Scots overwhelmingly want food, drink and other companies to pay to clean their packaging from our streets. A new poll shows more than seven in 10 people support special "polluter pays" litter levies for businesses generating the plastic polluting the country. The finding, in an independent survey for environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB), comes amid growing concern about trash both blighting the nation’s urban spaces and finding its way in to nature.
Before the general election was called Conservatives at Westminster were set to introduce a scheme called Extended Producer Responsibility or EPR for packaging. Read More: What Sweden can teach Scotland about recyling our waste Highland loch's sandy shore 'only fresh water site' to scoop beach award The windy North Sea is Scotland’s greatest asset in the race to reach net zer o That, starting next year, would have forced the companies using packaging to pay for the collection and recycling of household waste. Businesses - especially big brands facing similar regulations on the continent - look ready to accept their responsibility for their own plastics.
Some 40 environmental charities and groups, including KSB, lobbied for EPR to go even further. They want to make firms help cover the cost of picking up crisp packets, sweetie wrappers, take-away and drinks bottles and cans that find their way in to the environment . Scottish and Welsh authorities have been mulling an EPR scheme for litter, of a kind currently b.