 2011 study finished up with aggregates, which I think is stones to you and me, fish, palm oil, which must be substitutable and timber, and everything else was a metallic element. And I do find it strange that some of the things which we're short of in Scotland are actually abundant in the world, and there was a very strange disparity between the two lists. Perhaps that's for another day. But to reduce waste, it seems to me that we need more than regulation. We do need a change in mindset. Waste to less waste to even less waste can come by government simply regulating and nudging and doing the things we're really doing. Getting to the point where it is complete reuse and cyclical economy requires a change of attitude and one which we must therefore encourage. But I think customers could cope with that. I would be very, very happy if somebody could provide me with a car, which I knew they were eventually going to take back and re-engineer. Because if they were going to do that, and if they had to do that, then they would make sure that the original manufactured materials were in as refined a condition as they can be so that it's the minimum effort to recycle them. And that is actually a crucial point which I can maybe explain rather better by considering the humble plastic bag. Now, we have very recently decided that, I should have an example in my hand, but you know, find out what I'm talking about. The ordinary plastic bag is not a terribly good thing. It's commendably light, doesn't cost a great deal, and actually for one doesn't really reuse any huge resources. But of course we know that it's easily lost and it's easily broken, and then it becomes pretty much unrecyclable. So actually it's bad news, and we have done what we know about. What would I like to replace that with? Well, intrinsically, we would think, give me one of those hemp ones, one of those natural raw materials, make a bag, and we've all got them actually, I suspect, and we know that it'll last a long time, it's the right shape and size, and when eventually it falls to bits, well it's a natural raw material, it will degrade and it will go back into the environment. So we can convince ourselves that's not a bad thing, and we would be right. What would be even better, presiding officer, would be a plastic bag, because as long as it's one pure plastic, and we make it, and it's a resilient plastic, then we have that bag, we can use it probably for even longer, and when it finally does become unserviceable, we can recycle it, and because it's a pure material it doesn't need to be refined, and so all you need is a little bit of heat input to turn it back into effectively the raw material from which you then manufacture the net plastic bag. And as I said, presiding officer, there is a theme in here, you cannot avoid using energy, but you don't have to use anything else. So actually the best replacement for my shopping bag would actually be a single plastic, a monoplastic, which I can reuse for a long time, and which I can then recycle specifically to produce the same material again. If it can be reprocessed, that's relatively easy. If it needs to be refined, that requires energy, and that's the thing we need to avoid. I'm grateful to Granday for bringing up the subject of washing machines. I have what is probably an unhealthy interest in washing machines, as someone who worked in the detergents industry I knew more than you would reasonably want to know about a washing machine, and I'm not going to tell you it, but can assure you that I really, really don't want to own one. I would much rather rent it because if I did, then the person who manufactured it would want to build in reliability. It would not be in his interests for it to break down. He would use the right materials, and again if he had to take it back at the end of the day, then he would use pure materials so that when he had to recycle it he didn't have to be refined, it could just be taken apart and the bits could be reused as they stand, and the only input apart from a little bit of manpower would be energy. I will not repeat the point. We've heard already about Rolls Royce and Aero engines. That's magnificent because Rolls Royce now concentrate on making engines which are reliable, which is good because we don't want planes to fall out the air anyway, but if they'll keep running even longer that's good because that's cheaper, and I bet Rolls Royce have also given some serious thought to how they make them reusable because if all those carefully machined bits, and there are lots of them and they're very carefully machined, can be reused into the next machine eventually, or they're made from a pure material which doesn't have to be refined when it's recycled, then it becomes cheaper for Rolls Royce and so they will automatically do all the right things. I have managed to avoid using the word thermodynamics. That's actually what I was just talking about. If you can keep it simple, don't mix things, and you have a renewable source of energy, then actually you can do things very efficiently, very effectively. You cannot avoid using the energy, you need to avoid putting in the complexity of mixing things, and as I hope I've explained, Presiding Officer, if we get this right it is a win-win because we finish up with more reliable bits of machinery and everything else. It actually costs us less and it does actually save the planet. Thank you very much for that well-informed speech. Now Colin Llynde Fabiani to be followed by Margaret MacDougall, a generous six minutes. Thank you very much Presiding Officer. I'll try and follow Nigel's lead in that. It has been a really interesting debate. I think particularly for me because hands up I really didn't know much about this at all. The first reference that I heard to the circular economy was actually an interview on BBC Radio 4 on the car radio a few weeks ago with Ellen MacArthur. I was amazed at just how much I got into it and how interesting I found what she was talking about. Overwhelmingly it's just common sense and seemed very, very sensible to me what was being said. Rob Gibson and I were smiling riley here earlier at talk of days going by and saying things go in circles right enough because we both remember quite clearly collecting lemonade bottles in Glasgow and taking them back to the shops so that there was enough money to go to the cinema. I'm not together, I hasten to add. Rob is that wee bit older than me? So things do go in circles and Dave Thompson spoke as well about the ragman, things that some of us have memories of. A lot of that was related to coming out of the war years and different things as well but certainly we did move from a culture of reuse, recycling although we didn't call it that and remanufacturing into one of in-built obsolescence and throwing things away without batting an eyelid. So yes it is something that we have to talk about now and yes remanufacturing, recycling and reuse does affect all of these things that we know are problematic for our world today and moving into the future emissions, water and energy use but also that whole circular economy thing about having lower input costs if you do these things wisely and I looked at my own constituency of East Kilbride because I knew there were some good examples there of these things happening and I was actually quite stunned about just how much goes on in my own local area and I would reckon that everybody here if they looked at their own