Ministers urged to “make Scottish businesses responsible” for supply chain impacts around world

International human rights experts this month told the Scottish Government how it can reduce the harms of damaging business supply chains. 

In a series of meetings, the Scottish officials heard from representatives from civil society groups based in Malaysia, Colombia, Malawi, Sri Lanka and more. They spoke of harms including water pollution in India, the illegal international waste trade in Malaysia and ‘donation dumping’ in Kenya.

They called on the Scottish Government to do more in its draft ‘circular economy strategy’ to improve the way materials are produced, used and disposed of in Scotland for good.

The new Circular Economy law passed last year requires the Scottish Government to consult internationally on its circular economy strategy. Which it can do through meetings like this. 

In what is believed to be the first meeting of its kind, the Scottish Government funded a group of eight human rights and environmental experts to attend the meeting virtually and covered the cost of translation services, where required. The group was chosen based on their expertise and location, to ensure those most affected by supply chain harms in Africa, South America and South East Asia were represented. Scottish NGOs Friends of the Earth Scotland, SCIAF and Commonweal supported the meetings taking place.

Supply chain harms

Over half of the materials we use in Scotland are imported and an increasing amount of Scottish waste is exported. Supply chain impacts are well documented, from the extraction of raw materials from land sacred to Indigenous people, toxic pollution and unsafe working conditions to the dumping of waste in countries unable to manage the material safely.

In both the UK and internationally, awareness of the harms in supply chains is growing. In the UK, a 2024 survey found that four in five UK adults support new laws to tackle environmental harm and human rights abuses in company supply chains.

Internationally, governments are coming together to reduce the supply chain impacts for materials from plastic to lithium.

Kim Pratt, senior circular economy campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland said:

“The Scottish Government has reached out to those most affected by the harms of international supply chains in the first step towards creating a better system for everyone. It now has a responsibility to take the lessons learned from international experts and ensure that Scotland’s circular economy strategy is based on fairness and sustainability, both for Scotland and those people impacted by our international supply chains.

“This means making corporations that operate in Scotland responsible for the harms in their supply chains. We also need to see more efficient use of materials, so that people in Scotland can keep the products they buy for longer and need to buy less.”

Examples of supply chain harm linked to Scotland

Attention was drawn in the meetings to the serious and extensive social and environmental harms caused at every point in supply chains, and calls made for the new plan to prioritise people rather than the economy. 

Malaysia suffers from the dumping of a great deal of imported and illegal waste. In the first half of 2025, the UK exported nearly 30,000 tonnes of plastic waste to Malaysia, in a large jump up from the previous year. Some containers of international waste were abandoned at ports when approval was denied, and much contaminated and dirty waste was unable to be recycled. There was evidence of the intimidation and criminalisation of activists speaking out against the imported waste problem, and children who lived near recycling centres suffering adverse health impacts.

Kenya is an endpoint for the UK second hand clothing market – but 40% of ‘donations’ are unsellable and dumped, creating 450 million waste items in 2024 and effectively resulting in ‘donation dumping’, and in India examples were given of the toxic dyes from textile waste causing water contamination.

In addition to these meetings, Friends of the Earth Scotland and a coalition of 22 international NGOs have written to Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy, Gillian Martin, urging her to ensure that the circular economy strategy results in fairer and sustainable international supply chains. 

Charles B. Chilufya, Director of the Justice and Ecology Office (JEO) for the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar (JCAM), Kenya said in one of the meetings with the Scottish Government:

“What is Scotland’s waste export problem for us here? It is not just waste, number one, it is used goods that function as waste. And the draft strategy itself acknowledges long established international trade routes for the UK’s used textiles, for example, export to Africa and notes that:

‘These channels are now often at capacity, leaving little room for disposal, with harmful conditions to communities internationally if waste is exported’

“This is an important recognition. A lot of what leaves Scotland and the wider UK is not officially labelled as waste but as ‘used goods’, especially clothing, even when a large share is effectively unusable on arrival.”