I share Lesley Griffiths’s ambition to enable us to become a zero-waste nation. We have to keep up the pressure to reduce, reuse and recycle, and our first obligation must be to reduce the amount of waste we create. It is nothing short of shocking that one third of food produced never reaches the table or the plate. On a farm visit yesterday in the Vale of Glamorgan I heard how one leading supermarket insists in their contract with the grower that so-called wonky cauliflowers that don’t meet their cosmetic requirements for perfectly round white cauliflowers have to be ploughed back into the ground rather than sold on to people who are more interested in the taste than the shape of a cauliflower. And more outrageous, waste of perfectly good food that is hard to find, in the context of severe famine today facing at least four countries in Africa, is downright offensive. Frankly, such contracts should be banned, but not, apparently, according to UKIP, who want to delete all mention of further initiatives to achieve sustainable development. I appreciate that this is not something that municipal waste functions of local authorities can address but it may well be possible to use public procurement to change such wasteful practice. The role of the supermarkets in driving evermore unsustainable farming practices is something that requires a separate debate.

Turning to the role of Cardiff council and its strategic role in helping Wales to become the best recycling nation in the world, as it is the largest municipal waste authority that we have, its ‘Stay Out of the Black…Move into the Green’ campaign has made huge strides in driving up recycling. In terms of reusing materials, their free recyclable bulky waste collections has been massively popular and reduced the amount of fly-tipping, because it’s not credible to think that people fly-tip residual waste because there’s hardly any of it. That is where you get fly-tipping, apart from the actual criminal organisation of the fly-tipping of commercial waste.

However, in terms of talking to our populations, there’s obviously a lot more that we can do. I had a conversation this morning with a constituent who assured me that she and her neighbours found it impossible to confine their residual waste to the size of the bin provided for fortnightly collections. I was not convinced, and during the conversation it emerged that this person was indeed placing recyclable items into the non-recyclable bin. It illustrates the fact that 50 per cent of what is in non-recyclable household waste could be recycled. So, we obviously have a major challenge there. I’d be happy to talk to any of my constituents who think they can demonstrate that they cannot reduce their non-recyclable waste to the restricted bin that Cardiff provides, bearing in mind that there are separate collections for clinical waste, including nappies. I have yet to meet any household who cannot comply as opposed to can’t be bothered to comply or is not aware of what can and should be recycled.

An irresponsible person’s waste has to be paid for by other members of the community, whether it’s the cost of picking up litter or disposing of recyclables as if it were general waste. I look forward to seeing the landfill disposals tax community scheme being used to address the fact that there’s no such thing as throwing away. Every tonne of non-recyclable waste costs £80 a tonne in landfill tax, as well as the cost of disposing of it. That opportunity cost translates into other essential services that are not provided. So, we have an obligation to reduce our greenhouse emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050, and landfill is not it because of the methane produced.

So, we can see exactly how well we’re doing, as non-recyclable waste is one of the 40 national well-being indicators in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Local authorities all need to adopt best practice to increase recycling rates. So, therefore, I oppose amendment 4 that UKIP proposes. If Isle of Anglesey County Council can have three-weekly residual waste collections, and Conwy is moving towards monthly collections, I do not understand why other local authorities cannot do that.

Plastic bag use is down 70 per cent since we introduced the levy. Could we not apply a similar levy to wasteful packaging, as described by Simon Thomas? Plastics Europe, the trade body, says that two thirds of plastics used in UK is for packaging, and we can learn from the German Government, who introduced legislation in 1996 to compel manufacturing companies to design out wasteful packaging from their processes. It's no coincidence that Germany is now the top European nation in recycling, and we should obviously be embracing the way they've done things.

In the fourth Assembly’s environment—