National Litter and Flytipping Strategy

3 Strategic Vision, Outcomes and Actions

3.1 Vision

The previous section outlined the scale of the ongoing litter and flytipping challenge and

the importance of taking further action. Our vision sets out Scotland’s response to the challenge:

Our vision is for a future where Scotland’s environment and communities are not blighted by litter and flytipping, and materials remain within a circular economy.

Working collaboratively towards this goal offers opportunities to prevent litter and flytipping, to promote and contribute to a thriving circular economy for Scotland.

This vision encapsulates three core ideas that:

• Urgent action is needed at scale across Scotland;
• Effective action needs to be integrated and co-ordinated to address a range of drivers; and
• Tackling litter and flytipping can make an important contribution to addressing Scotland’s throwaway culture and supporting the retention of products and materials in the economy.

3.2 Approach and key themes

We recognise that the challenges are significant and the route to achieving our vision is complex. Therefore, the Strategy, and associated Action Plan, are underpinned by a systems approach, to reflect our aim to take into consideration the whole life cycle of commonly littered and flytipped items to determine effective action.

Litter and flytipping are addressed as separate topics across three strategic themes:

• Behaviour Change
• Infrastructure and Services
• Enforcement

These themes have been chosen to ensure that the actions over the course of the six year Strategy encompass interventions throughout the life cycle of products. They include shifts in product design and materials, the supply and use of products, and their “end of life”, including the point of disposal or reuse. The Strategy focuses on action which can be taken within Scotland’s devolved powers, and although the Circular Economy Bill proposes to increase the levers we have available to us, wider UK Government action is likely to be required to support the transition to a circular economy.

Actions may be required under more than one of the strategic themes for these changes in the product life cycle to happen, steered by those involved in managing the journey of the products and materials through the economy. Where some interventions operate across more than one theme, they have been placed where they align best and have the greatest impact.

Continuous improvement in collecting quality, comparable data has been identified as an overarching and priority element through all of the themes. It will support the monitoring of proposed interventions and inform development of future activity. Our approach to monitoring is detailed further in Section 5 as well as in the 2023-24 Action Plan^[*].

3.3 Outcomes – what does success look like?

To help define what success looks like, we have worked with our partners and other stakeholders via a public consultation, to identify the following set of outcomes:

Litter

• Behaviour change: Individuals, communities and organisations have greater awareness of the problems caused by litter, understand their responsibilities in preventing litter and are enabled and motivated to behave responsibly.
• Infrastructure and Services: Scotland’s infrastructure and services are fit for purpose, they encourage and enable responsible behaviour and they prioritise action and innovation that proactively prevents litter and supports a circular economy.
• Enforcement: There is a strong and consistent enforcement model across Scotland that is fit for purpose and acts as a proportionate deterrent and effectively stops people from littering.

Flytipping

• Behaviour Change: Individuals and businesses have a clear understanding of their responsibilities to dispose of waste appropriately and are fully informed on the potential consequences of not doing so and are enabled and motivated to behave responsibly.
• Infrastructure and Services: There is a resilient national framework which provides consistent, accessible and joined-up services that prevent flytipping where possible and tackle it effectively where it does occur.
• Enforcement: There is a strong, consistent enforcement model that is fit for purpose and acts as an effective deterrent for flytipping behaviour. There is more consistent and co- ordinated enforcement activity across Scotland through effective partnership working.

3.4 Litter and Flytipping Objectives and Priority Actions

Taking account of the findings of our consultation, we have worked with our delivery partners and key stakeholders to develop a set of objectives and priority actions that will achieve our goals.

A 2023-24 Action Plan*, published in conjunction with this Strategy, details specific actions and interventions that will be progressed in the first year of the Strategy. Actions for year one have been prioritised to reflect available resource. In partnership with stakeholders, actions will be reviewed and refreshed on an annual basis for the six-year lifespan of the strategy, enabling additional measures to be progressed as part of a phased delivery plan. This will ensure that actions are adapted to suit a changing external environment and are informed by emerging insights and available resources.

3.4.1 Litter Objectives and Approach to Delivery

Litter Behaviour Change

Objective 1:

Build understanding of litter perceptions and behaviour to enable targeted approaches for interventions and campaigns to be further developed.

