Scottish household survey 2017: key findings

Environment

Climate change

An increasing proportion of adults in Scotland believe that climate change is an immediate and urgent problem.

Six in ten adults (61%) viewed climate change as an immediate and urgent problem, a 6 percentage point increase since 2016.

Concern about climate change has increased in particular among the 16-24 age group, and was lowest among the 75+ age group.

61% of adults in 2017 thought that climate change is an immediate and urgent problem

Recycling

More households are now disposing of their food waste in local authority-provided food caddies (55% in 2017 compared with 26% in 2012).

While more people in houses than flats use food waste recycling caddies, the proportion of use in flats is increasing.

The rate of food waste composting and disposal of food waste with general rubbish is higher in rural areas compared to urban areas.

Use of food waste caddies

Access to greenspace

Those living closer to their nearest greenspace were more likely to use it more frequently.

Most adults (65 per cent) lived within a five minute walk of their nearest area of greenspace, a similar proportion to 2016.

More than a third of adults (37 per cent) visited their nearest area of greenspace at least once a week, which was around the same proportion since 2013, when comparable figures were first collected.

Visits to outdoors

Over a half of adults (52%) visited the outdoors at least once a week in the last year, an increase from 48% in 2016.

Adults living in the most deprived areas were more likely not to have made any visits to the outdoors in the past twelve months (20%) compared to those in the least deprived areas (6%).