We now move into the short debate. If you are leaving the Chamber, please do so quietly and quickly. Thank you. I’ll now call on Russell George to speak on the topic he has chosen. Russell George.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The title of my short debate today is ‘The challenges of recycling for businesses and residents in rural Wales.’ I’m going to start my contribution by patting the Government on the back and saying what a good job they’re doing, then I’m going to bring some cases forward that demonstrate that, if we don’t carry on the momentum, things will change. I’m also then going to show a video clip that highlights some of the cases in my own constituency. I’m going to give a minute of my time to Darren Millar, and I should also declare I’m a member of Powys County Council.

So, I will begin by noting that the overall picture for Welsh recycling is a positive one. The Welsh Government’s current waste strategy, ‘Towards Zero Waste’, has set a very ambitious target of 70 per cent recycling by 2014-25 as a whole, and Wales’s recycling rates are already above the 58 per cent statutory recycling target, which was set in 2015-16. So, 19 out of 22 councils reached or exceeded that target, with the exception of outstanding issues in south-east Wales. The Welsh Government’s performance on recycling is largely a record that we in Wales can be proud of. Indeed, the general approach is good, with good, clear targets, proper monitoring and evaluation, so it’s a gold-standard approach, I think, from the Welsh Government, and it’s something that the rest of Europe can learn from and be adopted. So, there we are.

So, a good approach so far. But Wales’s record of recycling is also reflective of a change in attitudes as well across society towards recycling, and this bodes well for the future. However, if we are to meet the Welsh Government’s 70 per cent target by 2025, it is essential that we keep up the momentum by providing innovative solutions to increase recycling rates whilst reducing the barriers of recycling, and that’s what I’m coming on to—the barriers of recycling. So, I’m therefore concerned that local authorities across Wales are curtailing both residential and commercial waste collections, largely as cost-cutting exercises, without providing the facilities to enable residents and businesses to increase their rates of recycling. So, we must ensure that waste management policies, such as the move to three-weekly collections, do not have unintended consequences in terms of increasing environmental crime such as fly-tipping, and ensure that Wales continues to be a European leader in recycling. So, for example, local authorities such as my own in Powys have moved to a three-weekly residual waste collection and, in some respects, are creating unnecessary barriers for residents and businesses when it comes to encouraging recycling. Indeed, I fear that current policies, unless addressed, will have an adverse effect on recycling rates in the county.

I would now like to show a short video that illustrates some of the challenges that business owners and residents are currently facing. It’s just a couple of minutes, and then I will explore each of the cases. I will now ask for the video to be shown.

A DVD was shown. The transcription in quotation marks below is a transcription of the oral contributions on the DVD. The presentation can be accessed by following this link:

DVD presentation.

Lorna Hamer: ‘Hi, I’m Lorna from Quality Pipe Supports in Newtown, Powys. This is the area where we recycle. We recycle plastics, which we have to take over the border to Oswestry as there’s nowhere in Powys to recycle them. Paper and cardboard are the same; we have to take them to Oswestry. Metals we have to take to a local company. Wood—we recycle that, but there’s nowhere in Powys to take it to. We then recycle these plastic cups, which are recyclable—[Inaudible.]—there’s nowhere in Powys to recycle them. It’s the same with fabrics and aerosols; there’s nowhere to take them. We do pay the council a licence for recycling our goods, but there’s just nowhere for them to go.’

Paul Martin: ‘The bin at the end of my lane, as you can see, is full of household waste. There are a lot of black bags, which shouldn’t be here at all—they should be purple. This will be spilled all out over the sides by the time of the collection, which will be in about 10 days’ time. We’ve noticed a big increase in the amount of waste in this bin since the closure of the Kerry recycling unit a few months ago.’

Dan Morgan: ‘Hi, my name’s Dan Morgan. I’m the general manager here at Cefn Lea park in Newtown, Powys. Information about our rubbish at the moment, as this has become quite a problem for us as a business: a number of years ago, we used to have about 10 of these wheelie bins full of rubbish per week. Over the last three or four years, since the recycling has come into place for the council, we’ve cut this down to two bins per week, whereas the other eight bins worth of rubbish per week was being recycled in the food waste bins and plastic et cetera. Now, from 1 February, the council are cutting off recycling services for businesses, which is a major problem for us.’

Thank you. So, I’ll just explore each of those cases. The first clip was from Lorna Hamer of Quality Pipe Supports, and I have to say I was surprised when Lorna said she can’t recycle cardboard and plastic anywhere in Powys. When I questioned her, there was one place in the next town, but, unfortunately, the form that they produced it in wasn’t accepted by that company and there was a minimum requirement to accept that cardboard as well. So, therefore, they had to go across the border to Oswestry. I should explain as well—the company has got a licence, so it can take its recyclable waste to a depot that is just up the road, which was working very well until a couple of years ago, but then what happened is the council reduced a lot of the items that can be recycled. They crossed them off and said, ‘You businesses can no longer take these items to the recycling point.’