Objective 2:

Further embed a shared approach between Scottish Government, local authorities, public agencies, the third sector and communities to drive litter prevention and behaviour change across Scotland.

Littering behaviour is context specific. For example, evidence indicates that people believe littering certain materials in some locations is acceptable, where in others it is not acceptable^[28]. There is a need to engage the public in their communities, to make littering socially unacceptable in the locations and contexts which are most affected.

Behaviour change is complex. Actions will need to target a range of factors and be based on best available evidence. We will also need to scale-up best practice initiatives and support innovative new interventions.

The measures that will be developed over the six-year timeframe of the Strategy to encourage positive behaviour change include research to understand the range of influences on littering behaviours, the development of a national anti-littering campaign, improved collaborative working with stakeholders and community participation.

Initial priority areas include:

• Working with key stakeholders to test collaborative approaches to

delivering innovative behaviour-based interventions, evaluating their impact and the potential for wider roll-out.

• This may include a focused, localised campaign or activity to target an item or location to reduce litter. Existing data will be used to identify and target litter types or items (e.g. cigarette or vaping litter) and hotspots (e.g. roadside litter at motorway slip roads).
• Developing and delivering a national community-focused education programme that will build capacity and capability within local communities to enable them to take action at a local level to tackle litter and littering behaviour.

Litter Infrastructure and Services

Objective 3:

Work with stakeholders to improve our understanding of the sources, amount and composition of litter in Scotland.

Objective 4:

Encourage a shared approach to services across local authorities, national parks and other bodies with a statutory duty to clear litter in Scotland that will effectively support litter prevention.

Objective 5:

Encourage a shared approach to services across local authorities.

In order to make best use of infrastructure and services designed to handle and reduce current levels of litter, actions will target different stages of a product’s lifecycle, including product placement, design and disposal.

Improving the level and consistency of data on litter is a key step in order to better understand the sources, amount and composition of litter items. Working towards this will be a priority action.

The measures that will be developed over the six-year timeframe of the Strategy to address infrastructure and services include a focus on joint working with stakeholders to identify what makes services effective and to encourage a more consistent approach; empowering groups in a community setting, for example, via community education programmes and an increased use of citizen science; improving data and encouraging retail and service design to become more circular.

Initial priority areas include:

• Working collaboratively with key stakeholders to scope options to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and consistency of prevention activity, to stop items being littered in the first instance, that could be trialed and, if successful, scaled up across Scotland.
  • Examples of this type of action include encouraging a move away from single-use disposable items, communications to help influence individual and social perceptions of littering, and improving access to and use of waste and recycling infrastructure (e.g. litter bins, ‘on the go’ recycling facilities, or household waste recycling centres) to increase opportunities for recycling or responsible disposal.
• Working alongside local authorities and other relevant stakeholders, develop and promote a national online litter hub by March 2024 to provide information, advice and support to community groups and other relevant local organisations on tackling litter and littering behaviour.
• Developing a Litter and Flytipping Data Strategy to explore and
  • identify the data necessary to support
  • local and national action planning, monitoring and evaluation activity.
  • Considering opportunities to improve the quality and consistency of
  • citizen science reporting to aid data collection and future policy development.

Litter Enforcement

Objective 6:

Develop a more effective enforcement model to deter and robustly tackle littering.

Objective 7:

Improve the consistency of enforcement practices.

The Strategy will focus on reviewing existing approaches to raise awareness of successful enforcement measures and remove implementation barriers; scoping and trialing the use of technology to improve enforcement; developing more effective enforcement practices and exploring the potential introduction of new legislation to tackle littering.

Over the lifetime of the Strategy we will explore raising current fixed penalty notices, explore alternative penalties to monetary fixed penalties and further develop guidance on enforcement best practices.

Initial priority areas include:

• Conducting an evidence review of enforcement of litter and flytipping offences to better understand, and address, the key barriers to current enforcement practices.
• The introduction of new powers to impose a civil penalty on the

registered keeper of a vehicle from which a littering offence is committed.

