Keep Scotland Beautiful

– in the Scottish Parliament at on 18 September 2012.

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Photo of John Scott John Scott Conservative

The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-03683, in the name of Graeme Dey, on Keep Scotland Beautiful. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament congratulates the Keep Scotland Beautiful 2012 National Spring Clean campaign; notes that 120,000 people in Scotland registered to participate in the event, which was supported by charities, businesses and organisations across the country; understands that a further 100,000 were estimated to have participated without registering; believes that this makes this the biggest mass mobilisation for civic purposes in Scotland since the Second World War; considers that the removal of around 1,100 tonnes of litter from Shetland to the Borders should act as an encouragement to everyone concerned to champion the cause of keeping Scotland beautiful, and wishes Keep Scotland Beautiful every encouragement in preparing and implementing its plan to involve up to one million people in the 2013 clean-up, which, it understands, would remove 10,000 to 20,000 tonnes of litter from the streets and country roads of Scotland.

Photo of Graeme Dey Graeme Dey Scottish National Party

I thank Scottish National Party colleagues, Alex Fergusson, Alison Johnstone and Labour members whose support for the motion has allowed an extremely important subject to be aired in the chamber.

It is entirely fitting that members have an opportunity to recognise Keep Scotland Beautiful’s work in inspiring up to 220,000 Scots to take part in this year’s two-month-long clean-up, which removed 1,100 tonnes of rubbish from the environment. In so doing, we should offer it our encouragement as it plans an even bigger and better exercise next year, which is the year of natural Scotland.

We must recognise, as KSB does, that what is needed to address the littering issue is not just volunteers trailing behind the litterers and cleaning up after them; a culture change is also needed. We need people to realise that dropping litter or fly-tipping is an unacceptable antisocial habit. In part, that might be achieved by exercising existing enforcement powers more effectively or increasing penalties to provide an enhanced deterrent. I believe that my colleague Chic Brodie will cover that issue in his speech. However, it is also about fundamentally altering mindsets.

I took part in one of the litter picks in my constituency, which was organised by Colliston primary school. That school is located just off the crossroads on the main Arbroath to Brechin road, which links the village of Colliston with nearby Letham Grange. Teachers, parents and kids set out in teams to tackle the scourge of litter in an area that extended no more than 500m away from the school in assorted directions. In spite of the relatively small amount of ground that we covered, we soon ran out of litter bags; indeed, my team had to return to the school for fresh supplies within minutes.

It was not just the volume of rubbish that we found that was disturbing; its nature was also disturbing. Why would anyone feel the need to dispose of a pair of Y-fronts by apparently throwing them from a moving car? Perhaps I have led too sheltered a life. Actually, our experiences were rather tame compared with those elsewhere. Among other items that were found in the clean-up were a guitar, a drum and 70 bottles of a particular brand of light perry. That must have been some party. A bed, fish boxes, a toilet seat, a park bench, the rear seat of a car, ironing boards, a wheelie bin and a whip were also found. That was the kind of whip that Indiana Jones uses, not the type that back benchers in the Parliament dread. To be serious, those are hardly items that people would drop inadvertently or accidentally—they were deliberately dumped.

Before and during the litter pick in which I was involved, it was interesting to listen to what the kids were saying about littering and to note their horror that people abandon food, drink and goodness knows what all round their school. Hopefully, those youngsters will grow into the kind of adults that we should be—people with respect for the beautiful country that we are fortunate enough to live in—although, sadly, most of us have almost become oblivious to the rubbish that is abandoned in our streets and our countryside.

However, that is not the case for many of our youngsters. Earlier this year, I was asked to judge a photography competition that was organised by Webster’s high school on the theme of my Kirriemuir, in which pupils were asked to produce photographic images that encapsulated their town. Mixed in with the predictable shots of Peter Pan’s statue and the camera obscura, there were disturbing photographs of rubbish abandoned in the stream running through the Den and, most memorable of all, a close with litter spilling out of bins and strewn across the area. That is how some kids saw Kirrie—a town spoiled by people lacking pride in their surroundings—but we must face the fact that those images could have come from any corner of Scotland.

