The Scottish Government's high-profile plan to establish the country as the world's first "zero waste society" moved a step forward last week with the launch of a new £5m capital grant programme design to stimulate the development of plastics recycling facilities.
Scotland has already met its EU target of sending no more than 1.32 million tonnes of biodegradable municipal waste to landfill by 2010. But it is facing a series of daunting targets to ensure that half of all municipal waste is recycled or composted by 2013 and that 60 per cent is diverted from landfill by 2020.
As with the rest of the UK, the country is also suffering from a shortage of plastic recycling facilities. An estimated 200,000 tonnes of plastic waste, which includes plastic bottles and packaging, are currently generated by Scottish households, but only about 15,000 tonnes of that is currently collected for recycling.
The aim of the new funding, which comes under the auspices of the Zero Waste Scotland initiative, is to divert an additional 20,000 tonnes from landfill each year so that it can be used as raw material for manufacturing new products.
Richard Lochhead, cabinet secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, said there was demand for high-quality recycled plastics in the country and that it made sense in both environmental and economic terms to meet that demand from Scotland's own waste stream.
"The potential spin-offs are exciting," he said. "If we sort and recycle the plastics here, we can provide the raw materials for a new generation of manufacturing businesses and create jobs at the same time."
There is growing demand for recycled plastics globally, with sportswear giant Nike announcing only last week that all its new shirts for teams and fans at this year's World Cup will be made from material made from old plastic bottles.
The Scottish government also hopes that the creation of Scottish plastics recycling and reprocessing facilities will also encourage Scottish households to recycle more of their waste.
The Zero Waste Scotland Plastics Capital Grant Programme officially opened last Friday and will close at 1.30pm on 30 August this year. It will provide up to 30 per cent of eligible capital expenditure for a new facility or facilities.
A seminar advising interested parties how to apply for the grants will be held in Stirling on 20 April.
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