Scotland's Local Environmental Quality Seminar took place 31 October 2024.

With the Circular Economy Bill passing through parliament and confirmed year 2 actions of the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy to take forward, this seminar provided an opportunity to present how these can support ambitions to improve our Local Environmental Quality, what has already been achieved, what is planned in the coming year and future opportunities.

While the day will consisted of keynote presentations, the majority of the day centred around interactive workshops, including varied topics such as trade waste, nature and biodiversity, behavioural influences, developing litter strategies, litter intervention initiatives, flytipping enforcement, LEAMS reporting and citizen science data.

Seminar agenda

Workshops

Morning

Participants chose two of the following four workshops to attend during the morning.

Workshop 1 - Supporting North Ayrshire Council’s Litter Strategy Review

Heather McLaughlin, Keep Scotland Beautiful

Over the last six months KSB have worked with North Ayrshire Council to review, complete internal and external consultation and provide a report outlining areas to develop and prioritise going forward.

In this workshop you can hear about the process undertaken to gather feedback from elected members and the wider community, and how this was then used to provide a detailed report on perception, feedback and ideas to take forward into a new strategy.

Workshop 2 - Big bins and birds

Alex Hutchison, North Berwick in Bloom

A collaboration between Sustaining North Berwick, local stakeholders and East Lothian Council to address the issue of increased gull numbers in towns due to food leftovers in conventional rubbish bins.  This workshop will outline a creative initiative which is having a positive impact on the local environmental quality in the coastal town of North Berwick

Workshop 4 - Nature and biodiversity training

Jamie Ormiston, Keep Scotland Beautiful

We are living through a global biodiversity crisis, the impacts of which are being felt from Lewis to Laos. In this workshop we’ll take you through the highlights of our Nature and Biodiversity training and look at how our training develops a deeper understanding of the threats to biodiversity, as well as the local and global impacts, which can lead to better decision making for the environment and people.

Afternoon

Participants chose two of the following four workshops to attend during the afternoon.

Workshop 5 - Enjoy it on the way, bin it on the go – our Forth Valley litter intervention to tackle food and drink litter

Heather McLaughlin, Keep Scotland Beautiful

One of KSB’s actions for the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy was to test a Targeted behaviour-based intervention.  This resulted in the delivery of the Forth Valley Litter Intervention aimed to raise awareness of and reduce litter that is generated by items associated with food and drink on-the-go.

The project was a collaboration between Clackmannanshire Council, Falkirk Council, Stirling Council, Forth Valley College and was funded in-part by CCEP (Coca-Cola Europacific Partners). The intervention rolled out between January – March 2024 and saw almost 10% reduction of food and drink on the go litter, and a further 33% decrease in other litter types.

Workshop 6 - Trade Waste Permits initiative in Dundee City Council

Gaynor Sullivan, Dundee City Council

Since 2023, Dundee City Council have introduced a project to enhance the city centre public realm by reducing the number of commercial waste containers on public roads and footpaths and changing the way in which commercial waste can be presented for collection by businesses. 

Workshop 8 - Behaviour change - where to start and tools that can help

Emma Leask, Zero Waste Scotland

Zero Waste Scotland will host a workshop to explore litter and flytipping behavioural influences, allowing participants to bring a problematic behavioural challenge and begin to work through this using techniques that can help identify solutions.

Speakers

Paul Wallace (chair)

Head of Operations, Keep Scotland Beautiful

Paul joined Keep Scotland Beautiful in 2013. After having responsibility for managing behaviour change campaigns, including Roadside Litter, Upstream Battle, Cup Movement and for Environmental Services activity, he became Head of Operations this year.

Prior to this he spent 15 years in local government working in senior management positions. He has extensive experience in strategic planning, policy development, research, partnership working, community planning and SOAs, performance management and corporate communications.

Paul is a graduate of Glasgow Caledonian University with a BA (Hons) in Public Administration and Management.

Scott Edgar (presenter)

Senior Research Manager, Diffley Partnership

Scott joined the Diffley Partnership in 2022 following previous roles in social research at the Electoral Commission and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.  Since joining the business he has managed a wide range of research projects including two of Diffley Partnership’s regular quarterly surveys in Understanding Scotland and Understanding Business.

He has significant expertise in statistical data analysis, research design, management of research projects and communication and has worked on several high profile and high impact projects over the course of his career.  He holds a MSc in Political Research from the University of Strathclyde.

Scott has worked with Keep Scotland Beautiful for a number of years including on the Scottish Litter Survey and commissions focusing on marine litter, roadside litter and sport and climate action.

Anne Dagg (presenter)

Reuse and Reduce - Waste Prevention, Scottish Government

Brian Rae (presenter)

Operations Manager, Environment and Place Services, Keep Scotland Beautiful

Brian joined Keep Scotland Beautiful in 2006. He has a committed approach to working in the environmental sector and has, in the past, managed a variety of data streams for us – including LEAMS, development and rollout of the Litter Monitoring System (LMS), coastal environmental quality data, trunk road service station quality audit data, bespoke Nudge behaviour change projects and more recently working with duty bodies/statutory undertakers in quantifying the quality of their local environments to support strategic plans for improvement.

With an academic degree in Environmental Science, majoring in Applied GIS, Brian has a key role of overseeing the development of spatial data capture/querying/reporting systems for us, with efficiency and ease of use in mind, while allowing for complex hypothesis testing. He has also been involved in developing a standardised methodology for monitoring litter across Europe with the Clean Europe Network and currently leads on delivering Actions 16 and 17 of the year 2 action plan in line with the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy 2023.

More recently, Brian has stepped up into the Operations Manager role within the Environment and Place Services Team, with responsibility to ensure that services are current and delivered with a focus on quality outcomes for stakeholders/clients.

GDPR Statement

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