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.