2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:38 pm on 23 October 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:38, 23 October 2018

Well, to start off with, of course, I'm very happy to congratulate the performance that Jenny Rathbone highlighted. I'm very proud of what the Welsh people have done in commemoration of the sacrifice and bravery of many of our people during the first world war, and I'm very pleased to be able to add my voice to that, I thought, very powerful example of the effect of the death of so many young men and the loss of them to our culture and society. 

In terms of the plastic issues that she mentions, the Environment Agency is indeed, as she says, investigating the UK plastics recycling industry for possible fraud and abuse, following criticism last year, as she said, by the National Audit Office of PERNs, which is plastic export recovery notes, which are used by producers to show they're contributing to recycling plastic packaging waste. The export trade is at a UK level.

Here in Wales, NRW do not have any current investigations into plastic packaging waste exporters, because there are three exporters in Wales that have all been inspected and audited in 2018, and NRW do not have any specific concerns or suspicion of fraud in relation to those exporters. The EA investigations are all focused on exporters based in England. Any UK-wide investigation would be carried out jointly between the two agencies, but, as I say, that's not happening at the moment. Any other Welsh waste going overseas will be included in the overall figures for materials exported from the UK, and the regulation of the transshipment of waste is not devolved to Wales. So, that's a UK Government-level matter. The Environment Agency, as I said, is leading that investigation. 

Apart from fraud, as she points out, it's clearly a very bad thing if waste is being exported from the UK and not treated properly overseas so it leaks into rivers and the sea. The answer is to have good infrastructure at home to treat the materials we collect and collect the materials in the best way that guarantees high, clean-quality materials that can be recycled and fed back into a circular economy.

The Welsh Government has very much set out its preference for source-separated collections and materials at the kerbside in its collections blueprint for this very reason. As Lesley Griffiths has said on a number of occasions in this Senedd, we are very proud of our records on recycling here in Wales.