Experts gather to discuss the environmental quality of our communities

Today we hosted more than 70 representatives from organisations and local authorities across Scotland at our annual Local Environmental Quality seminar.  This event followed a breakfast briefing with key stakeholders to garner support for action on litter.

The seminar, held at the Green Key Mariott Hotel in Glasgow, was an opportunity to network, hear about ongoing work to deliver the Year 3 actions of the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy and outline our policy priorities ahead of the 2026 Scottish elections.

Chaired by our CEO Barry Fisher, the seminar featured presentations by Scott Edgar from Diffley Partnership, Jenny O’ Hagan, Director of Service Deliver, Neighbourhoods and Sustainability at Glasgow City Council and a number of #TeamKSB.

Scott opened the seminar by outlining the key findings from the Scottish Litter Survey 2025 which gauged public perceptions on the litter issue – revealing the level of embarrassment and safety fears for children and animals caused by litter.

Jenny shared her experience of leading a team to develop and deliver a positive city wide approach to improving local environmental quality and talked about the need to change the narrative around litter and celebrate and share the successes.

We heard from Heather McLaughlin about our current roadside litter interventions and trials and Brian Rae, our Operations Manager, Environment and Place Services, revealed key trends from our long term data set on Local Environmental Quality and outlined developments and opportunities of utilising new technologies in data collection.  He was joined by Bipin Babu, AI engineer with Stirling University, who demonstrated the development of AI software to detect litter in the environment.  

Our policy priorities for the next Scottish Government and Parliament were also presented at the seminar – with a focus around our proposals for action in key areas around roadside litter, litter travelling to the marine environment from inland via our waterways, education and training provision, and support of communities.

Attendees also had the opportunity to attend workshops, hosted by our own team, looking at maximising community involved and volunteer action, developing innovative approached to informing action, campaigns targeting behaviours leading to litter, and the training opportunities we offer to support duty bodies.

Barry our CEO wrapped up proceedings with a call to action: "We have all talked about the importance of trusted data to tell a story. But we think story telling is so important and we need to do more of it personally, making it meaningful. You will all have your own stories, you have had to interact with the challenges and issues, now we need you to tell those stories please. 

"I have taken a lot from today, I am committed to challenging the misinformation, but also to share the brilliant action - there are hundreds of communities getting on with it, businesses making real changes, and local authorities driving action - we need to share this and build on it."