Litter and flytipping strategy: final business and regulatory impact assessment

2.0 Purpose and Intended Effect

2.1 Background

Litter and flytipping are well-documented indicators of local environmental quality and have significant negative environmental, economic, and health implications.

Litter and flytipping are defined as follows:

Litter is waste in the wrong place: The Environment Protection Act (1990) defines littering as 'throwing down or dropping an item in any public open space'.^[1]

Flytipping is illegal dumping of waste – from a bin bag of household waste to large quantities of domestic, commercial, or construction waste.^[2]

Research indicates that at least 15,000 tonnes of litter is disposed of into our urban and rural environment - and is subsequently cleared - by local authorities every year. This is comprised of around 250 million easily visible items.^[3]

A further 26,000 tonnes of waste are flytipped each year and dealt with by local authorities, with over 60,000 incidents occurring per year. This estimate excludes the majority of cases on private land^[4]. For both litter and flytipping, these figures are likely to represent an underestimate due to data limitations.

Litter and flytipping have both direct and indirect costs for society. In 2013, Scotland spent at least £53 million^[5] of public money on litter and flytipping in direct costs (for clearance, education and enforcement activities). Indirect costs are the negative impacts or consequences of litter that impact on society more widely, for example encouraging other crimes, mental health and wellbeing. Further indirect costs due to environmental, economic and social impacts to the terrestrial and marine environments were estimated to exceed £196.7 million in 2019 according to recent research undertaken to update the figures referenced in the previous strategy on the cost and scale of litter and flytipping in Scotland.^[6] The availability of data, which is often limited and inconsistently collected or reported, was a significant barrier to this research project and so these overall figures have to treated with some caution but, based on available evidence, are the best estimate of the scale and cost of litter and flytipping in Scotland.

Items littered or flytipped represent resources and value lost to the Scottish economy. It is estimated that 80% of the litter stream consists of potentially recyclable material, and 50% of material could be easily recycled, had it been properly disposed of.^[7]

A proportion of items littered and flytipped on terrestrial land will make their way into the marine environment. Whilst there is no exact figure for the direct and indirect costs of litter and flytipping into the marine environment, it is estimated that items littered on land now constitute 90% of plastic in Scottish seas.^[8]

Beaches are one of the main routes for terrestrial litter to enter the marine environment, and survey data indicates that there are, on average, 160 items of litter on every 100 metres of beach in Scotland. Plastic and polystyrene pieces were the most common litter item found, with wet wipes second, and packets (crisp, sweet, lolly and sandwich) third.^[9]

Understanding the most common types of litter found in terrestrial and marine environments will help target resources at the highest priority areas. There are several studies which aim to quantify the prevalence of litter in Scotland and the UK.

Looking first at terrestrial litter, the most recent data comes from Keep Scotland Beautiful's 2021/2022 audit undertaken through the Local Environmental Audit and Management System (LEAMS).^[10] This data, shown below in table 1, shows that cigarette-related litter and food and drink packaging make up over 74% of litter by item count in Scotland. This data is based on total item count and is a useful way of demonstrating best the visual disamenity of litter as, for example, cigarette stubs will have a very low individual weight but can be very visually prevalent in the local environment.

Another method of measuring the prevalence of terrestrial litter in Scotland is to measure by total weight. This approach will be more accurate in gaining a picture on the costs of managing terrestrial litter in Scotland, as public bodies and businesses will have to consider the total weight of litter when deciding what to clean up. This data comes from Zero Waste Scotland in 2013^[11]. Table 2 below shows the top ten terrestrial item types by weight.

Quantifying the prevalence of litter in Scotland in the marine environment is challenging. Beach litter provides a measure of litter types and can be used to identify sources (from both marine and terrestrial environments). Recent data from the Marine Conservation Society's 2022 Great British Beach Clean^[12] identified the top five most littered items. As Table 3 shows, plastic and polystyrene pieces (0-50cm) are the most common item found littered in beaches by a large margin. This emphasises the wider issue of plastic pollution in the marine environment.

