Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:20 pm on 8 May 2018.
I thank the Member for his very illuminating and entertaining contribution then, taking us down memory lane as well. I'm not sure whether the reason you're committed to us bringing DRS in is so you can actually have a sideline of collecting all the bottles, or encouraging the nation's youth to that. I think you're absolutely right to say, 'Look at where we've come from.' So, I think our earliest recycling figures—in 1999, it was on 5.2 per cent, and we're now at 64 per cent in Wales. That has come, not from generating headlines, but from hard work and a sustained strategic approach to driving that change, and it's driving that cultural change too. We know that a lot of people now take it as the norm to separate and do their recycling and have separate waste collection.
In terms of your second question, in terms of the education, that's such a huge part of it, and one of the most enjoyable things I've found in this portfolio so far is doing the eco-schools work. The children, they are so well informed. I went to one school, and they all explained to me what a global citizen was, and global responsibility. They will tell you why they need to do this recycling and up it to the next level. I did ask them if they wanted to come and do my questions for me, perhaps, and stand in. But they're also—. What you see, it's not actually within the school; it's going outside of that, because they take what they've learnt and they use that pester power, and they'll tell their parents and their grandparents and their relatives, 'Why aren't you doing that? You need to do that'. And they can tell them, 'This is about me in the future; I want my environment to be in a good state for me when I'm your age as well'. So, I think, really, the education things and the fun things you talked about like that—. We just recently did a—it was a campaign on what will Wales look like in 2050, and we had some great contributions from primary schools across Wales coming back about what they thought Wales could look like, and what we needed to do to stop it getting that way in 2050 to make sure that we still had a brilliant country for us all to enjoy.
You're absolutely right. As well as this being an environmental issue, and having environmental reasoning and a positive impact from us making these changes, there are huge economic benefits for us as well. That's why it's important in terms of the role the circular economy can play. And at the same time as we're looking at the measures to tackle single-use plastic waste, we also as the Welsh Government are committed to looking at actually how we drive the inward investment to here, to make sure that we can actually do more of the reuse and recycle within Wales. So, at the same time, actually playing our part in terms of the recycling model and the circular economy, but also at the same time creating multiple jobs as a consequence of that.