constituencies and regions would find many many good examples of larger companies doing things, small organisations doing things which all work towards that circular whole that we're looking for. My own area Langlands Moss most of which actually lies in Claudia Beamish's region. The walkways across the peat bog have all been made out of pellets from rubber tyres and actually that's something I'm not convinced the construction industry yet takes full advantage of recycling and reuse and I'm thinking of building materials that come from old buildings that could be much better reused than this throwing up of new houses and kith houses all the time using brand new materials. There are good examples but I think we could do better. My own area has a wonderful charity called House of Hope which as well as recycling aluminium cans does great work in recycling, remanufacturing, doing up furniture that people donate so that it can be bought. It looks fantastic so lots of initiatives all been very much pulled together and I hope that the Government's launch of the Scottish Institute of Remanufacture of the Scottish Materials Brokerage Service and Resource Efficient Scotland will help in pulling all that stuff together and looking at all the elements of it so that we can achieve the targets that we all aspire to and of course zero waste Scotland have been excellent in pulling a lot of that stuff together. Again in my own constituency of East Kilbride Claire Baker mentioned coca cola and yes coca cola does have an excellent waste management record though I took on board some of the comments that Claire made that we can look at about how you then move the stuff that is recycled and yes that is one of the things we have to look at in general about how everything fits together into that circular economy. Coca cola enterprises in East Kilbride have let me know that coca cola is the largest user of food grade recycled PET plastic and recycled aluminium in Scotland. Supply chain by glass plastics metals from all over local areas for reprocessing and filling in the plant in East Kilbride. Yes of course. I'm interested in what you're saying about coca cola because I've met with them on one or two occasions and they've drawn my attention to the fact that they have concerns about the possibility of a deposit and return scheme because they believe that it would reduce the amount of material they need for their own recycling programme and I just wonder if that's a discussion she's had with that company. Yes it is and it is an interesting discussion and that's why I think it's so crucial that we never just look at one of these elements we have to look at the bigger picture the overall effect of all these things and how they tie in. Circular economy is a very good term using it and I'm sure that what the cabinet secretary has put in place in terms of advice and organisations will help us to have that discussion so that we do the best for everyone. There's one thing about coca cola that still fascinates me when they told me this ages ago at the time of the London Olympics. They were so efficient in what they did. They were sponsors for the London Olympics that they supplied London Olympics with coca cola soft drinks and all the bottles and cans that came back from that went through the process quickly enough that they were reused for the Paralympics in the same location so that's the kind of really innovative thing that can be done. Another big employer in East Kilbride Sainsbury's in conjunction with DHL and up at their main place in East Kilbride they also have a recycling plant site which is excellent so again what really strikes me about that is the pride that the workforce have in what they're doing on that site whether it's DHL workers or the Sainsbury workers but what they also do and it's something that's not been much mentioned here is food I don't know what the word is certainly not recycling but the donation of food and making sure that food waste is not just dumped. I think Dave Thompson talked earlier about what used to happen with food waste whether it was in the school dinner programme or other things when we were kids excuse me but for example in Sainsbury's 100% unsolved bread has turned into animal feed so again that's all contributing and there also I understand the largest provider toxfam outside oxfam's own shops with clothing accessories books DVDs in looking at this debate today I came across something absolutely fascinating me there's a company in East Kilbride that I didn't know about called Retech and they were actually highlighted as part of the launch of Zero Waste Scotland's circular economy business models programme at base in East Kilbride 32 employees turned over of £3.3 million repairing and refurbishing functional used IT products so that's certainly something I want to learn a lot more about and I would intend if the company are quite happy that I do so to visit them and learn more about it and perhaps if the cabinet secretary hasn't already been that's the kind of initiative he would like to join me in visiting so all in all I think we've got a fairly good story to tell it's been mentioned a few times that I think it was the the low hanging fruit the cabinet secretary mentioned makes things a bit easier when you start off and as time goes on things get a bit harder seems to me there's a commitment but it also seems to me that people are now getting it perhaps not the terminology circular economy I mean I was up front about not knowing what that was until a couple of weeks ago so perhaps there's an issue there about using language that people understand a bit more quickly that is immediately apparent for Dumplins like me at times and that starts in schools and it starts with young people and again in East Kilbride we've got good form in that our three schools called the Glen High School Duncan Creek High School St Andrews and St Brides and I know that St Andrews in high school also takes these things very very seriously about zero waste policies and how we do that and I would like at this point to mention Viridor and the engineering development trust who every year do schools competitions which East Kilbride schools perform very very well in and it's about translating zero waste policy into practice and coming up with really really good projects quick mention for Calder Glen High School who won the Lanarkshire heat of the company's go for set competition this year and I look forward to supporting them in the final very very soon thank you thank you for that magnificent effort and now call on Margaret McDougall to be followed by David Torrance a very generous six minutes thank you Presiding Officer and I am delighted to take part in this speech today and in my speech I will be focusing on the North Ayrshire area and some of the work that has been carried out there not only towards developing a circular economy but also in meeting the zero waste and renewable energy targets outlined by the Scottish Government. I'd like to start by saying as Claudia Beamish did that it's disappointing that 23 Scottish councils failed to meet the recycling targets set by the Scottish Government. The target was to ensure that 50% of all household waste was recycled by 2013 with further targets of 60% by 2020 and 70% by 2025. There was also an additional target of reducing the proportion of waste going to landfill to a maximum of 5%. North Ayrshire however not only met but exceeded the target by 12.13 and