I agree with you entirely. I don’t see why these things can’t be refurbished, and I think that it’s unfortunate there are still some people who have this throwaway mentality. We’ve had rapid technology changes. The mobile phone—I know that’s interrupted this session on several occasions this afternoon. That contains gold, heavy metals—in fact 70 per cent of the heavy metals in landfill come from discarded electronics, while it only makes up 2 per cent of America’s landfill; I assume Britain will not be dissimilar. The value of precious metals inside a mobile phone are worth around 75 cents in America, which means going on for £1 here, and it’s about 18 cents to take them out. There’s a huge saving in doing it, but far too many electronic devices end up being put into landfill. In mobile phones there’s gold, there’s rare earth metals, and yet they’re still being thrown away without being recycled. No metal or product including metals should be ever be thrown away. We have a finite amount of metal in the earth’s crust. The more we recycle, the less we need to extract and the less damage to the environment. I think we are likely in the future to see the mining of old refuse tips to access metals and other items previously discarded.

Turning to food, in a world where many are going hungry, in a country where people are having to go to food banks, where children would have gone hungry in my constituency during the summer if it had not been for the action of Faith in Families and Carolyn Harris MP in providing meals, we are still throwing food away. The supermarkets, of course, must take some of the blame for food waste. Giant bags and buy-one-get-one-free offers promote over-purchase and waste. We need to cut down on food waste: things such as buying less, avoiding offers that would provide you with more than you can use, cook and freeze, creating smoothies and creating soups.

It’s not only the waste of food; there is a cost to the environment and there’s a cost to the purchaser as well. We just cannot afford to keep on throwing food away. There are people who are going hungry because we are doing it. Huge progress has been made in Wales. We need to continue making this progress. I’ll just finally end with: well done local councils in Wales for what you’re doing with recycling.