National litter and flytipping consultation: strategic environmental assessment

Appendix C – Aims, Objectives and Actions for Litter

Litter Strategy

Behaviour Change

Aim

Improve the consistency and nature of our communications so people have greater awareness and understanding of their responsibility in preventing litter and motivate people to behave responsibly.

Objectives

Understand litter perceptions and behaviour to allow targeted approaches to be developed.

Develop and adopt a shared approach between Scottish Government, Local Authorities, public agencies and the third section, to litter prevention and behaviour change across Scotland.

Actions

Conduct research to understand the full range of influences on littering behaviours across various contexts and audience groups.

Develop a sustained, evidence based, national anti-littering campaign and deliver this consistently and collaboratively across Scotland.

Services and Infrastructure

Aim

Scotland’s services and infrastructure are fit for purpose and prioritise action and innovation that proactively prevents litter and supports a circular economy.

Objectives

Encourage a shared approach to services that will effectively support litter prevention.

Empower community groups to take action.

Actions

Explore the use of flexible and innovative interventions to support litter prevention and removal.

Encourage collaboration and share best practice between local authorities, national parks and other duty bodies to optimise services.

Create a national litter hub to provide information and advice to community groups.

Increase the use of citizen science to support data on levels and composition of litter.

Carry out a review of the development, implementation and progress of the Code of Practice for Litter and Refuse (2018).

Enforcement

Aim

There is a strong and consistent enforcement model across Scotland that is fit for purpose and acts as a proportional deterrent and effectively stops people from littering.

Objectives

Develop an effective enforcement model.

Improve the consistency of enforcement practices.

Actions

Conduct an evidence review of barriers to enforcement of litter offences.

Explore raising current fixed penalty notice amounts for a litter offence.

Develop guidance on enforcement best practices and seek agreement for this to be voluntarily adopted by Local Authorities and National Parks.

Review current powers for enforcing littering offences.

Explore potential alternative penalties to monetary fixed penalties for a litter offence.

Explore using civil penalties in relation to littering offences.

Create fixed penalties for the registered keeper of the vehicle for littering from vehicles.

Data and Research

Aim

We understand the behaviours, attitudes and drivers behind littering and develop an evidence base of litter data that can facilitate design, implementation and monitoring of effective policy interventions.

Objectives

Improve our understanding of the sources, levels and composition of litter.

Actions

Review the available litter data and approach to data collection across Scotland and reach an agreement between stakeholders on a common approach to collecting data.

Identify commonly littered items and litter hotspots and work with Local Authorities and other duty bodies to develop targeted interventions to reduce litter.