What People Power achieved in 2019

Making progress on plastic and waste

This year saw the Scottish Government tackle some environmentally harming single-use products in response to rising public concern about plastic. Scotland became the first country in the UK to ban plastic stemmed cotton buds and, in October, they announced plans to introduce a ‘latte levy’ – a charge on single use disposable cups.

The Scottish Government also progressed their plans for a Deposit Return Scheme that will include glass bottles, plastic bottles, aluminium and steel drink cans. We’ve been pushing for the scheme to also include other materials such as HDPE (e.g. milk containers) and cartons, and to make sure it is not delayed by waiting for a not yet certain UK-wide scheme.

The Scottish Government has also announced plans for a Circular Economy Bill. Their proposals included lots of welcome ideas including charges for environmentally harming products, mandatory reporting on waste and work to increase recycling rates. But in order to tackle the climate emergency, we need this Bill to include robust targets to tackle our overconsumption of resources.

Over 1200 people responded online to the public consultation so far to make this important point. We held events with local activists to engage them with the proposals for a Circular Economy for Scotland.

We’ll be involved with the Bill in 2020 as it progresses through Parliament and with your help we can push for those targets so we can reduce our huge over-consumption of the planet’s resources.

Making the case for a jobs-rich and just transition

Launching our ‘Sea Change’ report

In May, we released our ground-breaking ‘Sea Change’ report, which revealed the devastating climate impact of North Sea oil and gas extraction and urged governments to prioritise a job-creating energy transition.

The report sets out how Governments, with the right policies, could overhaul our economy to meet climate targets while providing decent work in Scotland for those currently working on fossil fuel projects and many more. This would be a hugely important shift for our workforce with more public investment ensuring the long term social benefits are shared across communities.

We spoke to people around the country about this report, going to political party conferences and to public events in Glasgow and Biggar. Keep an eye out for more events like this in 2020.

Standing with BiFab workers

This year, the workers of BiFab in Fife were told they wouldn’t be receiving any of the manufacturing work from 53 turbine jackets for an offshore wind farm to be placed just ten miles off the Fife coast. Instead, EDF Energy had decided to send the work to Indonesia and ship the jackets two at a time back to Scotland. This was just another example of a failure of the renewables economy to deliver its full potential of decent work in the supply chain.

But the workers of BiFab weren’t prepared to watch on and instead formed a powerful campaign, Ready for Renewal, to demand EDF reverse its decision. We stood with the workers of BiFab and the Ready for Renewal campaign alongside trade unions and the wider community in support. The campaign included public meetings in Burntisland, the delivery of a letter to EDF’s office in Edinburgh (posted through their locked doors) and a rally in Kirkcaldy town centre. EDF eventually moved, with a potential 8 of the 53 jackets being built at BiFab, but this is still nowhere near good enough.

We will continue to stand with the BiFab workers and others who should be seeing more of the benefits of our renewable economy across the country but Ready for Renewal was a powerful campaign in 2019, with workers, communities, trade unions, climate strikers and ourselves standing in solidarity.

Young FoES goes from strength to strength

Young people have been leading environmental campaigns across the world in 2019. Young Friends of the Earth Scotland have continued to grow, getting involved in a wide range of social and environmental issues. They have also been at the heart of climate campaigning – providing wellbeing stalls, march stewards and of course taking to the streets in support of the incredible Scottish Youth Climate Strikes in September.

They’ve led by example in working with and learning from our European neighbours to build an intersectional approach to these issues, returning to share this knowledge at home. They collaborated with YFoE Norway for training in Aberdeen on the theme of just transition with sessions led by trade union reps, oil industry experts, activists and many others. These conversations about climate justice, workers rights, the economy, and how to protect workers and communities are vital as we move our countries away from fossil fuels.

An end to fracking ?

In a victory for local campaigners across Scotland and FoE the Scottish Government finally announced a firm policy ban on fracking. This was the result of eight years of campaigning for us. We had commissioned a legal opinion to try to make this a more secure ban in legislation but fracking is certainly dead in Scotland for now.

Of course, we are crossing our fingers that arch-fracking-enthusiasts INEOS do not take the government to court to try to overturn the ban.

The highlights above are just a small selection of the fantastic people-powered action from this year. We’ve also linked up with European allies, supported action to transform grouse moors, hosted webinars, revealed a dirty bus scandal, Ceilidh-ed, improved the new National Investment Bank, gained new members of the team, hosted a Summer Weekender and went to the UN climate talks in Madrid.

Thanks for making so many of these successes possible through your hard work, energy, willingness to talk to decision makers and getting your friends involved. With the UN Climate Talks coming to Glasgow in 2020, it promises to be our biggest and most exciting year ever. We’ll need your help to achieve even more in the next 12 months.

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