The next item on our agenda is the debate on a Member’s legislative proposal, and I call on Simon Thomas to move the motion.

Motion NDM6227 Simon Thomas

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Notes a proposal for a Bill on waste reduction.

2. Notes that the purpose of the Bill would be to reduce waste through placing requirements on food producers and retailers in respect of packaging.

Motion moved.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I want to propose that the Assembly notes the proposal for a waste reduction Bill in Wales, and the purpose of the proposed legislation would be to reduce waste, and in two particular ways: to address the need for a deposit-return scheme in Wales and to address the need to either ban, or at least have a levy on, polystyrene packaging in Wales.

The context for this proposal is that further waste reduction is needed if we are to reach the Welsh Government’s target to reduce waste by 70 per cent by 2025, and, to reach zero waste by 2050, a significant pace of change is needed. Plaid Cymru would also like to bring the zero-waste target forward to 2030 and, as stated already by the Welsh Government, Wales can, and should, become Europe’s best recycling nation. We are fourth, to be fair, but we can do even better.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

Wales’s recycling rate has doubled over the last decade, from just under 30 per cent in 2006-07 to over 60 per cent in 2015-16. However, not everyone recycles, and there are also local authorities that are significantly behind the pace of change. The current 58 per cent target of Welsh Government was not met by Newport, Torfaen, and Blaenau Gwent in 2015 and 2016. I believe, therefore, that a deposit-return scheme, through which customers pay a small additional charge for cans and bottles and are paid back when they return the empties, will incentivise people who do not already recycle and, indeed, will introduce an element of resource saving into our economy. This scheme should be available for plastic cans and bottles as well as metal ones and glass ones. As well as increasing collection rates, deposit schemes provide a higher quality of material, which can then be refilled or recycled. Deposit schemes could also save local authorities money in the long-term through lowering the amount of household waste to be managed, reducing the need for sorting and disposal facilities, such as incinerators and landfill, and reducing the need for street cleaning.

It’s a particular concern that the marine environment around Wales is being very much degraded by the amount of plastics in our environment. The Marine Conservation Society has a petition before the Assembly currently and is supporting a journey by a clipper around the coast of Britain in August, which will be calling in Cardiff sometime in the month of August, called the Sea Dragon, and the purpose of the Sea Dragon is to collate data on plastic in our marine environment. This is citizen science at its very best, in co-ordination with universities. And any of us—

Can I just—[Inaudible.]

Yes, indeed, I would do.

Just as species champion for the grey seals, all 43 of my new friends now in Worm’s Head would surely back such a proposal.

I’m sure they would, but I would say to Dai Lloyd that they’re not necessarily his friends, because I think they travel a long distance, and they’re probably as much Irish and Breton friends as they are Welsh friends. But it just shows the marine environment is there to be protected. And I think if anyone has undertaken a beach clean—and perhaps Dai Lloyd would like to consider a beach clean—they will know how many bits of plastic and returns from bottles are picked up at that stage.

Now, Germany’s deposit-return scheme is the most successful in the world. That’s been in place since 2003. A charge of 25 euro cent is applied to all drink containers apart from milk and fruit and vegetable juices. As a result, 98.5 per cent of refillable bottles are returned by consumers, and this is the point: the quality of recovered material is good enough to guarantee that an old bottle will become a new bottle. So, though we succeed in recycling at the moment, the advantage of a deposit-return scheme is the saving of resource, as well, and less waste. This has also helped to remove 1 billion to 2 billion one-way containers from Germany’s bins and streets.

It’s also the trend that is increasingly growing. I didn’t want to bring rubbish into the Chamber, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I did have to prepare this last night—myself, personally—but, if you buy some trendy beer or hipster ale these days, you’ll find that it often has a 10 cent refund for any state or territory—this is for international sales in Australia and the United States. So, this is the trend that’s already happening—we need only to follow that trend, and, as they say, work with it.

