2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:38 pm on 12 June 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:38, 12 June 2018

Yes, and I think the Member makes a very good point, and it's a point that all of us who walk the shoreline would want to reinforce. We've all been written to, I'm sure, by several schools in our own constituencies and regions asking us what on earth we're doing to reduce this and giving specific examples. Certainly, schools in my constituency have written to me asking what we're doing. We have got Value Wales and the National Procurement Service working closely with the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales's office and WRAP to develop and deliver several pilots in conjunction with local authorities and partners across Wales to demonstrate new approaches in procurement that fully embrace the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and one of those pilots covers the plastic straws issue. Officials are looking to see what we can do to develop a range of measures to identify trends and implement actions to reduce or eliminate the use of plastics, including food packaging and straws, in our contracts in the future. We're also consulting on those measures with suppliers in June—just right now, June 2018—and will monitor the outcomes as part of the formal contract management of those suppliers moving forward.

We've got a range of other things that we're looking into, and one of the pilots, for example—the Llywydd will be particularly interested to know—is with supporting Ceredigion County Council with their collaborative catering disposables framework, which fully embeds the well-being of future generations Act and looks at sustainable alternatives to plastics across the county. So, we're looking at a range of pilots in Joyce Watson's region that she'll be very interested in, and what we're looking to see is how fast we can roll those out across Wales so that we can eliminate the scourge of plastic in our oceans, which I know Members will have seen programmes on the television about—the penetration of microplastics right across the Arctic, in particular, which is horrendous to look at. So, the sooner we act, the better.