11 Nov 2018
The SNP are on course to miss their household recycling targets by a significant margin according to analysis undertaken by the Scottish Conservatives.
The figures come as the Scottish Conservatives prepare to use this week in the Scottish Parliament to highlight new ideas to boost the environment, and deliver a cleaner, greener Scotland.
The SNP has committed to recycling 60 percent of household rubbish by 2020. However, between 2011 and 2017, the percentage of recycled household waste has only risen from 40.1 percent to 45.6 percent.
This shows that the average annual increase of household waste recycling is less than 1 percent, which, if this trend continues, means that the SNP will only hit this target in 2032, a staggering 12 years late.
Indeed, this comes after the SNP has already clearly missed the previous target to recycle 50 percent of household waste by 2013.
Maurice Golden, Scottish Conservative shadow environment secretary has said these failures show that this SNP government is ‘asleep at the wheel’.
While this is concerning enough, these figures are compounded by the fact that the SNP is planning to increase incineration capacity by 500% over the next 5 years.
Maurice Golden, Scottish Conservative shadow environment secretary said:
“The SNP are once again asleep at the wheel while presiding over a series of missed environmental targets.
“The SNP has already missed one crucial recycling target and is clearly on course to miss another by a staggering amount.
“The SNP appear to have no ability to substantially improve household recycling and would rather bury waste in the ground, export to China or burn it.
“The Scottish Conservatives will this week be focussing attention on ways to improve the environment and create a cleaner, greener Scotland.
“The SNP must dramatically increase our recycling rate and ensure that Scotland is playing its part in tackling climate change.
“The SNP is clearly a tired government, running out of ideas and failing to deliver.”
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