10. 6. Debate: Municipal Waste and Recycling

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:26 pm on 14 March 2017.

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Photo of Gareth Bennett Gareth Bennett UKIP 5:26, 14 March 2017

Yes, we—. I would have to look into that, but when I had a—. [Interruption.] Thank you, Joyce. To continue, when I had this exchange with the Minister responsible, Lesley Griffiths, we did actually have this difference of opinion over data. So, I apologise; I will look into it. I am being given data; I haven’t actually—. I can’t personally verify where it came from at this point.

Right. We do have therefore problems of fly-tipping in various areas. Okay, we’ve done that. Looking at Cardiff, we have had almost weekly instalments in the ‘South Wales Echo’ of admittedly anecdotal evidence, but there have been plenty of photographs that have been provided by concerned local householders in recent years pointing to their belief that fly-tipping has increased rapidly in the last couple of years. Recently, there has been a clearance of bushes on land around the main railway line that has revealed the huge amount of waste deposited illegally on this land over the past few years, and that didn’t become apparent until the bushes were actually cut back, and it’s quite a dramatic sight. Clearly, the so-called ‘zero waste’ policy is not leading to zero waste at all, and, indeed, it seems to be actually increasing the amount of waste that is illegally fly-tipped in Wales. In Cardiff, the Welsh Government’s policy has, in fact, been undermined by the Labour council’s decision to close down two of the city’s four recycling depots, which seems a curious way in which to try and achieve zero waste. So, I wonder what observations the Minister will have regarding that decision.

Over the past couple of years, Cardiff council has tended to hide behind the need to comply with EU waste recycling targets when they have been asked why the policies of waste collection are changing. They always say this: Bob Derbyshire, who’s in charge of it at cabinet level, he has always recited that they need to comply with EU waste recycling targets, but now that we are leaving the EU, we can ourselves, as a—. [Interruption.] Ah, okay, perhaps you can elucidate on that, but he is still claiming the need to comply with EU targets. We now have our own target of zero waste, so it’s not an EU target. So, we do need to consider the cost of slavishly adhering to very stiff targets. I think that we now need to have a good hard look at our own zero waste policy, and perhaps the debate today will help us to do that. Thank you.