By John Crawford

FIFTY years ago our councils provided a free collection of commercial waste from small businesses including shops and offices. Council bin motors were usually passing the premises anyway, and the businesses were paying non-domestic rates. It was a discretionary service: any business with too much waste used a contractor. Some businesses worked hours that weren’t suitable for the councils’ collection service, and also used the private sector instead.

Over time, councils began to look for additional income streams, new legislation was introduced and they began charging businesses to collect their waste. By 1990, the private sector was complaining that some councils’ charges were lower than theirs only because the former’s were subsidised by domestic ratepayers. Councils were then told to keep separate accounts and demonstrate their commercial waste charges fully recovered the costs of providing collection, treatment and disposal services.

When waste recycling started seriously in the first years of this century, councils offered their commercial customers lower rates for collecting separated recyclate. Things have more or less worked well since then.

It’s therefore very worrying that the current Scottish Government Consultation on Delivering Scotland’s Circular Economy includes a proposal to introduce "Business Waste Zones": a concept that’s been developed in the United States and some European countries in recent years. The intention is to give local authorities new powers to designate "zones" where commercial waste producers with "similar waste" will be required to collaborate and work towards standardisation of waste storage and collection regimes, including bin weighing, carbon accounting and the "end destination" of their waste.

In the (likely) event that businesses won’t be able to meet this requirement voluntarily, councils will be able to step in, decide how businesses will store their waste and recyclate, when it is to be collected and so on then invite tenders for the collection, treatment and disposal of all commercial waste and recyclate in the zone. Local businesses would then have to pay whichever contractor wins the council contract. It’s not clear if the councils would be able to tender for the work as well, but that remains a possibility.

It’s been argued that this strategy would mean better air quality and a reduction of traffic noise and emissions (both of which are to be welcomed), with a promised bonus of cost savings (that is both difficult to understand or justify).

This proposal will deny individual businesses any say in how their waste is to be stored, how much recyclate is to be separated out, or who collects their waste. It is fraught with potential contractual problems, and assumes that councils have a unique ability to decide what’s best for commercial waste producers in these zones.

It could put a lot of Scottish SME waste operators out of business, as it takes no account of the complexity of the services this industry currently offers local businesses.

There are better alternative solutions to the problems this scheme is supposedly designed to address.

The author spent many decades in the Scottish waste industry