Draft circular economy strategy: strategic environmental assessment

3 Approach to the Assessment

3.1 Scope of the assessment

All of the following environmental topics were scoped into the assessment, though topics were only included in the assessment of appropriate chapters. For example, cultural heritage and the historic environment was only assessed for the Built Environment priority sector of the Strategy.

• Climatic factors (i.e. climate change)
• Biodiversity
• Material assets
• Landscape and visual impacts
• Air
• Water
• Human health
• Soil
• Cultural heritage & the historic environment

3.2 SEA Environmental Objectives

The Strategy was assessed against the following SEA environmental objectives, as set out in the SEA Scoping Report.

Biodiversity:

• Protect species in Scotland by reducing degradation of habitats resulting from extraction and disposal of materials.
• Support the conservation of ecosystems through reduced waste and more sustainable use of natural resources.

Climatic Factors:

• Minimise the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from production, consumption and disposal of resources. 

Material Assets:

• Minimise the use of virgin materials and promote the sustainable management of Scotland’s natural and manufactured assets.
• Increase reuse, repair, and recycling rates to retain value and reduce reliance on finite resources.

Landscape and Visual Impacts:

• Reduce the negative visual impacts on Scottish landscapes resulting from the irresponsible disposal of materials.
• Minimise negative visual impacts resulting from infrastructure associated with resource extraction and disposal or reprocessing of materials.
• Manage additional infrastructure requirements needed to enable circular economy practices in a way that avoids unnecessary negative visual impacts.

Air

• Improve air quality through reductions in the negative environmental impacts of resource extraction and emissions from waste disposal methods such as incineration.

Water

• Reduce the risk of water pollution from manufacturing and disposal of materials e.g. landfill leachate, wastewater from industrial processes, and microplastics in aquatic environments.
• Reduce water use through a reduction in virgin material production processes.

Soil

• Support land stewardship and sustainable land use through the reduction of extractive and waste-intensive practices.

Human health

• Improve public wellbeing by reducing negative visual impacts in Scottish landscapes and public spaces.
• Support improvements to human health by promoting food waste reduction behaviours in a way that complements wider policy goals on diet and healthy weight.

Cultural heritage and the historic environment

• Contribute to the preservation of cultural heritage and the historic environment by encouraging the retention, refurbishment, reuse, and repair of historic environment assets and materials.

3.3 Environmental Principles

The assessment in this SEA will follow the guiding principles in Section 13(1) of the Continuity Act. These are:

• The principle that protecting the environment should be integrated into the making of policies;
• The precautionary principle as it relates to the environment;
• The principle that preventative action should be taken to avert environmental damage;
• The principle that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source; and
• The principle that the polluter should pay.

The assessment objectives encompass the principles that environmental damage should be prevented or reduced by the policy in question. The assessment highlights any priorities set out in the proposed policy that may expected to cause environmental damage.

The proposal itself is guided by many of these principles. The Strategy is designed to minimise the negative environmental impact of our production, consumption and disposal and to maximise the economic value derived from material use without increasing our environmental impacts, thus aligning with the principle to integrate the protection of the environment into the making of policies. The Strategy sets out our approach to Product Stewardship, the design of which has been influenced by the ‘Polluter Pays’ principle. Finally, the Strategy promotes preventative action by addressing issues at source by focusing on reducing the extraction and use of non-renewable resources in the first instance. The influence of design in shaping these outcomes will also be acknowledged where appropriate.

3.4 Assessment Methodology

The approach to the assessment reflects the strategic nature of the Strategy, and the role it plays in bringing together the existing policy framework. As such the assessment takes a narrative approach which describes the likely additional environmental effects of the measures set out within the Strategy.

Likely consequences of the proposed priorities were assessed using causal loop diagrams to depict the interplay between measures and the anticipated outcomes within each priority sector. Subsequent environmental impacts were then explored qualitatively on a topic-by-topic basis. The causal loop diagrams can be found in Appendix A. Consideration may also be given, in broad terms, to potential cumulative effects across sectors.