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Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-02441

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 26 August 2021
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 13 September 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what (a) baseline material input standards have been established for material recovery facilities (MRFs) and (b) improvement in output quality from MRFs has been delivered since 2016.

This information is publically available through the SEPA Recyclate Quality Reporting Tool, which can be accessed here: https://informatics.sepa.org.uk/RecyclateQuality/

The tool presents data from samples taken from material streams entering and exiting material recovery facilities (MFRs). The tool reports the percentage of materials collected that are considered to be ‘target’ materials for recycling.

Question reference: S6W-02435

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 August 2021
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 13 September 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what work it has done to model future recycling performance.

Question reference: S6W-02455

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 23 August 2021
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 13 September 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its progress towards the 2025 food waste reduction target, including a tonnage breakdown for food waste (a) arisings, (b) incinerated/landfilled and (c) prevented and, if it is not possible to provide such figures, by what date the data will be available.

A full update on progress towards our target of a 33% reduction in food waste by 2025 will be provided in the upcoming review of Scotland’s Food Waste Reduction Action Plan. A detailed analysis on the composition of residual waste is currently being undertaken and will form part of this review, due in Spring 2022.

In addition, we are developing a Routemap to deliver our ambitious 2025 waste and recycling targets which will inform the development of the new Circular Economy Bill. There will also be further engagement and consultation to shape the Bill’s contents.

Question reference: S6W-02634

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 07 September 2021
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 13 September 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many enquiries (a) it and (b) local authorities have received since March 2020 regarding a lack of provision of free personal care for under-65s.

Question reference: S6W-02461

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 23 August 2021
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 13 September 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has spent on food waste prevention and reduction programmes since 2013.

Since 2016 - which is when a specific food waste support programme came in - up to April 2021, approx. £1.23 million has been spent.

Table 1 also provides a breakdown of Scottish Government’s advertising spend targeted at food waste prevention and reduction since 2013.

Table 1. Scottish Government food waste advertising spend
Year	Campaign	Advertising spend
2013-14	Eat In Season	£79,903.03
2013-14	Food Waste	£573,102.70
2014-15	Food Provenance	£80,049.11
2015-16	Greener Scotland	£53,042.18
2016-17	Greener Scotland	£103,742.55
2017-18	Greener Scotland	£88,893.75
2018-19	Greener Scotland	£217,737.81
2018-19	Food waste	£303,516.65
2019-2020	Food waste	£53,042.18
TOTAL		£1,553,029.96

A breakdown of Zero Waste Scotland’s spend on advertising and outreach activities to promote food waste reduction for 2019-20 and during 2020-21 (to date) and the outcomes of these are set out in Table 2. This forms part of the overall approx. £1.23 million spend mentioned above.

Table 2. Zero Waste Scotland advertising spend and outcomes
Year	Advertising spend	Outreach spend	Pieces of PR coverage	Increase in social media following	Training delivered on 'Love Food Hate Waste'
2019-20	£193,000	£76,000	437	17,000	1269 individuals
2020-21 (to date)	£105,000	£20,000	137	13,000	166 individuals
TOTAL	£298,000	£96,000

Question reference: S6W-02434

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 23 August 2021
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 13 September 2021

To ask the Scottish Government when it first made plans for a new round of household waste compositional analysis, following the 2013-15 programme, and how (a) much money and (b) many staffing hours it allocated to this.

Scotland’s Waste Data Strategy board keeps Scotland’s evidence requirements for waste and materials under constant review.

Previous analyses of the composition of household municipal waste were undertaken in 2009 and 2014-15. Zero Waste Scotland had planned to undertake a further analysis in 2020, however, this was delayed due to Covid-19. Work to develop local authority projects restarted in July 2021 and waste sampling and analysis is planned to start in October 2021.

Zero Waste Scotland has forecast costs of £155,000 in 2021-22. The staff resource allocation for this project is not recorded to this level of detail.

Question reference: S6W-02433

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 23 August 2021
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 13 September 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many households have access to food waste collections.

Question reference: S6W-02632

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 07 September 2021
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 13 September 2021

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-31723 by Jeane Freeman on 9 November 2020, how it is ensuring that everyone eligible for free personal care under Frank’s Law is receiving it during the COVID-19 pandemic, in light of data on this not being reported.

Question reference: S6W-02273

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 16 August 2021
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 9 September 2021

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-32506 by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020, whether it will provide updated figures to include spend during 2020-21.

Zero Waste Scotland have spent the following amount of money on tackling litter from 2015 to 2021:

Year	Spend on tackling litter
2020-21	£283,807
2019-20	£92,397
2018-19	£119,081
2017-18	£379,465
2016-17	£480,786
2015-16	£658,647

Additional funding was given to Zero Waste Scotland in 2015-16 to 2017-18 for specific projects, such as funding Keep Scotland Beautiful’s Clean Up Scotland Campaign and development of the Litter Monitoring System.

The Scottish Government and Crown Estates Scotland have funded Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB), for their "Upstream Battle" marine litter campaign. The details are as follows:

	Financial Year	Funding
Scottish Government	2018-2019	£30,000
Crown Estates Scotland	2018-2019	£25,000
Crown Estates Scotland	2020-2021	£20,000

The Scottish Government does not separately account for staff time dedicated to work on tackling litter.

Question reference: S6W-02438

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 26 August 2021
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 8 September 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has on whether a recommendation was submitted on a preferred design of a HazDoc system for waste monitoring.

We are not aware of a specific recommendation for the preferred full design for a HazDoc system submitted to Scottish Government.

The development of an electronic system for hazardous waste is being taken forward as part of our work to implement an electronic waste tracking system, as set out in our update to the Climate Change Plan. The design of this system so far has involved input from a range of stakeholders and will be informed through a consultation planned in Autumn.