However, not everything can be recycled, and to reach zero waste—or reuse, indeed—we will eventually need to ensure that all packaging used in Wales is recyclable. One of the main causes of litter is, in fact, polystyrene packaging, which is not recyclable and cannot be reused, as it’s often used for food packaging, of course. Whilst other more environmentally friendly materials can be used, many cafes, shops, and fast-food outlets use polystyrene packaging for drinks and takeaways because it’s cheaper. Figures from the Bevan Foundation demonstrated that an online wholesaler offered 500 large polystyrene burger boxes for £21.12, whereas the biodegradable burger boxes are sold at £44.48 for 500.

So, there’s little incentive currently for retailers to use environmentally friendly alternatives, which include biodegradable containers, refillable containers, and even edible containers, which are now possible. It may not be possible or necessary to follow many states and cities in the USA and ban polystyrene packaging in Wales, although I am personally tempted to think along those lines, but we can look closer to home at our own successful single-use carrier bag charge, introduced by the Welsh Government in October 2011. According to a review commissioned by the Welsh Government and published in March 2016, between the introduction of the 5p charge in 2011 and 2014, there was an estimated 70 per cent reduction in the use of single-use carrier bags in Wales. So, a similar charge on polystyrene food and drink containers could be paid by the retailer or passed on to the consumer and lead to a similar decline in use.

It’s very interesting that, when the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government came to the Finance Committee in Newport last week—I think it was last week, or it might have been the week before; I can’t remember exactly when now—he talked about using the new powers in the Wales Act 2017 to introduce innovative taxes. And, of course, one of the proposals from the Bevan Foundation and others is a polystyrene charge in Wales, as just such an innovative tax.

So, many stakeholders, from the marine and environmental sectors to people like the Bevan Foundation, are calling for a tax on polystyrene to reduce its use, or even to drive out its use with more environmentally friendly alternatives. I think such legislation could deal with and help reduce waste enormously in Wales, but, more importantly, put us at the forefront of thinking in a European context.

Thank you very much. Jenny Rathbone.

I support this excellent proposal, and I think there are many other things we might consider doing as well. First, just to correct Simon, we are, I understand, the third best in the world for recycling, after Germany and Taiwan, so we need to celebrate that.

I was wondering whether we would have the competency, for example, to outlaw contracts that the supermarkets are making with some of their farming suppliers to force them to plough vegetables back into the land if they don’t meet the cosmetic appearances that consumers apparently demand in supermarkets, because that seems to me absolutely criminal.

I support your polystyrene tax, but I feel that there’s also more that we need to do to clarify for the citizen what plastics are recyclable and what are not, because I’ve had some debate with constituents about whether the black trays that are used invariably in processed foods—are they recyclable or not? If they’re not, let’s stop using them and use another coloured tray or one that’s made of a slightly different material, because it ought to be perfectly possible to recycle plastics if they’re not adulterated. Therefore, I think that the polystyrene tax should be extended to any plastics that are not recyclable, so that we force companies to recycle, because the cost in terms of the environment is just absolutely huge.

Most plastic packaging material is lost after one use—it’s not recycled. Once it becomes waste, it’s disposed of as municipal waste and about 30 per cent of it gets lost into the oceans, with the impact on Dai Lloyd’s friends but also on the ocean generally. We do face a situation where we could actually have more plastic in the ocean than fish, and that is a pretty scary prospect. So, I think that Europe is beginning to look at this, because, obviously, not all of Europe is doing as well as either Germany or Wales. The European Parliament has recently approved something called the Bonafè report, which is aimed at moving the EU towards a circular economy, with an 80 per cent recycling target for packaging waste. So, we want to be ahead of the curve in that respect, rather than following on.

So, I think that those are particularly good things that we could be doing, but I think it is also about changing behaviour, particularly the fact that a third of all food never actually reaches the table—that tells us that there’s something wrong about the way we respect food. But I think that we should also be thinking of following the excellent example of Germany with the closed substance cycle and waste management Act, which they passed in 1996, as you’ve already referred to, because it really does help to embed the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ concept, which we should all be following.