People’s attitude to litter must sometimes be called into question. A farmer in my constituency farms at least 7 miles away from the closest fast-food outlet. He told me of how he had watched from a distance as a dog walker dropped a half-eaten burger and fries on the private road leading to his property. Presumably, that gentleman had purchased his food and driven out to the countryside to consume it while taking a leisurely stroll with his dog only to discover, when he got there, that the grub was cold, so he tossed it aside. That is an interesting contradiction. The individual valued the countryside enough to want to drive out and take a stroll in it, but he had so little respect for those surroundings that he discarded his uneaten food there.

That is the kind of attitude that Keep Scotland Beautiful wants to change by establishing a sense of civic pride. When Keep Scotland Beautiful was established more than 40 years ago, its aim was to campaign for a cleaner country. In the 21st century, that aspiration remains. KSB estimates that there are approximately 2,000 pieces of litter per kilometre on Scotland’s beaches. It also estimates that in the past year it has been involved in the removal of enough litter to fill 42,000 wheelie bins. All told, KSB reckons that the uplift of litter is costing the country £100 million a year. We cannot continue like that, especially when, as well as the eyesore that that presents, there is the lost opportunity for recycling.

The Scottish Government’s important initiatives include the planned recycling on the go initiative. It has also tasked zero waste Scotland with producing what has been described as

“a robust and comprehensive ‘state of the nation’ evidence report on litter’, which will inform future litter strategies.

The £250,000 litter prevention innovation fund—applications to which closed last week—assists local authorities, community groups, landowners and businesses to support and implement innovative local schemes. However, successfully tackling the issue will need more than Government initiatives, local authorities discharging their responsibilities effectively or even the many worthy small-scale local campaigns that are operating around the country and which other members may choose to highlight. People must take personal responsibility and there is a need for many more people to develop a respect for their surroundings.

I refer to the theme of Keep Scotland Beautiful’s 2013 campaign . If 220,000 folk could collect 1,200 tonnes of rubbish in eight weeks during the springtime, how much could be collected if 1 million people could be mobilised over 52 weeks? KSB hopes that a successful campaign will see well in excess of 10,000 tonnes of rubbish removed from the environment. It hopes that the campaign will succeed in changing the nation’s behaviour with regard to litter and fly-tipping. KSB realises that that will require it to capture the hearts and minds of individuals, communities, institutions and businesses. Those ambitions are bold but, after the unprecedented response to the 2012 national spring clean campaign, KSB is optimistic that a momentum is building with people becoming much less willing to tolerate litter and fly-tipping.

I hope that the message from Parliament today is that it supports the work of Keep Scotland Beautiful as part of a general drive to make Scotland a cleaner, greener place.

Photo of George Adam George Adam Scottish National Party

I thank Graeme Dey for bringing the debate to the chamber. He may be surprised to hear that I will speak about the situation in Paisley.

A fresh attitude to the problem of rubbish can make a difference. Vandalism is one of Paisley’s problems, which is evident in graffiti writing and antisocial behaviour in some areas. I know a community activist—I will not mention his name—who is an elderly gentleman living in the south end of Paisley. At every meeting that he attends—the community council meeting, the tenants and residents association meeting, or the local area committee—he asks what they will do about the Neilston Road shops, which are covered in graffiti.

That leads us into an interesting debate about how we might keep a whole area clean and tidy—which, as Graeme Dey has pointed out, is not just the responsibility of the local authority or the kids who pick up rubbish after school. Everyone has to be involved, including local businesses. For too long now, many retailers and those running businesses in the streets of our towns and cities, who take money from our pockets, seem to forget that, although they might not live in the town that they serve, they actually gain from being part of the community and should work along with it to ensure that the town is clean. After all, such an approach could make a massive difference in many different areas. Not only is rubbish in our town centres unsightly and wrong, but who will invest in a town centre that has rubbish all over its streets? No one will spend thousands of pounds on setting up a new business if there is rubbish everywhere, bin bags lying uncollected and so on. These things make a difference.