When I questioned the council on this, they said this was down to cost saving; it was just not economically viable for them to accept these items anymore and that business should use private businesses—except there are no private businesses that are able to come into the area because it’s so rural; it’s not economically viable for them to do so either. So, a lot of recycling waste is either building up or is being put into the residual waste. It’s not what the company want to do. They’re putting it into the residual waste, and it’s costing them more money, of course, as well, to do that. So, effectively, this is now a tax on rural businesses, because nobody else will accept their recyclable waste.

Paul Martin—this is not a business, he’s a local community champion in Kerry. Now, he’s making the point that people in his village were recycling very well, except then, of course, the council took away the recycling facility in the village and told them all to go to the next town, and said, ‘Go to Newtown, take all your recyclable waste there.’ Except the only thing is the council is now proposing to close either that or the Welshpool recycling facility. So, this is the case that he’s fighting as well. We know, last year, the council closed a facility in Machynlleth and told all its residents there, ‘You now have to go to Newtown to take your recyclable waste’. That’s a 60-mile round trip. So, when I went to an advice surgery in Machynlleth last year, one resident came with a load of bags and said, ‘Where are you going after this?’, and I said, ‘Back to Newtown’. He said, ‘Can you take all of this with you?’, and I had to place it all in my car, including a pot of oil. That was a 60-mile round trip. The resident couldn’t take the items himself simply because he’s only got a motorbike. It couldn’t fit on his motorbike. So, that’s the issue. What will happen is, if the Newtown facility closes, then residents will be expected to travel from Machynlleth—a 112-mile round trip. So, you’re going from the very west end of Wales all the way to the border. This is the situation that we’re finding ourselves in. I appreciate that the Cabinet Secretary might say, ‘Well, this is a matter for the county council’, but the question is: is this acceptable? Do we need to bring forward legislation, which I’ll come onto, and should this be happening? The Cabinet Secretary may say that I’m a Powys county councillor, but the reality is that this is a decision of a Powys County Council cabinet, and this is a decision that is happening right across rural authorities, wherever you are. It’s a case that I’m bringing forward and saying, ‘This is something I think the Welsh Government needs to step in and deal with.’

The final case is the case of Daniel Morgan from Cefn Lea park, where they have 20,000 guests every year. He was saying that they’ve got 10 skips all going to residual waste—all going to landfill previously. They changed their systems; so, only two are going to landfill and eight are being recycled. Now, they’re going back to the position where all are going to have to be going to landfill again. This is on the assumption that, for example, they’ve got a lot of food waste. The council is now saying, ‘As from next week, we’re no longer going to collect your food waste; you’ve got to take it yourself to the recycling centre’, but they’ve not got a vehicle to take their food waste to the recycling centre, and that’s the position that they’re in.

I’d also like to bring forward the final case of Dafarn Newydd Stores, a small shop in Llanwddyn, who will have their commercial recycling collection stopped at the end of this week. The store has informed me that they had no prior notification that the service was under review, and that the council have simply said that this will happen as of next week. I e-mailed the council about this—the Cabinet member—and this is the reply I got. I’m reading off the screen: ‘We are still able to provide a collection of trade residual waste, i.e. non-recyclables, but cannot justify the cost of collecting recyclables. Therefore, unfortunately, the only option is for the trader affected to put all waste into the residual bin, or take it to the household waste recycling centre via a permit scheme.’ They’ve actually given the advice to me that I should tell the business to put it in residual waste. This is the position that we’re in. Of course, that’s a 70-mile round trip for him, and if that recycling centre closes, then it’s going to go up to an even further distance as well.

I visited a number of recycling centres myself around Montgomeryshire on several occasions, and I witnessed first-hand how popular the centres are, with queues of people often forming. That’s good, isn’t it? That’s what we want. So, of course, I’m concerned about the reduction of opening times at some of these centres, and also the potential closure of one of them as well. So, I would like to ask the Cabinet Secretary to have a look at changing outdated legislation in this regard. I am looking at the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which states that local authorities have a statutory obligation to provide its residents with at least one facility where they may deposit their household waste. So, I believe that the Welsh Government does have a role here in amending the Environmental Protection Act, which, in my view, is not fit for purpose at the moment. It’s not an acceptable situation that there can only be one recycling centre in the whole of a county area—and I’m thinking of rural counties like Powys. It’s not fit for purpose, and the legislation needs to be updated. It was brought in, of course, before local government reorganisation. So, when it was brought in, there were actually three councils in Powys. This is exactly why it needs to be updated.

So, I sincerely hope that what I’ve said in this short debate today, and what residents have said in the case study shown earlier, will convince the Cabinet Secretary of the need to amend the Act, and also ensure that local authorities do all that they can to incentivise and increase recycling rates. It would be false economy if we were to decrease the cost of waste management on one hand and then, on the other hand, we see it having an adverse effect on recycling rates and environmental crime.