achieved a recycling and composting rate of over 53%. In addition they have reduced the amount of waste going to landfill by 17,000 tonnes since 2008. North Ayrshire seems like one council that is well on its way to meeting future targets and hopefully this will continue. Meeting the targets has been achieved through a number of initiatives and today I'm going to discuss two of them. Firstly I wish to focus on the work that North Ayrshire council is doing with Cunningham Furniture Recycling Company. The local authority encourages residents to send their unwanted good quality household goods to the company which then rehomes the items across Ayrshire. This new service moves waste material up the waste hierarchy and feeds into the circular economy. It's built up around North Ayrshire council's waste strategy which is one of the first to include a reuse target. The project helps to meet targets in regards to the number of household items going to the landfill as well as promoting reusing items. The project also provides employment and training opportunities within North Ayrshire and over the last three years 39 unemployed residents have been provided with either paid employment or training opportunities with 70% leaving to positive destinations. As of March 2015, the project has won the COSLA Excellence Gold Award for Strong and Sustainable Communities and has collected 360 tonnes of furniture from more than 2,500 collections, selling in excess of 5,700 items of furniture and white goods and assisting around 2,850 low-income families to furnish their homes on a budget. The charity has generated almost £190,000 of income from sales of furniture and recycled goods and carried out almost 1,000 house clearances, void cleans and estate maintenance, generating £174,000. That project seems to be going from strength to strength and it's an excellent example of how the circular economy can work while providing opportunities for those on low incomes and those out of work. I would like to wish the team all the best for the future and I hope other councils will start investing in some similar schemes in their own areas. The second example, the barkeep anaerobic digestion plant, which, when I visited it, was the largest combined organic waste treatment and energy generating facility in Scotland. The plant not only helps us to meet renewable energy targets but assists towards landfill diversion targets. The plant produces around 2.2 megawatts of renewable electricity from waste foods, manures and organic effluent sludge. It does so by using bacteria to break down the waste to produce methane-rich biogas. The gas is then combusted in gas engines to generate electricity. It's quite amazing if you go and visit it because you would imagine there might be a lot of waste lying around but it's absolutely spotless. All the heat used in the process is recovered from the engines. Each year the plant can process up to 75,000 tonnes of organic and food waste, which is turned into electricity rather than going to landfill. Furthermore, the barkeep plant was the first of its kind to incorporate a novel digestate processing stage, which produces a low-cost fertiliser that meets the PAS's 110 specifications to support local agriculture. That, in my view, is another great example of how the circular economy works. So, Presiding Officer, to conclude, I have offered up to two very different examples, which I believe are exemplary, in terms of sustaining the circular economy, and those could be replicated across Scotland. They might seem old hat compared with some of the projects that we have heard about today, but they are equally important. Perhaps they are not as sexy as the cabinet secretary's handbags and gladrags, but they are essential if we are to meet our targets. The Cunningham Furniture Recycling Company project is grassroots and community based, provides jobs and helps low income families while contributing to the local economy and reducing waste. I urge other councils to look to setting up similar projects. On the other hand, the anaerobic digestion plant is an example on a much larger scale, both contributing to renewable energy targets and landfill reduction targets, while helping local agriculture. I believe that we should be considering investing in this form of technology across Scotland as part of our commitments to renewables and zero waste. Thank you. David Torrance, after which we will move to closing speeches. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I want to start by agreeing with my colleagues across the chamber today that there are many benefits of moving from a linear to a more circular economy. We cannot simply apply 19th century solutions to the challenges that our country is facing in resource constrained 21st century. Decoupling economic activity from the use of resources demands smart solutions circulating around the efficient use of resources by fostering future economic prosperity. With new technologies come new risks. I believe that to successfully transform our economy, we need to consider all aspects of what a circular economy encompasses. We should consider what economic sectors in Scotland can benefit most from a circular economy model and aim to maximise the resultant social and environmental advantages. The Scottish Government has already taken the first steps towards facilitating circular and performance-based economic measures. As in the renewable energy sector, Scotland has been internationally recognised for its efforts. Nonetheless, I think that we should have a look at developments in other countries. In particular, in the Nordic countries, as there have been the forerunners in implementing policy-based and circular economy principles and waste management. Today, Scotland's remanufacturing industry alone is worth £1.1 billion and employs 23,000 people. Yet it has been set out by a circular economy Scotland report. Scotland's economy has the potential of profiting to a far greater extent from a circular economy approach. In place of repeating what the report says, I want to talk about one of its core messages, co-operation between key players. First co-operation is crucial to enable innovation to move from the lab and into the markets. Last close links between public research as well as companies, investors and enterprise agencies speed up the process. Second co-operation among different economic sectors is fundamental to cross-facility and the reuse of remanufacturing or recycling of products and resources. Efficient co-operation and co-ordination between stakeholders can unlock the potential of a performance-orientated economy that produces high-quality products. One example of such co-operation that I want to mention today focuses on re-using and putting value into by-products from whisky distillation. Draft, a spent grain left over from distillation, mixed with pothail, is already used by some distillers to produce methane, which is constantly used to fuel the distilling process. Diagell's distillate, Carmen Bridge, opened its bioenergy facility in 2013, which now covers 95 per cent of the site's energy demands. Additionally, the whisky by-product can be made into protein meal for fish farming, displacing fish meal. According to a circular economy Scotland report, this idea has a potential of generating £140 million. Apart from economic gains as such, I do want to emphasise two further aspects at height like the advantages of a circular economy. There are social and