I absolutely agree, and that’s why I think the Welsh Government, the UK Government and indeed all the legislatures across the UK need to work together in order to secure some change in attitude from manufacturers and supermarkets and other retailers. One thing I will say, though, is that it’s really important to take the public with you on this journey. We’ve been successful as a nation in doing that to date, but when you reduce waste collection services to a four-weekly basis, which is the situation in Conwy at the moment, you really do begin to lose people’s goodwill, and that is precisely what is happening in Conwy at present. We’ve got 10,000 households there who are on a four-weekly general refuse collection scheme. There has been an increase in fly-tipping reports. There has been an increase in rodent sightings. There are not just the issues of helping to educate people about how to dispose of waste more sensibly, but there are public health risks as well related to this. It cannot be right that pet waste sits in people’s bins for four weeks at a time, because that can cause public health risks to the council workers who then go on to collect that waste. It cannot be right either from an equalities point of view that we have older people, sometimes with clinical conditions, having receptacles outside their front doors that identify them as being vulnerable. Because that is the situation in my constituency at the moment, and people are very unhappy about the new regime.

So I would urge you, Minister, to consider what you might be able to do as a Welsh Government in order to promote the ability of local authorities to work with their residents rather than against the goodwill of their residents in taking this agenda forward. We’ve called for residual waste to be collected no more frequently than fortnightly. I think that that would be a good step forward; it would reassure residents that, whilst they continue to go on this journey and to make every effort to recycle, that they’re not going to be abandoned in terms of their public services.

Just one final point if I may, and that is: local authorities also need to get their act together. I think it’s wrong that we still see litter bins that take just one form of waste without being able to separate it in the way that you can in some local authority areas. Cardiff actually does a good job of this. There are very often bins with three holes in: one for paper, one for plastic products and one for other general refuse. But places like Conwy, whilst they’re expecting the public to recycle in a certain way, don’t have those sort of bins widespread across the county. So, local authorities need to get their house in order as well.