Executive Summary

This Lothian and Borders Area Waste Plan has been developed by the Waste Strategy Area Group to establish a framework for improved waste management practices across the five local authority areas of City of Edinburgh, East Lothian, Midlothian, West Lothian and Scottish Borders. It is the final output of an inclusive and highly consultative process which profiled a range of waste management options. These options were appraised and the Best Practicable Option for wastes management over the next 20 years and beyond was identified for Lothians and Borders. This plan should, therefore, be read in conjunction with the additional working documents set out in Annex 4 where further information on the decision-making process is required.

The key aim of the Area Waste Plan is to:

‘Contribute to the sustainable development of the Lothian and Borders area by developing waste management systems that will control waste generation, reduce the environmental impacts of waste production, improve resource efficiency, stimulate investment and maximise the economic opportunities arising from waste’.

The principle of sustainable development is now fully embedded at all levels of government thinking and policy making. The Scottish Executive recognises that effective resource use is a crucial element of sustainable development and, therefore, set the following objective within the Spending Proposals for 2003-6:

‘Ensure progress towards sustainable waste management of Scotland’s waste and achievement of EU landfill reduction targets by 2010, 2013 and 2020’.

The Executive overall national target set to achieve this aims to:

• Increase the amount of waste collected by the local authorities that is recycled or composted to 25% by 2006.
  

This Area Waste Plan has five main parts:

Figure 1 - Summary of Best Practicable Environmental Option for Municipal Solid Waste

The Best Practical Environmental Option for the management of Municipal Solid Waste within Lothian and Borders contains the following elements:

• Prevent the generation of waste at source so that Municipal Solid Waste arisings reduce from 2.6% to 1.6% in annual growth in 2013 onwards.
  

• Develop and trial new and sustainable collection systems tailored to the diverse nature of the Lothian and Borders area. This will seek to increase segregated collections of dry recyclates and compostables.
  

• The indicative recycling performance targets for municipal solid waste will increase from 5% in 2001 to 22% in 2010, 26% in 2013 and 31% in 2020.
  

• Increase the quantities of materials recovered, maximizing the potential value of recovery.

• Increase the quantities of materials reprocessed and replace virgin materials with these.
  

• Undertake further research into new and advanced other recovery technologies, such as gasification, pyrolysis and anaerobic digestion – inclusion within Best Practicable Environmental Option will be reviewed in 2007. The fraction of waste requiring treatment by other technologies will depend on the success or otherwise of recycling and composting efforts in the early stages of Area Waste Plan implementation.
  

• Reduce the quantities of waste landfilled.

Indicative Performance Targets for Lothian and Borders BPEO for Municipal Solid Wastes

Education and awareness raising is a vital element in achieving widespread attitude and behaviour change towards the management of wastes. The Best Practicable Environmental Option requires increased levels of public awareness and participation in waste prevention and in source separating of materials for collection. It also encourages communities to get involved in developing local projects that have added social, economic or environmental value.

Implementation of the Lothian and Borders Area Waste Plan
Implementing this plan will result in significant increases in the cost of waste management. Therefore Increased levels of funding will be required for local authorities and the producers of waste will be have to pay more. The planning system will have to grant appropriate permissions to site a range of new waste treatment and disposal infrastructure. This will require challenging decisions to be made by officials, politicians and local communities alike.

The area waste plan sets out a wide range of actions throughout the document. Annex 2 provides more detail on what the action will be achieving, how it will be measured and identifies lead bodies for taking the action forward. To ensure that these actions and the whole Area Waste Plan become a reality, partnership working at all levels and between a range of stakeholders is required. All Waste Strategy Area Group members are fully committed and signed up to both the principles behind the plan and the range of actions promoted.

This Plan outlines the first step forward to making the significant changes that are required to change our throw-away culture to a more waste aware resource-efficient society. It seeks to deliver an integrated framework for managing wastes to bring about economic, environmental and social benefits to everyone. The magnitude of this change is substantial and all sectors of society, government and industry will have a key role to play, from waste reduction, participation, commitment and support to the efficient and safe operation of waste management facilities. This framework provides guidelines within which change can be effected and progress can be monitored. Whilst it is recognised that substantial change will not happen overnight, incremental change is better than no change at all.

Figure 2 - Area Waste Plan Process.