environmental benefits. The social benefits are manifested in boosting employment levels and creating new fields within the labour market. Jobs resulting out of remanufacturing and recycling sector are deemed to be permanent, as they are cararchised by one and come hand in hand with a structural economic shift, generating demand for labour, thereby investing in human capital, and there are many positive implications for society as a whole. The environmental benefits are self-evident, increasing resources efficiently led leads to reduction in land for waste and its close connection to renewable energy sector further boosts the proportion of renewables within the energy mix. Both the social environment and advantages of circular economy has been emphasised in the recent report published by the club Rome. The authors of the report studied the impact of implementing circular economic approach on Sweden. Their findings were astonishing. Sweden could increase material efficiency by 25 per cent overall if it organised manufacturing along the lines of material efficient circular performance-based economy. All in all, studies suggest that it can result in a creation of 50,000 new jobs. If in addition to this, Sweden focused on maximising energy efficiency by 25 per cent, as well as an increase in its share of renewables in the energy mix from today's 50 per cent to 75 per cent, a further 50,000 jobs, resulting in the economic benefit of 10 billion euros a year, could be achieved. However, the author also stressed and I quote, a lot of investment will be needed to make decoupling possibly and hence a more sustainable economic structure come true. It becomes clear that a linear economy does not simply transform itself into circular, performance-based economy, deliberate policy measures and targeted investment are as often a key success. Let me talk about our Nordic neighbours again, with a special focus on reducing food losses, the collection of tech styles for reuse and recycling and improving plastic recycling rates. The Nordic Council of Ministers has set itself a key target and evaluates the progress on a regular basis. That allows for constant improvements and to learn from unavoidable mistakes. As an example, the council has soon realised that in terms of plastic collection and recycling, a one-fit-all solution is impractical, and different collection systems are now in place on different local levels. Presiding Officer, Scotland 2 has been proactive and I welcome a Government's step towards a circular economy. The Scottish Government has set itself a target of reducing waste by 7 per cent by 2017 and 15 per cent by 2025 compared to 2011. Some improvements can already be seen. Between 2012 and 2013, the total number of households waste generated fell by 3.5 per cent, resulting in a 20 per cent reduction since 2007. In addition, the Scottish Government aims to recycle 70 per cent of all of Scotland's waste by 2025, which is the most ambitious target in the UK. Scotland has also joined the global network in the MacArthur Foundation's circular economy 100 programme. At least the introduction of a single-use carrier charge has been a milestone and raised the issue among Scots on what simple measures each and every one can take to reduce waste and reuse items. Over the past few years, my constituency in Cacordia and Fife has also made considerable efforts to increase recycling levels. Statistics indicate that people are becoming more aware of recycling. In 2013, households in Fife recycled over 50 per cent of their household whales, which puts the region ahead in comparison with the rest of Scotland. In addition to that, up to 70 per cent of all waste in Fife is now further recycled, reducing the amount to landfill waste. Paper was recycled into low-grade paper and cardboard products by food and garden wasters transported to anaerobic digesting plant in Dunfermline. I want to mention one organisation that is particularly good in Cacordia. Among other projects, it works with local constituents and provides them with information on recycling and reusing old materials. In the reacall shop in Cacordia High Street, where organisations encourage individuals, families and businesses to take action towards a more sustainable lifestyle. It also offers a so-on repair, sewing skills and up-cycle government's workshop. Just last week, Green and Cacordia celebrated the International Compass Awareness Week. Their work is truly inspiring and welcomes their commitment to foster awareness about recycling in Cacordia. Notwithstanding, more measures should follow to raise awareness of the importance of recycling and reusing of materials. I also believe that we need further improvements to our infrastructure to facilitate waste management and support remanufacturing industry. We should also follow in Nordic's countries and regulation reviewing our approach to assure the lasting impact. The lasting impact is also determined by a level of cooperation between all relevant stakeholders, most notably the public and private sector. We cannot continue to extract resources as we did in the past. As I said at the beginning, innovation comes with many challenges. However, I am confident that Scotland has the potential and determination to foster and further develop smart solutions and to continue to drive policies based on a circular economy model. We now move to closing speeches. I call Alex Ferrickson. The seven minutes are there by. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Like Claudia Beamish, I had not even come across the concept of that we are debating this afternoon until the Rural Affairs Committee started looking at it in 2013. However, I have to say that, at first sight, the whole idea of a circular economy seems such a simple no-brainer of a principle that you wonder actually how any other type of economy could ever have emerged over the decades and centuries that have gone by. However, of course, times have changed, particularly very recent times. We no longer live in a world of apparently infinite resources, manageable demand and very limited wealth. Suddenly, we are faced with a world of very limited resources, almost unquenchable demand and an ever-increasing wealth of both individuals and nations. That is the backdrop that demands a rethink on how we look at the traditional process of making, using and disposing, as others have defined the linear economy, and move to a circular economy model whereby we ensure that resources are kept in use for as long as is humanly possible, extracting the maximum value from them whilst they are in use and then recovering and regenerating products and materials at the end of each service life. Like Angus MacDonald, I am indebted to the waste resources action programme, or RAP, for providing that definition of a circular economy, but it does very accurately and neatly sum up exactly what this debate is all about. At its most simple, it is out with the disposable world that we currently inhabit and in with a new world that we need to inhabit if the world's increasingly scarce resources are to satisfy its rapidly growing population. Global statistics tell it all as other members have pointed out. By 2030, demand for water will grow by 41%, steel by 80% and energy by 33%. We will need to extract 75% more raw materials by 2040 if we keep using them at the current rate. The most chilling statistic of all, as Jamie Madriga highlighted, is that if the world's entire population