Are you coming to a conclusion, please?

So, I think if we want to be a zero-waste nation by 2050 or by 2030, then we should be really, I hope, considering this legislation.

It’s important that the Assembly continues with the good work of tackling waste. It’s an issue that affects us all. The seas, coastlines and beaches of Wales are habitats that are seriously damaged by waste and, in supporting Simon Thomas today, I want to mention the impact of waste on marine habitats and the impact of polystyrene particularly.

Following the plastic bag tax, introduced in 2011, there was a notable reduction in the number of plastic bags found on beaches around Wales, but according to the beach survey of 2016, when 28 Welsh beaches were surveyed, there was an increase of 16 per cent since the previous year in the number of items of waste found. Plastic and polystyrene are the main items found on beaches in the UK, and as we’ve heard, polystyrene is a huge environmental problem because it isn’t a material that biodegrades over time, and we don’t know how long it takes to biodegrade. In the meantime, landfill sites, as well as our seas, are filling with polystyrene. Polystyrene is worse than plastics, because there is increasing evidence that chemicals in polystyrene can be carcinogenic as well as damaging and being harmful to our wildlife and marine life.

By way of coincidence, yesterday I received a letter from a county councillor living near a school in Arfon, and this is what she says:

In our area, we see pupils visiting food shops at lunchtime and dumping their polystyrene containers in the woods and on riverbanks, on greenfield sites, along paths and on our pavements. It’s terrible and it’s a problem that’s increasing. Certainly, there is work to be done to educate children to dispose of their litter in a responsible way. Of course, it’s an ongoing battle to ensure a sufficient number of bins and so on. Despite that, I am of the view that it would be of great assistance to reduce packaging, particularly food packaging.

She goes on, this councillor, to say:

I wonder whether the Welsh Government would consider taxing polystyrene. The tax on plastic bags has been a sweeping success. So successful, indeed, that other nations in the UK have adopted the same policy. What about Wales leading the way once again, creating a Wales which is free of polystyrene? Thank you for reading my letter. I hope you’ll have an opportunity to speak up on my behalf and ask the Government to consider my request.

Clearly, there’s more discussion to be had: a tax, a levy, a prohibition—which is the best approach of reaching our aim? But certainly, reducing the packaging waste in terms of goods would do a great deal to reduce the waste that is disposed of, with so much inevitably finishing up on our beaches and in our seas, where it can take many, many years to biodegrade. So, thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Thank you to Simon for bringing this issue forward, and on with the attempts to tackle the issue of waste.

Could I just say that the Welsh Conservative group has no objection in principle to what Simon is intending to do, or would do if he got the opportunity to introduce a Bill here? However, we do think the practicalities play very heavily and need to be fully considered, and, in fairness, he did refer to them in his speech.

But we do start from the concept of the circular economy. I think we’re much more aware, now, of the impact we have in terms of how we wrap our products and how we consume the goods that we rely on so much. As many people have said, you’ve only got to walk on a beach anywhere, really, in the world, now, to realise the impact. I think, in the last 20 years or so, there’s been a huge shift, also, in public support and the demand the public have for policies that effectively meet these environmental demands.

I think we should remember that Wales does have a good suite of recycling polices at the moment, and we start from a high base. Whatever we do, we obviously want to preserve those achievements. I think any deposit scheme, in particular, would have to be very carefully thought through, so that we would be convinced that it really would take us a lot further than we can get just with the existing policies.

Some of the issues that have been raised with me—I don’t think they’re insuperable, but they obviously will need to be addressed. The existing infrastructure could be affected by a poorly designed scheme. You can end up with a clumsy policy that encourages people to make extra journeys to the supermarket, or whatever, to return bottles and other items. So, I think that needs to be considered. Also, many people, especially vulnerable people, have their groceries delivered—how that is incorporated into any deposit scheme. As I said, I don’t think they are insuperable, but they are knotty problems and they need to be addressed. I also think that the implications of any radical shift from kerbside, which has been hugely successful, to bring-to-store schemes, or whatever model is suggested, needs careful thought.