We have all seen pictures of housing estates throughout the country that show how lovely the estates were in the 1950s and 1960s. If those in certain areas or streets simply allow rubbish to go everywhere, everyone simply gives up and leaves it lying. As a result, such behaviour becomes the norm. Graeme Dey does us a favour by highlighting this issue and reminding us that this is not just about some on-going campaign but something that should always be part of our lives.

When the Scottish National Party was the administration in Renfrewshire, it introduced the clean Renfrewshire campaign; although we offered community clean-ups, we focused on the ownership of the idea and on getting people to realise that it was our problem and that we had to deal with it. I think that that is the most important issue. We also gave the warden service the powers to book people for littering and the like in the town; the move was not very popular initially, but it made a difference in the area and helped to change the culture. As Graeme Dey pointed out, we have to make it clear that fly-tipping is totally unacceptable. Once it happens in one area, it quickly starts to happen non-stop.

I thank Graeme Dey for securing the debate. We have to work together on this issue; indeed, the message of the local campaigns in which I was involved was that every one of us was responsible and that we needed to clean Renfrewshire together. That made all the difference.

Photo of Claudia Beamish Claudia Beamish Labour

As a long-time community and environmental activist, eco-schools co-ordinator and now shadow minister for the environment and climate change, I, too, thank Graham Dey for securing this debate, for focusing our minds on Keep Scotland Beautiful’s 2012 national spring clean campaign and for setting our sights on the 2013 campaign. The debate is vital in highlighting the major and urgent contribution that is required from communities across Scotland to improve our environment.

I also pay tribute to Keep Scotland Beautiful’s work. Almost 60 years ago, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes set out to keep Britain tidy by trying to stop littering, and to encourage pride in local environments. Since then, that work has continued in various forms and the organisation’s remarkable achievement of getting 120,000 participants—and perhaps thousands more unofficial participants—involved in its recent campaign shows that it is as strong as ever.

When I first came to Scotland 20 years ago, I, a farmer’s wife and a couple of others had a vision of turning a dump in our village—Douglas Water in Clydesdale—into a community nature reserve. Some members of the community council laughed when we first raised the possibility of cleaning up an area that had been undermined by years of dumping and neglect. However, years later, after volunteers had cleaned it up, divers had taken cars out of the burn and so on, people once again had pride in their local area. That—and the fact that we received financial support and advice from a range of organisations—shows that we need a behavioural change to allow communities to take ownership of their areas. If that happens, people can once again take pride in their neighbourhoods. That very point is made clear in the briefing from the Carnegie UK Trust, which has just produced a report that I would highlight, called “Pride in Place: Tackling Environmental Incivilities”.

The specific initiatives that are organised by Keep Scotland Beautiful, such as the annual spring clean, help to build links between schools, their communities and local businesses. A primary 6 pupil in the community where I worked as a primary teacher wrote to a local hotel and asked whether the school could clear the burn between the hotel and the school. The owner got involved and was delighted not only to have the burn cleared, but to work alongside the local schoolchildren and to build community links.

KSB also administers the eco-schools programme, for which I was responsible when I was an eco-schools co-ordinator. According to the KSB website, more than 3,000 schools have now signed up as eco-schools. The programme engages children and young people and enables them to learn about key issues, including the environment, sustainability, local citizenship and, of course, litter. Pupils take ownership of the problem of littering, and assessments for the coveted green flag award emphasise clean playgrounds and playing fields. As a result, many schools now operate a rota of litter pickers, which not only gets pupils physically involved in keeping the school tidy, but teaches them skills such as organisation and taking responsibility, and makes them feel that they are owners of their communities. Even more significant, recycling and reuse become common parlance, and through a cultural shift litter can almost become a thing of the past.

The significance of developing children’s and young people’s understanding of a sustainable future—from local to global—is fundamental to the future of our planet, yet the work by Keep Scotland Beautiful is often overlooked. The work also flows through to parents and others, when children go home and tell them what has been going on.

