Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:40 pm on 25 January 2017.
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.