Ensuring EPR delivers a just transition in the Scottish Highlands and Islands
The Scottish Highlands and Islands face numerous waste management challenges thanks to their rurality, large service coverage areas, and long distances to recycling destinations. This is exacerbated by factors such as weather conditions and reliance on ferries as a primary mode of transportation for materials.
Wanting to investigate the challenges and opportunities that the implementation of extended producer responsibility (EPR) policies will bring, Zero Waste Scotland commissioned Resource Futures to investigate the effects that these new regulations would have on these areas, considering their unique characteristics.
The Scottish Highlands and Islands are a region which includes many of the UK’s most rural and remote communities. While this much was known anecdotally, our research sought to build an evidence-based, comparable account of the challenges and opportunities faced by the local authorities in this region in regard to EPR materials.
The research also aimed to identify opportunities for circular initiatives such as local reuse and recycling schemes to mitigate the impact of EPR schemes in the Highlands and Islands.
How EPR will work
The three upcoming EPR schemes – packaging, batteries, and waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) – will result in payments from producers to local authorities for the waste services they provide, based on their individual circumstances and service efficiency. By requiring producers to fund the circular management of these materials, the policies seek to increase both reuse and recycling.
The UK Government, in collaboration with the devolved administrations, aims to create a payment mechanism that will channel producer fees to local authorities in a way that is both fair and effective at increasing reuse and recycling. To achieve fair outcomes, the unique challenges or advantages of different local authority areas must be considered.
Understanding a variety of perspectives and needs
A just transition to a circular economy depends not only on well-designed policies, but also how they are designed and implemented. This project took a co-design approach to policy development, working in partnership with the stakeholders these policies will impact. In this case, this involved local authorities, waste management companies, ferry operators, and community and business groups.
Through interviews and workshops, we encouraged stakeholders to openly communicate their lived experiences of what worked well in local recycling services, as well as key challenges and gaps. We gave local authority representatives the space to share their challenges and learnings with each other: they also played a key role in verifying the research findings.
The wide variety of stakeholders spoken to allowed us to capture a holistic and nuanced picture of the unique and shared challenges of the areas in question.
Visualising the situation on the ground
To aid understanding and comparison, we visually represented the variety in service provision across the areas of focus, as well as the different limiting factors influencing service design for each authority.
Combining these with ArcGIS maps highlighted the challenges of large collection areas, heavy reliance on ferries, and the long distances waste is transported overland. All of these significantly add to local authority costs – an important factor when calculating EPR payments.
Identifying unique challenges
Through this research, we identified several unique challenges to EPR waste collections and management in the Highlands and Islands:
- While other local authorities gain net revenue from selling higher-quality recycled materials, partially offsetting waste management costs, high costs for this in the Highlands and Islands mean that there is either neutral or negative revenue from all materials collected.
- There is a lack of private waste management companies in remoter areas, so there is a heavy reliance on local authority service provision.
- Seasonal pressures on ferry services – such as tourism, fishing and aquaculture – can mean that waste transportation is deprioritised at certain times of year.
As well as these insights, we identified opportunities to increase circularity and mitigate these challenges. These included building on existing local circularity initiatives and linking these to community wealth-building efforts. Finally, we made recommendations for future research.
Further research
A second phase of research has since begun, in which we are gathering quantitative data on the tonnages of EPR materials managed in the Highlands and Islands, as well as associated costs to local authorities. This research is being used to inform the roll-out of UK-wide waste and recycling policies, with a goal of achieving a just transition for very rural and remote areas to a low-carbon, circular economy.
A summary version of our findings has been published online, while the full, detailed report has been shared with the appropriate government agencies.
“To advance the circular economy, we need to advance our understanding of place-based considerations that can act as both a barrier and an enabler and use the evidence we find to ground our policy decision making.
“This research has provided much needed evidence and produced findings which helps us to communicate unique challenges and considerations for EPR implementation (and for other policy areas) in the Highlands and Islands local authority areas, while also identifying opportunities to help leverage EPR to achieve a just circular transition for communities in these areas.
“Resource Futures’ knowledge and experience, as well as their collaborative and participatory approach was a great asset to produce quality research outputs that we – and anyone – can make use of”.
Ray Georgeson, Head of Policy – Evidence & Insights, Zero Waste Scotland