has the same standard of living as the average European, we would need an additional two planets to keep us going. The more you look into this, the more you realise that not moving towards this model is not an option. However, the hard part comes as Claire Baker who pointed out comes with the question, how do you move towards that economy? It is very definitely not just a question of more and better recycling though that is an important part of the equation. As the much quoted Professor Walter Stahl of Product Life Institute told the Rural Affairs Committee meeting of 2 October 2013, the economics of the circular economy are very important and the economics tell you that the smaller the loop, the more profitable it is. If you look at the economics he continued, recycling is the least interesting option. Of course this is not and should not all be about profit but if we are genuinely talking of a new model of an economy then profit and profitability have to be a factor and we shouldn't shy away from that because the potential for benefit is enormous. The Aldegate group noted that it is the componentisation, that was a new word on me, the componentisation, remanufacture, refurbishing and reselling of goods that is of most value to the economy and in doing so create the most high value jobs. Defra estimator somebody has already pointed out that if all food waste in the United Kingdom was treated through anaerobic digestion technology 35,000 jobs would be created. So whichever way you look at it there are massive benefits to be gained from going down this route but the change that has to come about is not just a switch that can be casually flicked on by any government or indeed any minister because it requires a complete change of mindset and behaviour to bring it about and that can never be achieved overnight. We're talking after all of a complete change of culture and attitude towards waste and yet most companies, business models are still centred understandably around disposable goods and resources. Large-scale investment will almost certainly be required and access to high-level funding is never easy, particularly at times like these that we live in and of course there is always a reluctance to change from tried and tested models that have stood the test of time although of course the big irony in that argument presiding officer is that it is time that is running out. So it is good and encouraging as many members have noted to have received a number of briefings from companies and organisations that have clearly got the message and are looking to drive change towards a more circular economy and it's very commendable that the Scottish Government was the first national government to sign up to this circular economy 100 programme, an initiative that brings together corporations, innovators and geographic regions to use a collaborative approach to scaling up to this circular economy and that collaborative approach has to be the right one, Presiding Officer. In reply to a question that I asked Professor Stahl on whether government stimulus is required to encourage the required change of mindset or whether it could come from the bottom up, he replied, I think that both are required. Big international companies, he said, probably do not need government stimulus but small and medium-sized enterprise as normally lack the knowledge and the overall view and he went on for SMEs it would be useful if the government possibly together with universities could provide some kind of data bank to allow them to see what other companies have done, what the successful models are, what new capabilities and skills they might need and where they might find those. So we are looking at a prospect of companies, universities and government all working together on a collaborative and knowledge sharing approach and that is clearly the way forward if this transition to a circular economy is to proceed successfully. One surefire hurdle to prevent that transition would be any increase in red tape or bureaucracy hence our amendment to the government motion today but if a truly collaborative approach is taken there is surely no reason why we in Scotland shouldn't continue to play the leading role we have already taken in bringing this transition about. We simply have to move in that direction. Member after member has given great evidence as to why that should be the case but the simple truth is we have to do it because we don't have two other planets for us to colonise. We've got to make the most of this one and that means maximising the use of every single possible resource available to us until that resource can literally be used no longer. We have a long way to go as this debate has shown but the sooner we get there the better. Usually the other way around so I'll see how we get on. I think that this has been an excellent debate this afternoon and the fact that the benches are so sparse does not reflect the quality of the debate. If I have one thought on how we take this forward it would be really interesting to rerun this debate with all our colleagues on the economy and enterprise committee. To get all the different spokes people on the different parties you lead on the economy and get them to rerun this debate and push them through the same learning process and the same engagement process I think everybody who's spoken this afternoon has gone through and I particularly think the points Claudia Beamish made about the work of the Rural Environment Committee which was echoed by several members was absolutely right. Once you get into this issue it is an answerable issue, a circular economy. It makes sense in terms of sustainable development principles, how you develop a green economy, there's the half a million jobs that Claudia Beamish mentioned that we could create but wayed against that there's what's happening in our economy, the financial pressures, the difficulty of long-term investment decisions when you've got short-term profits to make and also the challenge of making our markets for reused goods sustainable. So there are immense challenges in creating the green economy but it's got to be one of our objectives. Then if we look at the human side of it as several members have talked about the importance of consumers having the knowledge and the interest is absolutely vital when we're recycling, knowing that we're recycling properly, knowing that the local authorities have designed schemes that people are actually using properly there is actually quite a challenge in that. I know personally whenever there's a minor change in how our waste is collected even if you're really interested in the topic you're not necessarily sure you're doing the right thing so there's an issue about consumers and how we come into this and then there are the massive pressures on the environment the exploitation and the use of resources, scare resources that we don't have and also the impact of waste, the pollution of water and even just at a more basic level fly tipping everybody can see the impact of fly tipping and the impact of landfill tips. So I think the speeches this afternoon have been excellent in capturing that range of challenges that range of issues that we need to tackle. I think in terms of progress today I think we could all agree that there's more knowledge more expertise and more progress in the business community whether it's retailing or whether it's the waste management issue itself but I think we have had some warnings. I