Scottish Government spent just £1.26m on improving recycling infrastructure since 2007

GAINS press release, 5 November 2011

A Freedom of Information request by GAINS has revealed that the Government has spent just £1.26 million to improve Scotland's recycling infrastructure, since the current administration came into power in 2007.  The full response can be seen here (Word Doc)

Although £6 million had been invested in composting and anaerobic digestion, the Government's response also revealed that not one penny of the £5 million it pledged in 2009 for improving plastics recycling had been used. 

Campaign group Green Alternatives to Incineration in Scotland (GAINS) believes this shows the Government's promises about improving recycling are all talk. While hundreds of millions of pounds are being spent on waste incinerators, virtually nothing is being spent to improve Scotland's pitiful recycling infrastructure.

Lots of things that are currently landfilled or burnt could be recycled, if the necessary facilities were available to local authorities, including Tetrapak drinks cartons and plastic bottle tops.

Incineration recovers, at best, a tenth of the energy used to make the products in our rubbish. Burning one tonne of waste products represents the emission of up to 5 tonnes of CO2 - 3 tonnes from making those products, and a further 2 tonnes from the combustion process.

Companies are queuing up to build waste incinerators because of the huge subsidies that the Government is offering for generating electricity from burning waste, in the form of Renewables Obligations Certificates (ROCs). When one considers that a large proportion of waste is made from fossil-derived plastics, it is ridiculous to describe waste incineration as 'renewable'.  

GAINS, in common with the global anti-incineration movement, believes that if a product cannot be recycled, then the manufacturer should stop making it.