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to raise these issues in the short debate today. I look forward to a positive and constructive answer from the Cabinet Secretary. It’s no good telling me you’d rather Powys County Council sort it out; I’m a backbench Powys county councillor, and it’s the cabinet members that take the decisions. This isn’t just a Powys issue—it’s an issue for all rural authorities, and I hope I can work with the Cabinet Secretary at bringing forward some legislation to sort this issue out. I give one minute to Darren Millar.

Thank you, Russell, and can I congratulate you on bringing this matter to the attention of the National Assembly? I’m not going to talk about four-weekly bin collections today and the impact that has on people’s behaviour and engagement with recycling, which I can tell you is very negative. But I do want to talk about access to civic amenity sites, because there is a great deal of waste that is produced by households that is not collected at the kerbside in my own local authority area of Conwy. Local residents in the south of that particular county are unable to access civic amenity sites in neighbouring local authority areas. They’re simply not allowed to turn up at a site in Denbighshire in order to get rid of small electrical items or waste that’s been created as a result of old furniture, or anything like that. Unfortunately, they are forced to make a two-hour round trip to their nearest civic amenity site, which is on the coast in Conwy, which is clearly an unacceptable situation. So, I fully endorse what Russell George has said about the need to look at access to these sorts of recycling and civic amenity points to make sure that not just businesses, but individual householders as well, are able to benefit from promoting recycling and making it as easy as possible for local householders. I look forward to hearing what the Government has to say about what it can do to make that access easier.

I now call on the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs to reply to the debate. Lesley Griffiths.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you, Russell George, for bringing this subject forward for debate today. I think as you said in your opening remarks, we really have set our course as a leader in recycling and waste management. We’ve got the highest in the UK, and the fourth highest in Europe. I believe that our ambitions and our targets really will take us to first place in Europe and then, I think, the world, during the next few years.

But I think also we must pay tribute to the public. You said that we really have taken the public with us on this journey, and our recycling targets have been reached because of the way the public have embraced it. I think I said it in the debate we had yesterday—it is now second nature to so many people in Wales.

So, whilst I do agree there are challenges for businesses and residents in rural Wales, I think there are also opportunities as well. Rural authorities such as Powys do of course have specific challenges, and the distances, as you’ve mentioned, of rural collection rounds are larger, and facilities such as household waste and recycling centres are often further away for residents than in our more urban authorities. But I think we do need to be very careful how we characterise our local authorities. There are some city and Valleys authorities with rural areas, whilst many rural authorities have sizeable towns. I think local authorities have to take these factors into consideration when they’re planning and designing and delivering the services to businesses and residents. I think it’s really important—and again, you referred to this—that barriers aren’t put up for people.

I also think that rural authorities here in Wales have managed these challenges very well. Last year, Wales achieved a 60.2 per cent municipal recycling rate. If you drill down into those figures and look at the specific authorities, rural authorities achieved an average of 62 per cent; Valleys authorities reached 59.3 per cent; and urban authorities 59 per cent. Some local authorities have consulted on reducing the number of household waste and recycling centres they provide, and I know some sites have closed. I think it’s also important that, when local authorities are looking at whether they should close a site, or even open a site, they need to look at what supermarkets are offering with these very good bring sites for material—banks, for instance—and good kerbside collections, too.

Powys County Council covers a quarter of the area of Wales, so you can see just how large it is, and they have many sparsely populated areas where the provision of services, I know, can be a challenge. But I am advised that, despite these challenges, Powys is making—[Interruption.] Yes.

I take your point about bringing to centres at supermarkets, for example, but a business can’t do that. If a business did that, they’d be fined.

No, absolutely. I was just making a general point that there are very good bring sites now, and they have to be taken into consideration. But you’re quite right—businesses obviously can’t use those.

So, despite the challenges that I think Powys face, they are making excellent progress on recycling, and, again, it’s seen a significant increase in its recycling rate from the 59.1 per cent that was reported last year.

The Welsh Government provides support to local authorities, including those that have large rural areas, through our collaborative change programme. Our objective is to help authorities improve recycling rates through the provision of excellent services, not just to residents, but to businesses as well. I do meet with local authorities regularly to discuss the challenges and opportunities that they face in relation to waste. Next Monday I’ll be chairing a meeting of the waste ministerial programme board to discuss these challenges further. What we need to do is translate our impressive municipal recycling rates into local jobs and opportunities for training and community regeneration. That’s the circular economy that we talk about. And I have to say that your video proved that point more than anything, that, if there aren’t facilities in Powys for those recyclable materials, we’re not going to achieve that circular economy. So, I would suggest that that’s perhaps something that could be looked at.

All local authorities are part of this optimistic, life-enhancing agenda, which I think is being delivered for and by the people and communities of Wales. I’m really proud to celebrate the fact that Wales is a world leader in this area. I mentioned Powys’s very good recycling rates, so I’ll challenge Russell George: as a councillor, take credit for it, but, equally, you are part of the solution, and I appreciate what you’re saying about a backbencher, but it is really important that Powys council do provide these facilities.

Thank you very much. That brings today’s proceedings to a close. Thank you.

The meeting ended at 18:46.