think the verador briefing gave it quite bleak terms it said we face a stark choice further success or substantial failure and they suggest that recycling and recovery have been real UK success stories to date but that there's not an institutionalised model it's not across all industries it's not being done by everybody and that there's a potential that we actually stall or even reverse sharply backwards so that's a suggestion that we need a new economic model I go back to that first point those of us in the room who have become converted we need to be joined by all of our colleagues and it would be good to have that debate within the parties to make sure that everybody signed up to this agenda. I wonder if she would share my surprise that we haven't been joined in this debate by members of the Green Party. To be fair there's only two of them so proportionately if we look at the representation from the rest of us it would be less than one person so let's just move on. Can I just say a couple of words about the Labour amendment because what we were wanting to do is to add to the existing motion but to throw some light on the importance of people and skills and also highlight the pressures on local authorities now several members have talked about the fact that 23 local authorities have not met the targets and I think that's something we want to reflect on the challenges that local authorities are facing at the moment are really sharp they need help they need support and infrastructure investment they need some support from the Scottish Government in terms of joining up the dots in terms of the issues like public procurement local authorities are looking for short-term value for money it's really hard to take in the longer-term investment challenge that the private sector faces as well and the issue of markets for local authorities when they're using new recycling or new procurement challenges that needs to be factored and when you look at the challenge that local authorities have acute challenges in terms of demographic change schools social care it's understandable why they've not cracked this so they need our support and they need support from the Scottish Government there's been a huge amount of progress in terms of making more people aware of the challenges that we face I think the Scottish Enterprise's contribution we need to think through what more they could do the Ellen MacArthur foundation has clearly been leading the way but there's a lot more that needs to be done in terms of product development several members have talked about that Dave Thompson's explanation of design obsolescence that is absolutely that it's actually deliberate Claudia Beamish's point about the design the 80% of the environmental impact is all about design and I think Claire Baker's comments about colleges and universities so on one level we know exactly what needs to be done and I think the briefings that we've had today have been really useful I want to reflect a little bit about the barriers issue it's mentioned in the Conservative amendment in terms of regulation now we've got to be quite careful about this Sainsbury sorry the Scottish retail consortium point outs and I think quite a critical way that the general approach is to minimise risk and they want to get the regulations right and proportionate now that's true on one level but if we go back to why there's a risk assessment here you then go back to the section of our amendment which talks about the dumped on report which talks about the risk of human health the risk to the health of staff who work in this industry and we need to get the regulation right we don't have a dispute about that but we've got to be absolutely clear that where regulations that are there to protect public health are not followed there is a consequence in terms of people's health so change is difficult it's essential we need that discussion industry need to be involved in that process but one person's bureaucracy is another person's transparency monitorable form filling that leads to accountability so we've reservations about the conservative amendment because we think it has to we have to acknowledge the importance of proper regulation some of us have been briefed over the last few months about what's happening at the edge of the waste industry where we've got criminal activity so we need proper reporting we need proper regulation and we need proper enforcement it's all got to be there now there were some comments that the minister made which I think are actually quite important about our leadership role in Scotland but also about our leadership role within the UK I think that's that's actually right but there's an economies of scale issue here that need to cut right across the UK so while we want to be virtuous leaders we also want to make sure that the UK economy as a whole goes with us and I think leading by example is important and maybe there's a bit more that we could be doing in Scotland to make some of this work it absolutely speaks to the fact that the European regulatory framework is vital and that that needs to be right as well but I take you back to the local authority issue and I actually see a continuum here from the very first Scottish Parliament right to today we have been pushing on this agenda I'll give you the example when I was minister we would not have started as fast and as hard on recycling had we not had the threat of EU infraction proceedings the first Scottish government was threatened if we did not get going in this many of our waste dumps were not EU compliant and we were going to face a financial penalty so there's a role for regulation there's a role for financial penalties what we need to do is to get the circular economy to work so that we get ahead of the curve so that our businesses are the game changers so that our businesses are the ones that benefit from other parts of the world's economy coming along behind us as well I want to focus on the issue of third sector as well though and I think there have been some fantastic examples given from across the country I would want to talk about the remade project in Edinburgh I shall be going at some point post election to take some of my old electrical equipment which has been accumulating the charges that people have talked about old dvd stuff I have got mountains of stuff that is now festering and gathering dust but remade are going to take that stuff to bits harvest the stuff that's still useful they might mend some of it and they might pass it on to people who can't afford to buy that kit that I know regard as completely wasted and I think the points that were made by several members were absolutely bang on there I think there was a quote from Nigel Dawn I thought his comment was worth reading back into the system it's not waste until we really can't think of anything else to do with it now remade are leading the way because they're training people how you reuse that waste and they have a difficult financial model like all of the voluntary sector I also want to draw attention to the Edinburgh furniture initiative the work that four square is doing and the work that the garbled organization are doing training people up to give them the experience and then the examples that Margaret MacDougall gave recycling back to low income residents who otherwise would not be able to furnish their houses who would not be able to have white goods and would not have the things other people have thrown away