12. Will the Minister make a statement on recycling projects in South Wales East? OAQ(5)0036(ERA)

Thank you. Recycling in Wales is a success story, though there are challenges for some south-east Wales local authorities. Three local authorities failed to meet the recycling target for 2015-16. Each authority has been asked to explain why it failed to meet the target, and I will consider these explanations.

I’m grateful to the Cabinet Secretary for that response. As she said, there is great variety in the local authorities in terms of their performance with recycling. Given the Government’s announcement on the future of local government in Wales, with collaboration and even regionalisation going to happen, does she foresee, in the near future, that recycling projects will happen at a regional level, or even at a national level, rather than seeing that diversity from one authority to another?

Probably, going forward, that’s something that we would need to consider. At the moment, I am more interested in looking at what’s happening on a local authority basis. I mentioned that it is a real success story, recycling in Wales. We are way ahead of the game, and if we were done on an individual basis in Europe we would be fourth in the league tables. I mentioned that three have failed to reach their targets, and I have written to all the council leaders asking why this is so I can consider that. But I do think that recycling in Wales is something we should celebrate.