Circularity Gap Report:

If we’re serious about reaching net zero, as a nation, we must look at how we consume and radically change our habits. The first step to achieving this is to measure our circularity over time and establish a benchmark – which is why Zero Waste Scotland recently commissioned Scotland’s first Circularity Gap Report.

By analysing how materials flow through our economy, we can understand the volume of resources that are being ‘cycled’ back into use. That’s what’s known as Scotland’s Circularity Metric.

Zero Waste Scotland commissioned Amsterdam-based pioneers, Circle Economy, to develop the Circularity Gap Report that highlights the urgent need to transition to a more circular economy. It found that Scotland is currently only 1.3% circular. While that doesn’t mean that 98.7% of the materials flowing through the country’s economy are wasted, it does highlight the need for urgent and radical system and behavioral changes across the board. Crucially, it also showcases the huge scale of opportunity that we have in Scotland to embed circularity.

The Circularity Gap Report outlines ideas and interventions that could help achieve Scotland’s net zero ambitions and reduce its carbon footprint of consumption by over 40% while making significantly deeper contributions to its emissions targets associated with production and manufacturing activity.

It highlights seven scenarios that could increase the country’s circularity and, in turn, regenerate vital ecosystems as well as building on Scotland’s climate leadership.

1. These are: Building a circular built environment – Optimising housing stock expansion, increasing building occupancy, and creating a resource-efficient building stock.

2. Nurturing a circular food system – Endorsing a balanced diet and adopting sustainable food production.

3. Championing circular manufacturing – Implementing resource efficient manufacturing and employing R strategies (remanufacturing, refurbishment, repair, and reuse) for machinery, equipment, and vehicles.

4. Rethinking mobility – Embracing a car-free lifestyle, flexible work, and creating a resource efficient electric vehicle fleet.

5. Welcome a circular lifestyle – By embracing a ‘material sufficiency’ lifestyle such as reducing textile consumption and cutting back on long distance travel.

6. Tackle Scotland’s import footprint – Shifting away from high-impact imports.

7. Advancing circular decommissioning – By reusing valuable materials decommissioned from energy infrastructure in hydro and other sectors. We recognise the expanded Port of Aberdeen (South), as a new multi-use harbour, as having potential to contribute to decommissioning activities in the offshore wind sector, providing capacity and expertise in and around the local supply chain.

Beyond the benefits to the environment, the report suggests that 59,000 green jobs could be created and that, by shifting the tax burden from labour to resource use and pollution, the scenarios modelled could potentially generate £35billion for Scotland’s economy.

With these key findings and interventions, we’re reinforcing why it’s so crucial that we all coordinate action to accelerate our transition to a circular economy.

We’ve come so far in the last few years and if any country is armed with the passion and innovation needed to make real change, it’s Scotland. Our call to action is louder than ever: let’s embrace circularity and close the gap on the sustainable future we all want to see.

For more information search ‘Circularity Gap Report’ at www.zerowastescotland.org.uk.