Spotlight on: Scotland Excel's environment category

Gary Mooney, Category Analyst from Scotland Excel’s Transport and Environment Team, discusses the evolution of the organisation’s waste frameworks.

“Scotland Excel’s Environment Category has developed significantly over the past 12 years. It supports councils to meet their statutory obligations to deliver a waste management public service and meet targets associated with the various pieces of legislation including the Waste Scotland Regulations 2012.

Throughout the last decade, we have offered routes for councils and other members to source bins, bags, sacks and caddies commonly found in the streets, driveways, closes and gardens of households - ensuring quality and choice. This culminated in the award of a fourth-generation framework for the supply of recycle and refuse containers earlier this year.

Parallel to this, we have consistently facilitated the purchase of equipment used to operate Household Waste Recycling Centres, including skips, containers, balers and compactors.

Around the time I joined Scotland Excel in late 2011, we decided to expand the user intelligence group (UIG). Throughout 2021 we actively engaged with waste managers from around the country to encourage them to use and influence the UIG process.  This is also when we began to forge a close link with Zero Waste Scotland, who are responsible for delivering Scottish Government outcomes.

With support from Zero Waste Scotland and our UIG, by spring 2013 we awarded the category’s first service-related arrangements: treatment of organic waste and collection, treatment and disposal of household WEEE (waste electrical and electronic goods). 

These were innovative at the time, as Scotland Excel up until that point had focused primarily on delivering goods rather than services.  The organic waste arrangement was introduced to support councils in meeting mandatory requirements from summer that year, to offer eligible households a separate food (or co-mingled) food and garden waste collection.

Subsequent generations of this framework continue to operate. The WEEE framework was also a first, as it was a service concession to the councils. Although it had a value of £0.00, its introduction gave councils a standard set of terms and conditions (for a service that was until then largely uncontracted formally) and facilitated delivery of community benefits.

Successfully introducing these service contracts built confidence within the UIG. The influence and interaction with them strengthened and led to the introduction of a 23 lot framework for the treatment and disposal of a range of materials, including those commonly found in household bins.  Introduced in 2014, it was innovative for its time and was the first framework of its size and type within the UK.

Further innovation followed on its expiry in 2018, when the UIG opted for a Dynamic Purchasing System for the treatment and disposal of materials; this time over 22 lots. The intention was to operate with more flexibility than a framework enables (including allowing new entrants to join throughout its lifetime) and give greater ability to define individual requirements and contract against bespoke terms and conditions.

Our latest addition to the portfolio came in 2021, when despite the pandemic, working in partnership with Zero Waste Scotland, we introduced a framework delivering a waste composition analysis service. The data from this will inform Zero Waste Scotland (and councils involved) when considering what the future of waste collection and treatment should look like.

The category will continue to evolve and support councils as new policy arrives, including the pending ban on biodegradable municipal waste to landfill and the deposit return scheme. 

Through the remainder of this year, Scotland Excel is developing a Net Zero strategy, to go live 2023. Although covering a number of category areas, it will include the waste sector, considering our role in supporting the circular economy; including how and where opportunity for reuse and repair can be increased.”

This feature is part of Scotland Excel’s ‘Supporting the journey to Net Zero’ campaign that aims to support the Scottish Government’s ambitious target to become Net Zero by 2045.