5. 4. Statement: Building on our Recycling Success for a Circular Economy

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:51 pm on 14 June 2016.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 3:51, 14 June 2016

Thank you very much, and welcome, Minister. I’d just like to pay tribute to—you’ve said that an amount of food waste is still appearing in black recycling, which is obviously a major health issue, as well as loved by the gulls—the work that Love Food Hate Waste is doing to divert food from having to go to land waste into being used productively by organisations. I think it’s really important.

I just want to ask you about the perverse incentives around weight-based recycling—No. 1—and also what consideration you might give to how we could put levies on the plastic bottles or the can lids that have been mentioned earlier by others as a way of ensuring that we’re not sorting out one problem and creating another. How can we get the polluter to pay—i.e. those who do tip their cans onto the beach? How do we prevent that happening in the first place by maybe having bottles for drinks that have to be returnable as an alternative to that?