On food packaging, I think Wales and the UK need to get our act together, and I think a lot of us have just been depressed, on occasion, by the sheer quantity of material wrapping essential goods. That can’t be a great model and we need to move away from it. I’ve heard stories of outraged German consumers just tearing superfluous packaging off their products before they get to the till. I’m not recommending that, but I do think it shows you that there is a public mood for going even further here. So, we wish him well and we will look at anything that eventually comes to us very seriously.

I congratulate Simon on bringing this legislative proposal forward, aiming to reduce waste through placing additional requirements on food producers and retailers. It builds on the good work already undertaken by the Welsh Government and this Assembly to tackle an issue that affects us all, and we all do have a responsibility to tackle not least the islands of waste now growing in our oceans and choking marine life.

Wales has been at the forefront in the UK of proposing and then implementing legislation to support waste reduction, from the ‘Towards Zero Waste’ strategy, ambitiously aiming for a zero-waste nation by 2050, to the waste Measure, which introduced, as many other Members have remarked upon, the single carrier bag charge, followed, four years subsequently, by England. The carrier bag charge is an example of a great waste reduction success story for beaches here in Wales, with a significant reduction in the number of carrier bags found—lower than any other year since 2011. But even so, packaging waste is still a problem in our oceans and on our shorelines.

Like others here, I’ve joined in with people of all ages at beach clean-ups, and results from the Marine Conservation Society’s Great British Beach Clean 2016 revealed that, of the 28 Welsh beaches surveyed in September 2016, on average 607 pieces of litter were found per 100 metre stretch. That is still an increase of 16 per cent from 2015. Alongside plastic and polystyrene pieces, much of the litter on our beaches is packaging—the packaging of items such as crisps, sandwiches, sweets, lolly wrappers, and so much more. It not only causes an eyesore for residents and those tourists visiting our many fantastic beaches, but it poses a threat to our marine wildlife and to our commercial fisheries as it takes years to degrade.

Wales has made good progress on waste reduction, but should always be more ambitious in looking at how we can reduce waste. Some of Simon Thomas’s proposals, supported by the Marine Conservation Society and many others, are worthy of further consideration, and by extending producers’ responsibilities we could reduce the amount of packaging on food and other items, ensuring a significant step is made in reducing the amount of packaging that gets thrown away—waste that, one way or another, inevitably washes up on our beaches and in our seas. So, there will be many practical issues to work through in the proposal, I’ve got no doubt. David Melding has referred to a few now, and Simon Thomas himself acknowledged that there would be some difficulties to work through, but they are not unsurmountable in any way. So, I do support Simon’s legislative proposal in principle today, and in spirit, and I’m sure we can get the letter right if this were to come forward as well, and I urge other Members to consider doing so as well.

Thank you very much. I now call on the leader of the house, Jane Hutt.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Thank you, Simon Thomas, and everyone, for taking part in the debate today. The debate has given the Welsh Government the opportunity to update—in fact, the update has been fed back and expressed by Members today. But I think it is important to remind ourselves and put on the record that we published our waste strategy for Wales, ‘Towards Zero Waste’, back in 2010, outlining the actions we must all take if we are to reach our ambition of becoming a high-recycling nation by 2025 and a zero-waste nation by 2050. Our strategy is a pathway towards a so-called circular economy, which all Members have commented on today. That circular economy is one in which we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them whilst in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of the service life. Welsh Government published its waste prevention programme in December 2013. The waste prevention programme supports ‘Towards Zero Waste’ by describing the outcomes, policies, targets and work programme to address waste prevention in Wales.

Tackling waste is a big success story for Wales, and one that we should all be proud of. We have the highest municipal recycling rates in the UK and, according to an independent study, the second highest rates in Europe, and the third highest in the world. Now, in 2017, the Welsh Government has set its course to be the world leader in municipal recycling. The overall economic benefits to the Welsh economy of our waste strategy are enormous. For example, research carried out by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation projects benefits to Wales of achieving a circular economy of over £2 billion each year.

