Plaid Cymru will also support these regulations today. It's important to say, however, that we are of the view that we should go further in terms of controlling plastics of all types—micro and macro. These are regulations, as has been said already, which relate to materials that are washed off the body, used for personal hygiene products, but that leaves a number of other products—sun cream, for example—where one could still include these microbeads. It's estimated that between 4,000 and 7,500 tonnes of these microplastics are used every annum in the European Union. So, it is a task to get to grips with this plastic. It will start with regulations such as these, but, in my view, it will have to include a broader ban on microplastics, including those in domestic cleaning products, and so on. We are still calling for a levy on single-use plastics, and of course the possibility of a deposit-return scheme is something that should be welcomed, too.

Yesterday, I visited another shop—there are a number of plastic-free shops developing across Wales, which shows that the public is ahead of the politicians, because if businesses are pursuing customers, then, clearly, people are interested in this area. This shop, La Vida Verde in Llandrindod Wells, has the old pop bottles with a 30p deposit on them. So, you’ll get 30p back when you take your bottle back, which isn’t enough inflation, in my opinion. I think it was 5p when I was going through the gullies for the pop bottles many years ago. But it does demonstrate that people are ready for this change.

It’s also true to say that although we have good recycling rates in Wales, only 44 per cent of the 35 million plastic bottles that are bought every day—that’s every day, which is almost a plastic bottle for every adult—only 44 per cent of those are recycled, and a deposit-return scheme could be used to increase that to almost 80 per cent in that area. So, we look forward to hearing more about the discussions happening between the Government here and the Government in Westminster in terms of introducing a scheme of that kind.

David Melding mentioned the research at Cardiff University on these microplastics in the environment, which is staggering research, if truth be told. I just want to quote from that. We heard from Professor Steve Ormerod about research on the Irwell river in Manchester, where 0.5 million pieces of microplastic were found for every square metre—that's 0.5 million per square metre. Further research at Cardiff in the river Taff shows that microplastics are entering the food chain and are being found in birds that have been laid by eggs—or rather eggs laid by birds, I should say.