What is the Scottish Pollutant Release Inventory?

The SPRI is a Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) and has the primary purpose of making publicly available officially reported annual releases of specified pollutants to air and water from certain SEPA-regulated industrial facilities. It also provides information on offsite transfers of waste and wastewater from these facilities.

The SPRI data is collected, quality assured and made public under the requirements of Freedom of Information and can be compared with PRTR information from other countries. SPRI datasets from 2002 to the present year (except 2003) are available and reported annually.

A full list of the pollutants whose emissions must be reported can be found on the SPRI Schedule, which is updated annually. SPRI pollutants are substances considered to be environmentally significant and of interest to the public.

Interpreting SPRI data

Regulatory and environmental impact

SPRI data can be used to broadly compare facilities or sectors and it provides a general overview of the total amounts of pollutants released or waste transferred. However, direct, detailed comparisons between facilities are only possible where significant further information is available about all of the processes carried out on site; even where this is possible, few facilities have direct equivalents.

SPRI data cannot provide assessments of the regulatory compliance of the facilities or the health or environmental impact of their releases. Compliance information can be found on SEPA’s website.

Annual mass emissions alone are not necessarily directly related to concentrations of pollutants being emitted at any particular time and cannot be used to directly predict the resulting concentrations in the environment. High annual mass emissions are often due to the large size of the industrial process, where relatively low concentrations are released in very large flows of air or water. The efficiency of the facility’s industrial abatement and treatment processes will have a significant impact on emissions. These are guided by relevant UK legislation and Scottish legislation and associated guidance.

Annual mass releases are not directly comparable with air or water quality standards. Reporting thresholds for each pollutant are set based on characteristics of the pollutant (such as its toxicity, transport and persistence in the environment) to indicate what level of mass emission may give rise to ‘significant’ environmental concentrations.

Scope of this statistical release

We have focussed on the emissions of pollutants to the environment and on offsite waste transfers from non-waste facilities, as these are the areas where SEPA receives the most enquiries, and where SPRI provides data which is both significant and unavailable elsewhere. It’s important to note that we have not included discussions on the following topics in this context; however, all relevant data can be accessed on Scotland’s Environment Web:

• Radioactive substances ¹

• Releases to wastewater

• Offsite waste transfers from waste sector facilities

Annual variability

Caution should be used when comparing one year’s data to the previous year’s, particularly on a site-by-site basis. Substantial year-to-year variability is expected within some sections of the SPRI data, and we allow for this in our QA process.

For example, within the industry sector 7 – Intensive livestock production and agriculture we would expect emissions from poultry farms to be some of the most consistent in SPRI, because operators will tend to stock to similar levels across the whole year, every year. Marine pen fish farms, on the other hand, have clearly defined production cycles which include fallow periods, so emissions are expected to vary accordingly.

Many facilities will base their emission values on spot testing which has happened at different points throughout the year and again, in some industry sectors we can expect these to be quite variable.

User statement

The SPRI provides the Scottish part of the UK Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (UK-PRTR). The UK is a Party to the UN Kyiv Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers which aims “to enhance public access to information through the establishment of coherent, nationwide PRTRs”. The Protocol requires Parties to provide information on pollution sources to members of the public.

SPRI data are also used to fulfil various other reporting requirements and obligations including those of the UK National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI), and the UK Greenhouse Gas Inventory (UKGHGI), which fulfils the UN Kyoto Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Other obligatory uses are the OSPAR Convention and Scotland’s Marine Atlas.

The data are also used by central government, researchers and the general public.

Feedback

We welcome feedback on this publication and the associated datasets from all users, including information on how and why the data are used. This helps us to understand the value of the statistics to external users. Please see our contact details at the bottom of this page.

Revisions

SEPA will provide information about any revisions made to published information in this statistical release and the associated datasets. Revisions could occur for various reasons, including when data from third parties is unavailable or provisional at the time of publishing or if there are subsequent methodological improvements or refinements. Requests for revisions may be made by SEPA or by operators.

Note that revisions to individual returns may occur throughout the year. The revision process requires similar Quality Assurance (QA) checks to those carried out on annual data submissions and the return may be unavailable during this period.

Data available on Scotland’s Environment Web updates annually and will include all significant revisions to previous years. Where necessary, PRTR data revisions will be resupplied to Defra to allow the UK-PRTR to be updated.

Pre-release

The release of this publication is in line with practices specified in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. The statistics are released at the standard time of 9.30 am on a preannounced weekday date. Pre-release access to the statistics in their final form is provided to Scottish Ministers and those on a list of named officials advising them five working days before the public release. This is to ensure that at the time of release Scottish Ministers are able to comment publicly on the statistics based on a correct understanding of them.

Besides analytical staff involved in the production and quality assurance of this publication, the following post holders in SEPA and the Scottish Government were given pre-release access up to 5 days before release:

• Scottish Government Minister x 2

• Scottish Government analyst x 8

• Scottish Government policy official x 26

• Scottish Government communications official x 2

• Scottish Government special adviser x 1

• SEPA Chief Operating Officer x 3

• SEPA Senior Leader x 6

• SEPA Senior Manager x 4

• SEPA Unit Manager x 4

• SEPA Officer x 7

• SEPA Communications staff x 6

Enquiries

Media enquiries to: SEPA Communications Department: media@sepa.org.uk.