3.4.2 Flytipping objectives and approach to delivery

Flytipping Behaviour Change

Objective 8:

Build understanding of behaviours that lead to flytipping, enabling targeted approaches to be developed.

Objective 9:

Develop and adopt a shared approach and consistency of information between Scottish Government, local authorities, public agencies and the third sector in relation to flytipping behaviour change across Scotland.

Flytipping usually involves larger volumes of materials or bulky items and is often pre- meditated. Flytipping covers a spectrum of issues: from householders dumping material

or items near bins and in lay-bys, to operators illegally collecting and disposing of waste on public and private land, through to activity carried out by serious and organised crime groups. It is driven by a range of motivations, with cost saving a significant factor.

These differences across the spectrum are considered in the Strategy’s approach to this issue.

The measures that will be developed over the six-year timeframe of the Strategy to

encourage positive behaviour change include research to understand the range of influences on flytipping behaviours; development of a national anti-flytipping campaign; supporting collaboration and sharing best practice, and providing accessible information for the public and businesses on the correct disposal of commonly flytipped items.

Flytipping infrastructure and systems are wide- ranging. They encompass local and national policy, information systems, data gathering and technology as well as product design and waste management services.

Initial priority areas include:

• Ongoing communications to remind householders and businesses of their existing duty of care obligations in relation to waste.
• Supporting households and businesses to appropriately dispose of their waste through proactive work with online operators to identify, target and stop adverts by unlicensed waste operators.
• Targeted communications to highlight new powers through the Circular Economy Bill, subject to parliamentary passage, for enforcement authorities to seize vehicles linked to flytipping and the introduction of fixed penalty notices to households not complying with their duty of care when disposing of waste (e.g. using an illegal waste carrier).

Flytipping Infrastructure and Services

Objective 10:

Improve our understanding of the sources, amount, spatial distribution and composition of flytipping in Scotland.

Objective 11:

Support the ongoing development of consistent, accessible and effective waste management services and infrastructure.

Objective 12:

Provide support to private landowners and land managers that experience flytipping on their land.

During the six-year timeframe of the Strategy measures will include improving our understanding of patterns in flytipping occurrences, amounts and the items involved. In addition, actions will deliver better information-sharing between organisations and to support joint working and the implementation of more effective and accessible services to tackle flytipping. Furthermore we will provide support for private landowners affected by flytipping, encourage the reuse and repair of commonly flytipped items, and explore flexible approaches to waste disposal.

Initial priority areas include:

• Working collaboratively with key stakeholders to scope options to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and consistency of prevention activity that could be trialled and, if

successful, scaled up across Scotland.

• Examples of this type of action include communications to help influence individual and social perceptions of flytipping; work to optimise use of infrastructure designed to minimise flytipping (e.g. household waste recycling centres); and communications and joint working to ensure enforcement acts as an effective deterrent
• Developing guidance and carry out trials to better support private landowners to deter and deal with flytipping affecting their land.
• Simplifying and streamlining existing flytipping reporting channels, following a review of Dumb Dumpers.
• Developing a Litter and Flytipping Data Strategy to explore and identify the data necessary to support

local and national action planning, monitoring and evaluation activity.

Flytipping Enforcement

Objective 13:

Develop a more effective enforcement model to deter and robustly tackle flytipping.

Objective 14:

Improve consistency of enforcement activity across Scotland via effective partnership working.

Through the implementation of the Strategy, our aim is to work with partners to develop more effective flytipping prevention and enforcement measures, strengthen existing measures and clamp down on illegal, unlicensed operators.

It is recognised that the current enforcement system needs improvement to provide a stronger deterrent. There are two key aspects to this: enhancing the tools available to enforcement agencies and improving their application in practice.

The Scottish Government is committed to taking forward action to strengthen aspects of legislation surrounding flytipping, ensuring law enforcement agencies have access to appropriate enforcement tools. Under the National Litter Strategy (2014), the fixed penalty notice amount for flytipping was raised to £200. The Scottish Government is committed to more than doubling the fixed penalties issued by local authorities, Police Scotland, and Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park for flytipping to the maximum available through secondary legislation (£500) and to exploring the potential to raise the maximum further at a later date.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) also currently has the power to issue fixed monetary penalties of £600 and a variable penalty up to £40,000.