Unfortunately, as Graeme Dey and George Adam highlighted, there are still those who think that litter does not matter and who take no personal responsibility for the state of their community. The 2013 national spring clean will be an opportunity for all of us to help to change that by involving our communities in making their neighbourhoods better and clearing up a little more litter along the way. I thank Graeme Dey.

Photo of Chic Brodie Chic Brodie Scottish National Party

I, too, welcome Graeme Dey’s motion. He spoke of a cleaner, greener, more sustainable Scotland, and we all support that. I would like to focus on the clean part and indicate the impact that I think it has on the latter two aspects.

Graeme Dey said that I would mention enhancing the powers in legislation. I have indicated that I might wish to introduce a member’s bill on litter, because litter is not just a zero waste issue, although working with zero waste Scotland is clearly important. Tackling litter is important in order to further beautify Scotland, but also to increase morale and boost confidence. Renewed action is needed to further preserve and improve Scotland’s beauty and environment. That will become increasingly important as we approach 2014, given the number of visitors that we anticipate having then.

The responsibility for clearing litter from Scotland’s streets and public areas lies with our local authorities, but not just with them; it also lies with us. I do not want to dwell on the obvious opportunities of recycling and waste to energy—Graeme Dey mentioned those subjects—but they are important factors. The local authorities are failing in some cases. In some areas, the duties that local authorities were given under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 are manifestly not being met, and neither are the standards in the code of practice on litter and refuse. Given that those standards exist and are considered to be important, we have to ask why they are not being applied and met.

One can walk down the Canongate and see all over the place black bags that have burst. We had a recent report on Ayr and Stonehaven beaches. A couple of months ago, I did a radio phone-in on litter at West Sound in Ayr, and the number of phone calls that we received was striking. Graeme Dey mentioned people throwing material out of cars while they are driving. I have to say that it is only high-class Y-fronts that we have on the A77, but that is an issue. Fly tipping is unacceptable. We can fine people £40,000 for fly tipping, or put them in prison for six months, but we do not apply the legislation.

All those things have an impact on health and safety. However, it is not just that. Local problems such as litter, graffiti and dog fouling have major social impacts on wellbeing and quality of life. They define people and communities. There is a clear correlation between the extent of the problem and the nature of the area. Some 44 per cent of people in our most deprived neighbourhoods encounter problems with litter and rubbish, compared with 17 per cent in the most affluent areas. Various other factors and measurements substantiate that point.

We need action and—as has been said—it must be more than just voluntary action. That is why I have talked about introducing a member’s bill. We must look at awareness raising, education and, regrettably, at penalties. Awareness raising should highlight behavioural change and should focus on the impact on communities, our environment and climate. Although some work has been done on a coastal clean-up, we still have more to do. There must be more education in schools and communities. We must also create enterprises, as has been done in Dundee, where the Clean Close Company has cleaned up a city that used to be recognised by some people as probably the dirtiest in Scotland. It is not now. All those things are required.

At its heart, Scotland is beautiful. We must now tidy up the body of Scotland. I support the motion.

Photo of Jamie McGrigor Jamie McGrigor Conservative

I, too, congratulate Graeme Dey on securing this important debate. I also commend all my constituents throughout the Highlands and Islands who participated in this year’s national spring clean. The extent to which local residents across the Highlands and Islands got involved is demonstrated by the fact that there were around 40 spring clean sessions in Argyll and Bute alone, which involved 1,934 children and 591 adults.

Participants in the sessions included a wide variety of groups and individuals, including the staff at Loch Fyne Oysters at the head of Loch Fyne, who organised a beach clean-up early in April. Rumours that they found a pocket book that belonged to Gordon Brown are unconfirmed, although there was a mass of sweetie papers underneath where John Prescott had been sitting.

The spring clean sessions also involved school pupils from numerous schools, including Strachur, Kirn, Toward and Strone primaries and Dunoon grammar school. It is fantastic to see such a strong volunteering spirit. All of us would want that sense of community pride to be repeated in next year’s spring clean and, indeed, would ideally like it to become an effort that is repeated throughout the year.