that are absolutely reusable so we need to focus on reusing recycling refurbishing when big companies are getting rid of their furniture they're absolutely recyclable and I've heard some fantastic examples of stuff that was chucked by the banking industry being recycled and being reused by small firms and small companies so we can make this work the challenge is making the markets work and making the money work for local authorities they are they don't have the bodies with the expertise to do as much as they would like to do they don't have as much money to give to the voluntary sector to make sure that all the local community projects that we're really proud of have enough money to be in the long term sustainable so that the comments that Dave Thompson and Claire Baker and Jane Baxter made about the importance of the third sector are absolutely crucial that this is a debate that we need to be having across the Parliament and if there's one thing that the Scottish Government can do in the leadership role the Scottish Government can bring people together the local authorities the communities the businesses and make sure that the Scottish Government is the university passing on the research and the knowledge and the information and making sure that they work collegiately because local authorities are doing the exciting community energy stuff. Edinburgh and Glasgow will be transformative but only if they have the support and only if they have the leadership support from the Scottish Government thank you Presiding Officer. Excellent many many thanks and I now call the cabinet secretary Richard Lockhead to wind up the debate and behalf of the government cabinet secretary you have until five o'clock. Thank you Deputy Presiding Officer and can I very much welcome this debate it has been very heartwarming to hear the huge support for ensuring that we elevate the whole concept of the circular economy up the Parliament's agenda and there was many good points by many members across the chamber. I think that Senator Boyack is quite right in that we want to ensure those on the economy committee are aware of the economic potential of this particular subject as well and well there are not a huge number of members in the chamber there are a substantial number and I would remind members who are here for this important debate we're just like recycled materials it's quality that matters and not quantity and that was the message I gave earlier on in my debate so that very much applies to those of us here today as well. I do feel a bit older on what I did at the beginning of the debate because listening to Linda Fabiani and Dave Thompson who I always thought were a huge number of years older than myself I found myself also remembering that I used to return my bottles to pay for the access to the cinema a very brief intervention. Linda Fabiani okay cabinet secretary if you know what's good for you apologize I didn't want to stand for too long that's why I was hoping it was a brief intervention but I it was just the recollection of returning our bottles to get access to the cinema which I used to do as well when I was a kid so I feel a bit older given that seems quite a long time ago and also I also remember the horse and cart coming down the road where I lived the iron monger collecting the scrap metal as well so as Dave Thompson others have said we have had a circular economy to a degree over the decades but of course times have changed and it's a much bigger debate these days with the scarcity of resources across the world many members have mentioned the global trends and the fact that we are facing the prospect of three billion new wealthier consumers on the planet by 2050 fueling demand for the planet's precious resources just illustrate the scale of the challenge these are resources and materials today perhaps we take for granted but a few decades a few decades time will be seen as rare precious materials potentially and that faces that gives us a big economic challenge as well as environmental challenge very grateful to the cabinet secretary for giving me an intervention because the bit that I had to miss out my speech was it's not just the use of new materials it's also what we do with our old materials and there are parts of Bangladesh and India that have got huge piles of our rubbish so maybe one of our challenges is making more of more use of those products in this country as part of our global social responsibility I totally agree with that point I think that that also goes to the heart of this debate but if the demand for these raw materials is going to increase it does pose an enormous environmental challenge to the planet but an economic challenge to every nation as well including to Scotland that's why we do have to show important leadership on this issue especially with the prospect of 75 per cent more raw materials being required in the coming 25 years so that's why we have to look at traditionally what we've seen as waste as precious resources as precious raw materials and indeed in terms of summing up the challenge the previous European commissioner Pochnick when he visited this parliament made a speech he said that our old resource intensive growth model is simply not feasible on this scale and on a limited planet many of the resources our economies depend on are already scarce like energy and other raw materials and others are limited and vulnerable like clean water clean air and nature and he also said in concrete terms the global competition for resources will mean that we will be obliged to increase resource productivity particularly in Europe where we are so dependent on the import of materials so that's why creating the circle economy is so important it's about protecting our future protective environment economy but protecting the future and our quality of life as a people so the heart of the circle economy as the Ellen MacArthur foundation said is firstly minimising the amount a product has to be changed in order for it to be reused we manufacture refurbished secondly maximising both the length of time the product functions for and the number of times it can be reused we manufacture refurbished thirdly optimising how materials that have been degraded beyond being able to be reused as a feedstock in one system can actually be used as a feedstock in another process or supply chain and finally minimising contamination and maximising the purity of material chains to increase collection and value of materials that does sound quite technical but it's what the recycling debate what the reuse debate the repair debate the manufacturing debate is all about and why we have to keep our materials recirculating in their own society so we're lesser in imports from other countries because people there want to keep their raw materials to the same quality of life we have and likewise maintain their own quality of life here in Scotland as well and that does raise issues such as the design of products again which many members have mentioned product design is a reserved issue to the UK government but it's very important we work with both Europe and the UK government to address these issues around 80% of a product lifetime environmental impact is decided by its design so we have to get that right we can't afford to not get it right now again as many members have said the solution to circular economy very much relies on collaboration and everyone in society working together local government's role of course