Through the Circular Economy Bill, a new fixed penalty notice regime will be introduced, subject to parliamentary passage, to enforce breaches to existing householder obligations to appropriately dispose of household waste. This will aid in the prevention of flytipping where an offence is traced back to a particular household, and raise awareness of householder responsibilities when disposing of waste.

A simplified and strengthened regulatory approach to waste in Scotland is being introduced as a result of the transfer of certain areas of waste regulation into the Integrated Authorisation Framework (in terms of the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018).

This framework will replace a range of existing legislation and standardise the authorisation, procedural and enforcement arrangements across various regimes.

The Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 will introduce regulatory notices which will allow SEPA to target the person responsible for the illegal deposit of waste more effectively. In relation to flytipping, should the person who illegally deposited the waste be known, then it would be possible for SEPA to serve a regulatory notice on this person requiring them to remove the waste. This is a significant improvement to SEPA’s powers in this area as current removal of waste notices (Section 59) can only be served on the occupier of the land.

Scotland currently has several different enforcement agencies responsible for investigating flytipping crimes. Local authorities currently handle the majority of flytipping reports, while SEPA and Police Scotland are more likely to be involved in tackling some of the more significant and chronic incidents of flytipping. Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park also has responsibilities. Each of these agencies has different enforcement tools available to them to tackle flytipping.

Consistency in how enforcement tools are applied in practice must also be improved to ensure available resource for investigating and enforcing is utilised in the most productive way. By strengthening partnership working across the enforcement process, offences can be more effectively considered when incidents of flytipping are investigated. This will ensure enforcement agencies can make full use of all regulatory enforcement tools available to provide a robust deterrent to flytipping and be more effective in taking action against those responsible for flytipping.

Initial priority areas include:

• Raising fixed penalty notices for flytipping in Scotland to the current maximum of £500 and consider amending legislation so that these could be increased to £1000 if required in future.
• Exploring the possibility and benefits of enabling local authorities and national parks to use civil penalties to enforce flytipping offences.
• Supporting key stakeholders to review guidance on roles and responsibility of SEPA, local authorities, national parks and Police Scotland to improve the investigation and enforcement of flytipping offences.
• Increasing use of digital technologies to detect and disrupt fly-tippers, especially unregistered waste carriers advertising on-line (as well as rogue operators operating behind a Waste Carrier Registration).
• Through the Circular Economy Bill introduce new powers to allow local authorities, SEPA and Police Scotland to seize vehicles involved in flytipping offences; and a new fixed penalty regime to allow the issuing of fixed penalty notices for breaches to householder duty of care obligations in relation to household waste.
• Consulting on proposed improvements to the waste carrier licensing regime, which will aim to give SEPA improved scrutiny and control over who is able to obtain and hold authorization to handle waste. This will make it easier to keep criminals out of the waste collection business, strengthen SEPA’s ability to revoke authorisations and improve SEPA’s enforcement notice powers.
• This action will complement Strategy commitments to increase the use of digital technologies to detect and disrupt flytippers and the introduction of fines for breaches to householder duty of care obligations.

Cross-cutting policies

The delivery of the litter and flytipping priorities set out in this Strategy will also be supported by cross-cutting policy measures aimed at delivering a more circular economy.

This will include:

• The introduction of packaging Extended Producer Responsibility in a phased manner from 2024, and the Scottish Government’s continued working with Welsh Government to explore the possibility of including full net costs of packaging which commonly becomes litter within the scope of the scheme.
• Continued investment in the Recycling Improvement Fund to enhance local authority recycling infrastructure.
• Continued development of national Digital Waste Tracking to provide better data, help waste producers, including householders, comply with their duty of care, and enable more effective tackling of waste crime.
• Reviewing the environmental impact of and potential policy options for improving the management of single-use vapes.
• Continuing to support the implementation of, and evaluating the effectiveness of, Scotland’s Single-Use Plastics Regulations which banned many problematic single-use plastic items.
• Preparation for the introduction of a Deposit Return Scheme.
• Preparation for the introduction of a charge on single-use cups in 2025.