Developing a circular economy
Chief Executive of Zero Waste Scotland, Iain Gulland discusses the challenges and opportunities of the pandemic on Scotland’s progress towards becoming a circular economy.
Gulland outlines his belief that the pandemic has highlighted that in the face of a global crisis, business can be done differently, and this is worth noting when thinking about tackling the climate emergency.
The Chief Executive of the Scottish Government- and EU-funded company, set up to lead Scotland to use products and resources responsibly and focusing on where we can have the greatest impact on climate change, says that while the Covid pandemic demands urgency in the short term, the climate emergency and the associated biodiversity emergency remain the greatest challenges of our lifetime.
Gulland identifies overconsumption of the earth’s natural resources as the cause of these challenges, highlighting that 80 per cent of Scotland’s carbon footprint is caused by the vast amount of goods, materials, and services the country produces, consumes and then throws away.
However, he also highlights that over half of these items that become waste are imported from overseas, meaning that the impact of waste on Scotland’s biodiversity, habitat and water security isn’t solely to do with behaviour at home.
“Quite often we only talk about dealing with our territorial emissions but clearly we really need to address what’s happening overseas as well,” he states.
Gulland stresses that the reduction of waste is not only key to ending the emissions behind the climate crisis but is also an opportunity to create sustainable jobs and businesses.
This understanding was key to Scotland’s launch of their circular economy, which began in 2014 with macro-economic research on the opportunities of a circular economy for Scotland and culminated in the Government’s ‘Making Things Last’ strategy in 2016, one of the first circular economy strategies across the globe.
Gulland explains that the strategy laid the groundwork for a comprehensive programme of supports and influences across key sectors, individual businesses, communities, and public sector partners to embed circular economy thinking and enable innovations.
Outlining some key initiatives on this front, Gulland highlights that Zero Waste Scotland has established a growing level of circular cities and regions across Scotland and explains that many of these are done in partnership with chambers of commerce, creating both an interface with local businesses and providing a platform to facilitate strategic opportunities.
Additionally, the publicly funded company has developed Revolve, Scotland’s re-use quality standard with around 150 individual outlets now certified.
“It’s an attractive badge to hold, and this is now being rolled out across a wider range of businesses than the not-for-profit third sector where the Revolve standard began, with major charity retailers and now private sector businesses successfully achieving certification,” says Gulland.
“The logo assures customers that they are buying from a great re-use retailer committed to providing only the highest quality second-hand products and excellent customer service.”
Zero Waste Scotland has invested almost £9 million in around 30 individual businesses to develop new circular economy opportunities and provided business support over 200 individual companies in assessing new business models.
Highlighting some examples of early successes, Gulland points to Renewable Parts, a company that refurbishes wind turbine parts, and which alongside a growing wind industry, has seized an opportunity to re-manufacture and repurpose parts which would usually be retained until end of life and then disposed of.
Another example is a facilitated collaboration between a local brewery and bakery, whereby the bakery is making biscuits from the brewery’s spent grains. Gulland sets out that this partnership is not simply the identification of one common opportunity but rather an example of how bringing businesses together collaboratively in cities and regions can create a different dynamic to partnerships.
“Clearly there is an opportunity to tackle common problems but more importantly to identify common opportunities,” he says.
Covid-19
Gulland admits that Covid-19 has been disruptive to the circular economy journey and to the businesses involved but stresses that it has also helped to unearth some opportunities. Highlighting that the pandemic has helped identify supply chain resilience and weaknesses in relation to re-usable or re-purposed materials. Highlighting the example whereby many breweries in Scotland switched production to hand sanitiser earlier in 2020, Gulland states that it soon became clear that it was in fact bottles that became the critical material in the supply chain, and this brought about interest in re-usable and re-fillable opportunities. Explaining that Zero Waste Scotland have worked with companies to develop a pilot around refillable systems within hospitals over the winter, he adds: “These are the types of examples where people are beginning to think differently about single use and thinking more about how re-fill, re-use and how the circular economy could help plug some of the gaps.”
Reducing waste is just one of the opportunities identified by Gulland, with another being jobs. As unemployment rises as a result of the pandemic, hitting young people hardest, Gulland sees an opportunity to develop skills and to connect young people eager to learn with businesses looking to recover, around the circular economy.
“Clearly there is an opportunity to tackle common problems but more importantly to identify common opportunities.”
Scotland has set an ambitious target of a 75 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and Gulland believes that knowledge and skills development around the circular economy now will be crucial to future success.
Waste management
Discussing the opportunities in waste management, Gulland believes that the Government’s strategy has helped bind two spheres of the circular economy. The first being businesses and entrepreneurs excited about new circular economy opportunities and the second being waste management, which he says now have a common cause under the strategy.
Outlining that refuse collectors are now more accurately recognised as skilled resource managers, harvesting the valuable materials for a growing circular economy which feeds in to the national and global economy, Gulland says that the pandemic has highlighted the importance of waste material management.
“The challenges over the past months of maintaining our frontline services helped to provide a focus that it wasn’t just health issues that needed to be dealt with but that we had to continue provide the materials into the economy and to ensure that we didn’t lose ground on the circular economy progress we’ve made in terms of material stewardship,” says Gulland.
“It has brought to the fore the existing supply chains and the fragility of some of those supply chains and possibly exposed a lack of resilience in some areas. However, it has allowed us and government to target those areas where fragility is greatest and build opportunities going forward.”
Gulland explains that resources have been made available to a number of companies in recent months in this regard to facilitate the building of capacity but also to diversify into new markets and materials.
A further major step for addressing fragilities in the circular economy supply chains is the recent Scottish Government announcement that £70 million is to be made available to local authorities in 2021 to not only re-establish recycling services but to go further and “ensure that we are collecting the materials that we can make the most of in Scotland”.
Key to this will be the establishment of a consistent national household recycling service, which Gulland explains is something that has been in development for some time, recognising that 32 local authorities operating individual systems has not been optimal for circular economy development. Zero Waste Scotland have been working in a national recycling charter, which the Chief Executive believes will provide a roadmap to collection consistency.
Concluding, Gulland looks to the future and outlines the ambition to establish more re-processing infrastructure in Scotland. Pointing to an understanding that for every one job in collection in Scotland, there is potentially a further eight jobs in re-processing, re-purposing or re-manufacturing materials back into the economy, he describes this as “a prize that we would very much like to secure”.
“Covid has shown us that we can all do things differently which is exactly what is needed, not just to embed the circular economy but to move on our own ambitions around the climate change and biodiversity emergency,” he adds.
