Seòmar agus comataidhean

The two things—the climate and nature emergencies—have now been incorporated and are being considered together, and there is a variety of forums in which that work is happening. There is, for example, the sub-committee on the climate emergency, which is meeting this morning, unfortunately—obviously, I am here and not there—and there is also the First Minister’s environmental council, which is another good forum that is attended not only by ministers but by experts from the field.

I do not have any further information on the timeframe. I am not sure whether we can commit to a timeframe, but I will ask my officials to confirm.

Spatial planning, both terrestrial and marine, is about balancing competing interests so that we have a thriving economy and thriving nature alongside it. It is clear that, in the past, the balance between competing interests has been wrong, to the serious detriment of our natural environment. Our strategy is clear that our high-level goals of being nature positive by 2030 and substantially restoring nature by 2045 will require that whole-of-society approach.

As regards spatial planning in the marine space, Scotland’s national marine plan provides the guiding framework for decision making in the sustainable management of marine activities and resources in Scotland’s waters. I might ask Lisa McCann and Matthew Bird to provide more detail on spatial planning in both those spaces.

I agree that we await with interest the results of the review. We will consider the panel’s recommendations carefully and will share those and our response with the committee in due course.

I do not think that that is an accurate representation of the situation at all. There are other sustainable ways of providing water and it is up to schools to provide it in the way that works best for them. For example, if schools and local authorities have invested in water fountains and their maintenance and upkeep, that is how they have decided to meet the statutory requirement to provide water and that is how they have decided to spend their budgets. It is for them to make that decision. Equally, if schools have invested in jug and cup schemes, it is absolutely within their purview to decide how to spend that money and how to make the provision. It is not for us to impose upon them how to interpret the requirement to provide water.

We know that water is being provided, as my colleague said, because of our on-going conversations with education authorities.

I am happy to pass that to my colleague Laura Meikle.

I would just say thank you very much to Callum Isted for bringing the matter to our attention. He is absolutely right: we should all be working towards using fewer single-use plastics and using reusable, long-term containers and packaging. I thank him so much for his work.

Callum Isted’s petition is specifically about a proposal to replace single-use bottles, which were what were being used in his school. Many schools already have in place solutions to that, such as water fountains or jug and cup schemes. That provision is already in place and we do not want to solve a problem that has already been solved in many schools. We know that schools are working towards the sustainability objective. We also have in place national programmes to tackle single-use plastics, such as our deposit return scheme. The process to move away from single-use plastics is well under way.

I recognise Callum Isted’s hard work on the issue and the work that he has done with his school, but it is not necessarily the correct solution for every school, and it is up to schools and local authorities to put in place the correct solution for them.

I do. Thank you very much.

I congratulate Callum Isted on the incredible effort that he has put behind the petition and the campaign, and for raising £1,400 to buy reusable bottles for his school. His work has been an inspiration to us all.

I and this Government are committed to this agenda and are seeking to dramatically reduce the amount of single-use plastic products that we consume and throw away in Scotland. That is why we are working hard right now to implement Scotland’s deposit return scheme, have banned some of the most problematic single-use plastic products and are introducing a minimum charge on single-use beverage cups by 2025.

Scotland’s deposit return scheme, which will cover the kinds of single-use bottles that we are talking about today, will alone reduce littering by a third and cut emissions by the equivalent of 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over 25 years. That is an average of around 160,000 tonnes of CO₂ each year, which is the equivalent of taking 83,000 cars off the road in the United Kingdom. However, I agree that that is only part of what we need to do. Education authorities and schools have a key role in leading the way.

Callum’s petition has requested that the Scottish Government provides local authorities with funding to enable schools to give reusable metal water bottles to schoolchildren when they start in primary 1. Although I welcome the spirit of the request made in the petition and absolutely share the same ultimate goal—to reduce to a minimum the consumption of single-use plastics in schools—it is for local authorities, as autonomous and democratic organisations, to agree their annual budgets, taking into account their statutory duties and national and local priorities.

The law says that all schools must make sure that drinking water is available free of charge for all pupils at all times of the day, including at meal times. It is for each education authority and school to decide how drinking water is provided, and it is important that we respect that, so that they can provide water in the way that works best for their school and their pupils.

The Scottish Government is clear that that decision, like others made by schools, should support our broader environmental goals. I know that those who provide catering in schools actively consider sustainability as part of their thinking about the delivery of their services. Sustainability is also reflected in the learning for sustainability cross-curricular theme, which encourages schools to take a whole-setting approach to it. That means that all school buildings, grounds and policies in the school should support learning for sustainability, including making sure that the school is taking steps to be more sustainable, which includes reducing the use of plastic.

I know that, in practical terms, local authorities use sustainable approaches to reduce the use of single-use plastic in schools. That includes the provision of water fountains, ensuring that water jugs and reusable cups are available in dining halls, and encouraging pupils to bring in and use reusable bottles. Furthermore, in direct response to the petition, my colleague Shirley-Anne Somerville wrote to the directors of education at all local authorities, drawing their attention to the petition and their obligations to provide drinking water to pupils, and further encouraging them to do so in an environmentally friendly way. We will continue to build on that progress.

Thank you for inviting me here today. I look forward to answering your questions.

Schools may interact with the deposit return scheme in several ways. Large schools that have, for example, a cafeteria that sells drinks would be part of the scheme. They would charge the 20p, as any shop or cafeteria of that style would, and they would have an obligation under the scheme to decide whether they would operate as a return point. They would have the same options as any other cafeteria or similar venue: to operate as a manual return point, to install a reverse vending machine or to apply for an exemption from being a return point based on health and safety grounds or any of the other grounds that are available.

Schools that, for example, do free school meals and provide a free bottle have a couple of options. They could run as a closed-loop system, as many restaurants will. For example, when you buy a bottle of wine in a restaurant, you do not take that bottle away with you—the restaurant takes it back—so you will not pay a deposit on it. That is called a closed-loop system. If schools were to offer an open-loop system with free school meals, they would have to incorporate the price of the deposit in the cost of the meal, because the child would be able to take the container away and collect the 20p when they returned it.

There are different ways in which schools may interact with the scheme. Of course, if schools moved away from using single-use plastics as a way of providing drinks, specifically water, that they are required to provide, they would not be required to participate in the deposit return scheme.