After seven years of investment and £375m, 71% of Scottish waste goes to landfill

Despite investing £375 million over the past seven years to cut the huge amounts of waste dumped as landfill, Scotland is still languishing at the bottom of the European rubbish league.

A Scottish government analysis passed to the Sunday Herald shows that amongst the 15 EU countries only Greece has a worse record. Scotland's position is "shocking", say environmentalists.

An official briefing was circulated to those invited to the waste summit convened by environment secretary, Richard Lochhead, last Wednesday. In an annex, it showed just how poorly Scotland compared to other countries.

Scotland still dumps 71% of its waste as landfill, compared to 60% in Ireland, 30% in France, 18% in Germany, and just 2% in the Netherlands. Only Greece dumps more, with 83% of its waste ending up in landfill sites.

The figures also show that Scotland is still one of the worst at recycling waste. Though the recycling rate has risen to 27%, this is still well behind others, with France now managing 35%, Ireland 40%, Germany 60% and the Netherlands 63%.

"Our recycling record is improving but it is shocking that we still dump so much waste in holes in the ground," said Dr Dan Barlow of WWF Scotland.

"Waste should be regarded as a valuable resource to be utilised rather than rubbish to be thrown away," he argued. But he cautioned against seeing waste-burning incinerators as the solution.

The Scottish government briefing suggested the nation could reach European targets to cut the amount of waste going to landfill without building a rash of large incinerators to make energy from waste, as some local authorities have proposed.

Scotland has to cut the amount of biodegradable municipal waste dumped in landfill sites by more than half, from 1.48 million tonnes in 2006 to 620,000 tonnes in 2020. This could be achieved, the briefing said, by recycling 60% of waste by 2013 and 70% by 2020.

This is welcomed by Barlow, who pointed out that Scotland only needed to achieve recycling levels comparable to those elsewhere in Europe.

"While reaching such recycling rates would be challenging, with government leadership and public support real progress towards Scotland's zero waste ambition can be made," he said. "A rush to incineration would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, acting as a distraction from the pressing issue of cutting the amount of rubbish we generate and scaling up reuse and recycling."

Green MSP Robin Harper argued that it made no sense to sign expensive 25-year incinerator contracts. "Even the delegates at the summit on Wednesday voted seven to one against a large-scale energy from waste' strategy," he said.

"We should be guided by the ambition to get as close to a zero waste policy as we can. The summit also accepted that waste reduction must play a much more central role in overall waste policy."

Lochhead promised that the Scottish government would work "flat out" to improve the country's record on landfill. "Continued improvements show that we have come a long way in a short time, however there is still much more to be done," he told the Sunday Herald.

"Last week's waste summit was intended as a forum to discuss how to deal with the issue, including the balance between recycling and energy from waste, with key stakeholders. We will now use feedback from the summit to develop new policies on the issue, including how we aspire to a zero waste society."

This week will see another major gathering on waste policy, with the annual conference of Scottish waste managers in Glasgow on Wednesday and Thursday. Speakers will include the Scottish government's environment and rural affairs department head, Richard Wakeford.