I have been chairman of the Loch Awe Improvement Association since 1992. I remember the first clean-up that we had, in 1993, which was organised by our volunteer wardens. It resulted in more than 1,000 black bags of rubbish being filled from the banks of Loch Awe, which somewhat overwhelmed Argyll and Bute Council. I send a wish to the council that it should back up the efforts of volunteers to clean up areas of great beauty by providing litter bins free of charge. I take the opportunity to thank the retired schoolmaster at Eredine in Argyll, Donald Beckett, who has devoted so much of his own free time over many years to pick up litter left by others so that the public can enjoy the banks of Loch Awe.

All of us in the chamber support the aims of Keep Scotland Beautiful. Although clean-ups are vital in removing the presence of litter and improving the condition of our communities for local residents and tourists alike, all of us would also support tackling the scourge of littering itself, because prevention is better than cure. Keep Scotland Beautiful is to be commended for the work that it does in that regard in our schools and communities. Where adequate litter bins and receptacles are available, we should all back a zero tolerance approach to dropping litter. Councils could play a better part by providing more litter bins and emptying them more regularly.

In Inverness, Keep Scotland Beautiful is working in conjunction with Highland Council and the Inverness business improvement district to tackle the littering of cigarette butts on streets and pavements. As well as the visual blight, cigarette butts can become trapped between paving stones, can be washed into drains and can cause blockages, which in turn lead to flooding. They also leak toxins that contaminate water and can harm marine life. Many smokers believe that butts are biodegradable, but due to their plastic content they can in fact take 10 to 12 years to degrade.

Highland Council is also to be congratulated on the campaign that it is running to prevent people from dropping their used chewing gum on the streets.

I make a plea to yachtsman off the coast of the Scottish mainland and the islands not to throw their plastic rubbish over the side. It all gets washed up on beaches—especially in the Clyde estuary—and it is a blight on the beautiful scenery and a danger to wildlife.

The Scottish Conservatives are happy to support Graeme Dey’s motion and the work that Keep Scotland Beautiful is doing across the country. We hope that the spring clean 2013 will be an even greater success and will encourage local groups, schools and individuals to become involved in taking practical action that can make our localities more attractive and better for residents and the tourists who come to our country.

Photo of Paul Wheelhouse Paul Wheelhouse Scottish National Party

I thank my colleague Graeme Dey for securing this members’ business debate. It is clear that we all agree that Keep Scotland Beautiful is to be congratulated on the success of its annual national spring clean campaign and on its valuable contribution to our environment.

The growth in the number of volunteers who take part from 11,500 in 2007 to more than 117,000 this year is a fantastic achievement that we should celebrate. The Scottish Government has supported the national spring clean with £116,000 of funding from our delivery partner zero waste Scotland. The fact that the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment launched the 2012 national spring clean—in March, alongside schoolchildren in Portobello—reflects the value that is placed on the event.

Graeme Dey is right to highlight the issue. Few things can be as corrosive to our pride in our communities as the preponderance of litter on our streets and in our beautiful countryside. I identified with all the points that colleagues have made.

Littering and fly-tipping are problems that continue to blight many communities. In the Scottish household survey for 2011, 25 per cent of residents who responded agreed that litter was a serious problem for them. The fact that about one in 50 of the population officially participated in the 2012 national spring clean underlines the strength of that feeling.

More than 75,500 of the participants were schoolchildren. Claudia Beamish was right to highlight the significance of eco-schools. Many schools have signed up to the international eco-schools programme, which encourages whole-school action for the environment and includes a mandatory topic on litter. That is important in relation to the education point that George Adam and others made. The Scottish Government funds Keep Scotland Beautiful to support that programme, in which Scotland is a world leader. Tomorrow, our 1,500th green flag will be officially awarded to Mearns Castle high school in East Renfrewshire.

Events such as the national spring clean are a great way not only of tackling litter head on and removing a blight from our streets, parks and lanes but of helping to raise public awareness. However, the litter that the national spring clean volunteers pick up should not be there in the first place. Graeme Dey and others, including Chic Brodie, were right to highlight that we need to change the culture. Littering is totally unacceptable and should be seen as such by all and not just by the majority of the public, whom I genuinely believe see it in that way.