On food and drink packaging, it’s important to be clear that one of the primary purposes of the packaging is to protect the product from damage and wastage, including extending its shelf life. ‘Towards Zero Waste’ is currently being evaluated and will be refreshed to increase opportunities for the private and public sector to maximise financial, social and environmental benefits as a result of adopting changes in practices under the banner of a circular economy and resource efficiency. We will consult on the revisions to the waste strategy in a formal consultation in 2018. As part of the consultation process, the Welsh Government will have a comprehensive engagement with food producers, retailers and other stakeholders in respect of extended producer responsibility. This means making sure that they take a greater financial responsibility for the collection and management of waste that results from the products and packaging.

Recently there’s been significant interest following the media coverage on litter, plastic bottle recycling and recycling of coffee cups. The Welsh Government has a programme of work in place to tackle specifically these issues. For example, for many years funding has been provided by Welsh Government for the Waste and Resources Action Programme, WRAP, to work with the food industry and grocery retailers to reduce excess packaging. WRAP Cymru has also worked with the food service industry to deliver packaging waste prevention and increase recycling.

We’re about to commission a study to research options in relation to outcomes related to resource efficiency, including waste prevention, reuse and recycling, and to reduce litter under an extended producer responsibility approach. As part of this study, we will consider how a deposit-return scheme might impact on existing local authority schemes used to collect and manage the waste we produce in Wales. We must also take into account the associated environmental, financial, social, cultural and well-being impact on the people of Wales when making our decisions under the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. We will examine this research as part of our review and update of our waste strategy, ‘Towards Zero Waste’.

Simon Thomas, in bringing this forward today for debate, and Members, have spoken powerfully about the adverse impacts of waste, particularly on the marine environment, but also about the opportunities for Wales to continue to lead the way in its waste strategy policy. In considering this legislative proposal, as I’ve already said, we have a waste strategy and waste prevention programme in place for Wales, but we’re also committed to delivering approaches to address waste packaging. Any Bill brought forward now would need to be assessed for Assembly legislative competence under the provisions of the Wales Act 2017. Legislation regarding products is a complex area, and until we know in detail what might be proposed under the proposed Bill, we can’t be sure whether it is within the legislative competence of the National Assembly or not. On this basis, the Government will be abstaining on this proposal, but we commend the intentions of the outcomes the proposal for a Bill seeks to address, in relation to waste production, as it resonates with the strides that we’ve made through our waste strategy, ‘Towards Zero Waste’, and in our pathway to achieving a more circular economy in Wales.

Thank you. I call on Simon Thomas to reply to the debate.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. May I thank everyone who’s contributed to the debate and particularly thank the Minister, who’s just confirmed that the Government is still keeping in mind the need of a deposit-return scheme in Wales?

At the heart of this debate is the circular economy that David Melding and many other Members have mentioned. We must emphasise, in that context, that recycling something that can be reused is a waste of energy, a waste of resources and a waste of transportation very often. So, in moving towards a waste-free Wales, we should ensure that we reuse as much as possible, and that’s the purpose of this legislative proposal, to reduce that. We should also be collaborating towards an objective where we can’t use packaging in Wales that can’t be reused, recycled or composted. That should be the aim. And although there are some barriers, as Jane Hutt mentioned, in terms of doing that, we can overcome those problems with the right will and with some imagination.

And the final point, if I may, is this: who would have thought, five or 10 years ago, that just 5p would change the way in which people use plastic bags? If recycling were enough in and of itself, we wouldn’t see so much waste in our seas as we do at present, and on our beaches and in our environments. If 5p can do that for plastic bags, then a tax on polystyrene and a deposit-return scheme can also make a difference.

Thank you very much. The proposal is to note the proposal. Does any Member object? [Objection.] You object. Therefore, we will defer voting under this item until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.