COMMUNITIES could be rewarded for recycling and keeping the streets clean under a new strategy to curb littering in Scotland.
The scheme is one of several to be pursued as authorities seek to cut the 250 million visible bits of litter people drop each year and which is estimated to cost the country a minimum of £53 million a year.
Other moves outlined in the strategy — Towards a Litter-free Scotland — include imposing a 5p charge for single-use carrier bags from October this year and working with manufacturers to minimise waste packaging.
Details of the reward programme are yet to be worked out, but it would be available to communities for organising voluntary clean-ups in areas that are local litter blackspots.
Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead said: "Scotland is a beautiful country and we all have to play our part and take personal responsibility to keep it that way."
Iain Gulland, director of Zero Waste Scotland, said: "By reducing litter and fly-tipping and increasing recycling in public places, we can protect Scotland's natural beauty and harness the value of waste as a re-usable resource."
Derek Robertson, chief executive of Keep Scotland Beautiful, said they were "delighted that the Scottish Government has acted to give these issues a strategic focus".
He added: "To be effective, this strategy has to make a difference in the places where people live, work and spend their leisure, in our communities.
"Keep Scotland Beautiful will continue to work in partnership in communities throughout our beautiful country to ensure our shared objective of a cleaner and greener Scotland is delivered."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article