During my local village’s litter pick this year for the floral gateway competition in the Borders, colleagues and I picked up litter from the verge of a local B-road. We passed a couple of cars that were filled with young men who were in their 20s. When we turned back along the same route a mere 10 minutes later, we found that three cigarette packets and a can of Coke had been left behind. That truly infuriated me, and my behaviour has probably never been closer to resembling that of Victor Meldrew—I think that I even said, “I don’t believe it.”

While children help to clear up litter, those who should know better are creating more of it. Tackling that point really matters. As well as being an unnecessary eyesore that can deter visitors and investors—others have made that point—litter can cause a risk to health. If valuable materials that could have been recycled are wasted, that is a loss to society.

I assure the Parliament that the Scottish Government is committed to tackling the problem and that I take the issue seriously. As Graeme Dey said, the Scottish Government has tasked zero waste Scotland with producing a state of the nation evidence report on litter. A steering group that involves Keep Scotland Beautiful is guiding research that is investigating the wider cost of litter to society, analysing litter enforcement trends and the effectiveness of current legislation, and considering how best to influence littering behaviour and successful approaches to tackling the problem. That report is due early next year and will provide a powerful basis for our approach to tackling littering, which is antisocial and damages our habitats.

In parallel with that work, zero waste Scotland has launched two new funds to help to address the problem further. It is funding a new £250,000 litter prevention innovation fund for local authorities, community groups, landowners and businesses that will support local innovative approaches to tackling and preventing litter. It is also repeating last year’s successful £75,000 fly-tipping small grants scheme, to help communities to tackle and prevent fly-tipping.

Those schemes can help local organisations to make a real difference to their environment. For example, last year, Friends of Possilpark Greenspace in Glasgow was awarded just over £5,000 to clear fly-tipping from the park, and the organisation re-landscaped the area to make it more inviting for the local community. Through studying the impacts of those grants, we hope to establish what works and does not work in the hope that we can learn something from that.

Zero waste Scotland has also made £500,000 available to support the roll-out of more recycle-on-the-go facilities throughout Scotland, along with guidance about how to make the most from installing those facilities in public places such as shopping centres and high streets. The new bins allow people to recycle while they are out and about, taking away the excuse that there is nowhere to put the waste and helping to turn problem litter into materials that can be used again. We are keen for the number of such facilities to be increased substantially.

Richard Lochhead wrote to all councils last month to highlight the opportunities and remind the councils of their enforcement powers to penalise people who litter. I encourage all councils and the police to make use of those powers to impose fixed-penalty fines of £50 for littering. It is vital that people understand that littering is unacceptable, antisocial and a criminal offence. I do not know about other members, but I have been shocked to hear people occasionally say that littering is in some way excusable because it helps to keep someone in a job. I have heard that uttered by members of the public, and it shows that attitudes must change.

Zero waste Scotland is also piloting deposit-return and reverse vending of drinks containers to see which approaches are most effective. It is hoped that, as well as driving recycling, giving containers a value will reduce the proportion of them that become litter.

Reflecting the harm that irresponsibly disposed-of carrier bags can do, we are consulting on proposals for retailers to charge 5p for a single-use carrier bag, with the proceeds going to charitable good causes. We want to encourage people to reuse their bags whenever possible, and experience from other areas shows that that measure is highly effective in reducing the number of bags that are used and left as litter.

Litter such as carrier bags causes problems not just on our land. Our forthcoming marine litter strategy will address the problems of marine and coastal litter, which have been referred to by Chic Brodie and others and which give cause to annual beach-clean events organised by bodies such as the Marine Conservation Society.

In the next couple of years, Scotland will host high-profile events such as the Ryder cup and the Commonwealth games. We all want the watching world to see Scotland—one of the world’s most beautiful countries—at its very best. We will continue to work with zero waste Scotland, Keep Scotland Beautiful and others to tackle litter, to deliver a cleaner, greener Scotland and to keep Scotland beautiful.

Meeting closed at 17:32.