Climate campaigners are calling on Lorna Slater to set targets for ensuring products last longer as part of her Circular Economy Bill.

The Scottish Greens co-leader and Circular Economy Minister introduced her key legislation in June which will set a framework for a host of measures to ensure products are reused and recycled and could limit the use of some single-use items.

But environmental groups have called on the Scottish Government to strengthen the proposed legislation and focus on consumption.

More than half of Scotland’s carbon footprint is from imports, which are not included in existing climate targets.

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Campaigners have suggested that consumption targets would include the impacts of imports and ensure that Scotland’s climate efforts are effective at a global level as well as domestically.

Kim Pratt, circular economy campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “We are all paying for the costs of a throwaway society, which is expensive, wasteful and polluting.

“Creating a sustainable future for Scotland must be based on system-wide changes in the way that we use materials.

“Moving to a circular economy is about much more than just improving recycling. Strong consumption targets would mean policies to encourage producers to make products last for longer, choose lower carbon materials, and to shift consumption patterns away from carbon intensive goods and services goods and services. A circular economy has the potential to create thousands of decent green jobs in Scotland.

“The Circular Economy Bill is our opportunity to reduce the impacts of our consumption and we need to see the Scottish Parliament seizing it and being ambitious. Targets are essential to set the scale and pace of change required.”

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Dr Kat Jones, director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), said: "This Bill is still in the very early stages, and there's much work still to do.

“The targets proposed by the Scottish Government currently have a big loophole - if something is manufactured overseas, it's not counted properly, but if we want to reduce Scotland's impact through what we consume, it really doesn't matter where it's made.

"Another key issue for us, and something the Bill doesn't yet begin to address, is producer responsibility. At present waste associated with the goods we consume is the responsibility of local councils and the public.

“This doesn't create an incentive for companies making our products to make things more durable, more recyclable and promote more repair and reuse.

“Shifting the responsibility for waste back to the companies producing the goods is the best single measure we could adopt if we want the economic, social and environmental benefits of a truly circular economy."

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Phoebe Cochrane from Scottish Environment Link, said: “In Scotland, as with most other developed nations, we consume far more than our share of planetary resources and this ‘overconsumption’, and the associated pollution and land use change, is a key driver of climate change and biodiversity loss.

“A more circular economy, with its focus on wiser use of materials, offers an alternative economic approach with a reduced environmental impact.

“There have been lots of great initiatives in the area of circular economy in recent years, but the approach has been somewhat piecemeal, without the wholesale change that we need.

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“The Circular Economy Bill should bring in consumption reduction targets to drive policy across government and the investment needed to make that economy-wide transition.”

When the Circular Economy Bill was tabled, Ms Slater insisted that “the best way of tackling waste is to not create it in the first place”.

She added: “There are huge economic opportunities in the circular economy and we have already seen businesses in Scotland creating jobs by turning what we might otherwise throw away into valuable new products and services.

“This legislation will support the growth of more green businesses and community organisations while cutting waste and climate emissions.”