has been highlighted by many members including many of the pressures on local government the financial pressures the training pressures the skills pressures the other pressures and of course we have to address them there were some particular issues mentioned in relation to local government firstly in terms of training and skills etc i should just mention zero waste Scotland are working with local government employees they facilitate the Scottish waste industry training competency and health and safety forum and that addresses many of the issues raised by Claudia Beamish and others i should also say that we're now starting modern apprenticeships on sustainable resource management within scotland's local councils and five councils are now working with 31 apprentices and that figure is expected to grow in the times ahead as well so we want to build up the skills within local government of course the key issue facing local governments in fact we have 32 local authorities in the past we've had 32 different ways of collecting the recycleth the recycle materials we've had 32 different ways of doing things that has created problems it's not given the commercial conference to the reprocessing manufacturing sector set up new plants in scotland so we can recycle the the glass that's collected or the other materials because they can't get the quality of the volumes they want because it's carried out 32 different ways briefly. It might just be worth revisiting the whole issue of the regional networks between local authorities i know in the early days the minister wasn't convinced that was a good idea but particularly now that we've got city deals coming on the agenda a more regional approach might just make a lot more sense. The way we've identified going forward is actually the best way which is having the 32 local authorities working together to have common procurement and also to try and have a more uniform approach to how we collect materials for recycling in scotland. The financial pressures of course are very real they face the scottish government they face local government and hopefully over the next few weeks and months that'll change for the better but they are very real pressures but the message here of course is it's in the financial interest of local government to address this issue because if they have better recycling systems in place they'll get better income from the recycle that's been collected could be better quality so the income goes up and then the cost of carrying out the process will be shared and therefore the costs of the process go down so it's the financial interest of local government to improve recycling and work with the circular economy. It's also the interest of local economies as well because if we can collect in a more uniform fashion give confidence to the commercial sector set up new factories for processing what's collected that means local jobs in local communities and sustainable economic growth so we want that to happen so that's why it's really important the 32 local authorities work closely together. Viridor of course sent out a briefing to all members for this debate and of course they actually said because things are moving forward they've announced £357 million worth of Scottish investment in the last 18 months that includes for instance the UK's most advanced glass recycling facility at Newhouse in Lanarkshire bringing 30 full-time jobs and of course processing glasses collected from 17 Scottish councils so we get this right this is real jobs being created in communities across Scotland so that's why it's really important the 32 local authorities work together on this as they're now beginning to do with the Scottish government but it's really important just in conclusion that Scotland does maintain our leadership in this issue as many members have said. I will be speaking to the UK government, the new UK government in the weeks and months ahead because many of the issues are reserved in relation to creating the circular economy and improving recycling and product design. EU negotiations are reserved of course Europe's trying to do something about this just now the UK recently opposed the package they wanted to bring forward because they saw it as too burdensome on business but as the Scottish government took the view it was right to be ambitious and it was right to promote the circular economy so we need the UK's government to change its position in that and support the EU, European Union and the environment commissioner to take forward the agenda of creating the circular economy. Also national taxation if we get power over that in this country we can look at these issues product standards and design and labelling are also reserved issues in this regard as well so we need the UK government to play a ball but we will continue to show leadership. I've been invited to speak at an event in London soon on the subject we're inviting the environment commissioner to visit Scotland because he's got a special interest in creating the circular economy and very much sees Scotland as a leader. But we have already of course been showing leadership over the last few years we've got the new zero waste plan we've got the new safeguarding Scotland resources policy 1.46 million households in Scotland now have food waste collection services up from 300,020 a massive advance we've seen a threefold increase in food waste processing we've also seen the new brokerage service set up in local government with the 32 authorities now working closely together as I said before we've set up the new Scottish institute for remanufacture at Stratford University which is innovative again and a world leader and as I said at the beginning of this debate we're also looking at the introduction of a deposit return scheme in Scotland we'll consider seriously the report that was published this morning and see how best to take that forward so in conclusion Deputy Presiding Officer can I just thank everyone for their contributions we support to obviously our own motion and the amendments and I want to finish off where I started by saying that creating a circular economy in Scotland is an economic environment and moral necessity it will create jobs in our communities and improve our quality of life and of course just makes good sense so let's get behind it and make it happen for Scotland and the world. Many many thanks and that concludes the debate on the circular economy waste management and it's now time to move on to the next item of business which is decision time and there are three questions to be put as a result of today's business and the first question is that amendment 13134.2 in the name of Claudia Beamish which seeks to amend motion number 13134 in the name of Richard Lochhead on the circular economy we've agreed to are we all agreed we are thank you very much second question is that amendment 13134.1 in the name of Jamie McGregor which seeks to amend motion number 13134 in the name of Richard Lochhead on the circular economy we agreed to are we all agreed we're not agreed though therefore be a division please cast your votes now the result of the vote in amendment 13134.1 in the name of Jamie McGregor is yes 65 no six there were 35 abstentions the amendment is there for agreed and so the third question is that motion 13134 in the name of Richard Lochhead as amended is agreed to are we all agreed we are thank you very much and that concludes decision time and now closes meeting of parliament