2.2 Objective and Rationale for Government intervention

Litter and flytipping contributes to climate change in two main ways, firstly as wasted resources that have been lost from the circular economy and secondly, through the energy required to collect and process the litter or flytipped waste, most of which can then only be sent to energy from waste or landfill, due to the poor quality of the material.^[13] Reducing litter and flytipping will help accelerate Scotland's transition from a 'linear' economy which is environmentally unsustainable and energy and resource intensive to a more resource efficient and sustainable circular economy.

The Scottish Government is introducing a new National Litter and Flytipping Strategy which follows on from the 2014 five-year strategy 'Towards a litter-free Scotland: a strategic approach to higher quality local environments'.^[14] This initial strategy was subject to a five-year review, which was due to be published in 2019, but was instead published in March 2021^[15], due to a delay as a result of COVID-19. It provides a snapshot of the activities that took place within the first five years of the strategy and acknowledges that whilst progress has been made, litter and flytipping still pose a significant challenge.

Despite current efforts and strategies, the problem of littering and flytipping in Scotland has not improved in recent years.^[16] This was the conclusion of a Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB) report in 2020, which evidenced an ongoing decline in local environmental quality; and is backed by the most recent KSB annual Scottish Litter survey, which assessed public attitudes and perceptions to litter and littering behaviour. The latest survey results showed that 67% of respondents believe that litter is a problem in their local area while 87% believe that it is a problem across Scotland.^[17]

Engagement and partnership working with key stakeholders has been central to the development of this Strategy and will be crucial for effective delivery of its outcomes and specific objectives going forward. The overarching ambition of the Strategy is to prevent littering and flytipping behaviour in Scotland. This will be achieved through the application of a systems approach, to identify where the necessary incentives are not in place to ensure a product is disposed of legally and in a way which maximises the value of that product or the materials within it. This involves looking at the entire lifecycle of products in question and those actors who are involved in influencing individuals at the point of disposal.

Actions are then based on the Individual, Social and Material (ISM) model^[18], which identifies the need to address a broad range of influences on behaviour in order to achieve behaviour change. For the purposes of the strategy these are divided into the following themes:

Behaviour change

This theme recognises the need for improved communications and engagement, but also the need to take a holistic approach to behaviour change; understanding key audiences, issues and developing a framework to identify solutions that enable behaviours to be changed. It should also be noted that the key behaviours related to littering will differ from those for flytipping. Successful measures under this theme would improve the accessibility, consistency and nature of messaging that motivates people to change their behaviour.

Services and infrastructure

In order for the prevention of litter and flytipping to be effective there needs to be services and infrastructure in place to support people to behave responsibly. This includes services offered by local authorities, but also more widely looking to businesses and community groups. Successful measures under this theme would ensure Scotland's services and infrastructure are fit for purpose and prioritise action and innovation that proactively prevents litter and flytipping and supports a circular economy.

Enforcement

Enforcement and deterrents have been identified as important in preventing litter and flytipping. This stems from numerous stakeholder calls to review the enforcement process and procedures, and to attempt to understand if alternative solutions are available (such as education or volunteering for those who cannot afford to pay fines), with collaborative measures seen as crucial. Success in relation to this theme would ensure there is a strong and consistent enforcement model across Scotland that acts as a proportional deterrent.

Data and Evidence

Underpinning any next steps, improved data and evidence is crucial to successfully understanding the root causes of the issue, evaluating the success of any interventions, collaborating successful and monitoring progress. This includes reporting of issues by the public and communities, national reporting and monitoring, citizen science and measurable outcomes. Success for this theme would include an improved understanding of the behaviours, attitudes and drivers behind both littering and flytipping and develop an evidence base that can facilitate the implementation and monitoring of effective interventions.

The Strategy has a lifespan of six years. It will be reviewed at its mid-point and at the end of its lifespan. It will be published with an associated action plan, which will be reviewed annually through the governance and delivery framework which will comprise of a high-level strategy delivery group to drive implementation, agree priorities, review progress and adapt plans. This will be supported by topic-focused delivery working groups and other mechanisms for engaging key stakeholders and sectors to ensure a wide level of input into and scrutiny of future action plans.