The Scottish environment secretary, Richard Lochhead, has launched a £5 million capital grants scheme aimed at improving the country's plastics recycling infrastructure as part of the Scottish Government's ambitious Zero Waste Plan.

Speaking at a 'Zero Waste' conference in Edinburgh yesterday (January 21), Mr Lochhead unveiled plans to finance the development of plastics recycling facilities and improve the capacity to reprocess plastics at Scottish materials recycling facilities (MRFs) over the next two years.

I want to see an improved infrastructure for plastic in Scotland and hope that the new scheme will kick off significant investment in this area

 
Richard Locchead, Scottish environment secretary

The fund - which will be administered by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) Scotland - aims to help create a 'home market' for plastics recycling and reduce the necessity to transport the recovered material to other countries for reprocessing.

Currently, just 10% of waste plastics collected in Scotland are reprocessed within the country, with the rest sent to plants in England or exported to China.

Mr Lochhead said: "With most of the plastic collected for recycling in Scotland taken to England or even further afield, I want to see an improved infrastructure for plastic in Scotland and hope that the new scheme will kick off significant investment in this area."

The Scottish Government will welcome applicants for grants from both the private and public sector, and also expects partnerships from across the two sectors to come forward.

The environment secretary, who was making his first keynote speech on waste in 2009 at the Edinburgh event, explained that more precise detail of the scheme would be finalised with the Committees of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) shortly.

Zero Waste

The fund is part of the Scottish Government's Zero Waste Plan, which intends to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill to 5% by 2025, with the remaining fraction being catered for by recycling, composting and energy-from-waste facilities.

The attempt to stimulate infrastructure construction in the plastic sector comes soon after the Scottish Government made money available to help finance the adoption of food waste collections in local authorities.

Out of £18 million distributed to councils from the Government's Zero Waste Fund, six local authorities received a percentage intended to finance food waste collection trials as Scotland intends to tackle a wide range of material streams under its Zero Waste Plan (see letsrecycle.com story).