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The Scottish Government is actively engaged with Scottish Water in relation to widening circular economic activity in the treatment of sewage sludge after the current treatment contracts end.

Scottish Water’s bioresources strategy is to secure safe, sustainable, cost-effective sludge outlets and maximise the value of sludge either as a fuel or a fertiliser. This is in keeping with Scottish, UK and European regulatory frameworks encouraging sludge to be used as a resource wherever it is safe and practicable to do so.

Further to this, Scottish Water’s bioresources strategy seeks to maximise the value of sludge and takes into consideration future return of sludge treatment assets from PFI contracts.

Scottish Water, in collaboration with SEPA under their Sustainable Growth Agreement, is running a “Value from Waste” project exploring the options for co-treatment of sewage sludge with other organic wastes. In rural/remote areas this could offer significant circular economy benefits.

Further to the answers given to questions S5W-18767, S5W-18046 and S5W-18047 both on 28 August 2018, I can confirm that the waste collected during the Absorbent Hygiene Product (AHP) collection pilot was recycled in England as there was no facility in Scotland. None of the AHP waste collected during the trial was sent to landfill or incinerated. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

CRNS is a membership organisation with c. 125 members. Members contribute to the achievement of outcomes for:

• waste reduction
• recycling
• reuse (via reuse activities)

which have the added benefits of supporting social enterprise to create and maintain jobs as well as helping with employability.

CRNS carry out a biennial membership survey to evaluate these impacts and this is shared with ZWS.

Zero Waste Scotland funding provided to CRNS has involved specific project outputs, such as sponsorship of their annual conference and the development of a reuse consortium to bid for reuse contracts.

Under the current pipeline of projects, contracted projects and applications in progress this year, Zero Waste Scotland is forecasting a spend of £4.58m.

S5W-18715

Roseanna Cunningham : The key objective of the fund is to develop and expand innovative technologies, products and services and to deliver a circular economy in Scotland.

Over the lifetime of the projects supported to date, carbon savings of 432,540 tonnes have been identified.

Routine monitoring does not currently measure decreases in waste arisings or cost savings. These benefits, along with any others identified, will be recorded during full monitoring and evaluation of operational projects and will sit alongside the routine metrics.

To date the circular economy investment fund (CEIF) has attracted £5.4m of private investment into Scotland and a further £1 million of institutional investment. These investments are projected to support 218 jobs.

The total cost of the 2012 - 2013 pilot for Absorbent Hygiene Products was £311,706, of which £172,929 was distributed to the four participating councils as follows:

The Scottish Government is using a range of sources which are listed for each individual indicator on the Scottish Government’s Environment website: https://www.environment.gov.scot/our-environment/state-of-the-environment/ecosystem-health-indicators/

The full set of ecosystem health indicators were launched on 10 October 2017 at the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s ‘Scotland’s Biodiversity Conference’.

The number of young people aged 18 or under reported with three or more charges in a single case to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, in each of the last five years, is detailed on the following table. This information is not available at local authority level.