We now move to item 6 on our agenda this afternoon, which is the debate on a Member's legislative proposal: waste prevention and recycling, and I call on Jenny Rathbone to move the motion. 

Motion NDM6893 Jenny Rathbone

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1.  Notes a proposal for a Bill on waste prevention and recycling.

2. Notes that the purpose of this Bill would be to:

a) prevent waste through placing recycling requirements on food producers and retailers in respect of packaging and packaging waste; and

b) introduce extended producer responsibilities to ensure that the costs of recycling and waste management are shared equitably, with producers contributing to the financial cost of treatment at the end of their product’s life.

Motion moved.

David Attenborough has galvanised the British public to focus on the amount of plastics ending up in the ocean, imbibed by our sea life and ending up in our stomachs if we eat fish. So I'm glad the UK Government is considering a tax on plastic packaging, targeting those that contain less than 30 per cent recycled material or that are difficult or impossible to recycle, such as plastic straws, black food trays and single-use cups for hot drinks. Whilst these largely unnecessary items, like plastic straws, have attracted publicity, they are the tip of a very large iceberg. Taxing plastic straws or cotton buds out of existence isn't going to solve the scandal of plastics in our oceans. Our aim must be to eliminate waste of all sorts altogether. 

We in Wales can and should be very proud of our success in reusing, recycling or composting nearly two thirds of the 1.5 million tonnes of municipal waste we generate every year, but there's no room for complacency. Four years ago, Wales exported thousands of tonnes of materials overseas for recycling, including 4,000 tonnes of plastics. Much of it went to China, which has now banned much of our material from being imported from the UK, and it's ending up in other countries with even less coherent processes for dealing with it.

The Llywydd took the Chair.

The Environment Agency is now investigating exporters who've made false claims on thousands of tonnes of non-existent plastic waste, and a £50 million industry appears to have been penetrated by criminal gangs. Self-reporting invites fraud and error, and there's clearly inadequate oversight of what's happening to our waste. We simply cannot tolerate our rubbish being dumped on desperate developing countries, who don't have the technology to do anything useful with it. Instead, it's left to leak into rivers and oceans.

So, I would argue that the Welsh Government recycling targets for councils are unsustainable if they are based on fragile export markets. No doubt there's a market for aluminium, at £1,000 a tonne when I last looked at it, but other items are simply difficult to recycle—simply, there isn't a market for them. So, we need to move to a circular recycling system. Relying on recycling is masking unsustainable manufacturing practices, which the council tax payer is having to pick up the bill for. In terms of the three Rs—reduce, reuse and recycle—we need to put much more focus on reducing and reusing materials.

The landfill disposals tax will, I hope, tackle the unnecessary disposal of eminently reusable materials—particularly, the higher rate tax for unauthorised disposals should serve as a financial deterrent to illegal waste activity, which is particularly a feature of the construction industry, because those fly-tippers will be taxed twice over, and so they should be.

Of course, the construction industry is the UK's largest user of natural resources. As almost 90 per cent of construction waste is inert or non-hazardous, it can and should be reused, reclaimed and recycled. I would expect the landfill disposals tax to ensure that that will now happen. But, that, in turn, will make it even more difficult for local authorities to meet their recycling targets by weight, and that is why we need to look at a different strategy.

Legislation is needed to tackle the issue of packaging, particularly plastic packaging, that we generate, which is feeding the 8 million tonnes dumped into the ocean. In the Netherlands, for example, many goods are packaged in a clear plastic-like material that's made of starch and is biodegradable. German companies produce ready meals in biodegradable packages, whilst in Wales we already have universities producing packaging from recyclable material, but manufacturing industries are only using them in niche markets rather than adopting a systematic approach.

In Germany, the Closed Substance Cycle and Waste Management Act 1996, introduced 20 years ago, compels manufacturing companies to design wasteful packaging out of their processes. It has created a vibrant waste industry that is amongst the world leaders, and this is something that I think that we could be doing in Wales too.

We need to embed extended producer responsibility into all these packaging items, so that the manufacturers pay for what is currently being paid for by council tax payers. This extended producer responsibility would focus manufacturers on lifecycle thinking, making them have better access to secondary materials for their own supply chains, and also would have social benefits, like tackling litter, such as cigarette butts and chewing gum, that would save councils millions of pounds every year.

Of course, we do have some models of extended producer responsibility already, which is EU law, in things like electrical and electronic goods, batteries and cars. But, outside of the EU, Japan has taken EPR a lot further. It has extensive laws that cover the lifecycle of products from various industries, and requires manufacturers to use recycled materials and reusable parts in new products.

So, we could use the landfill disposals tax community scheme by providing grants to develop, for example, bottle-deposit schemes. Glass, of course, is 100 per cent recyclable and can be used again and again. That also can be applied to plastics, too, as they have done in Norway, where there's a deposit and return scheme in place that ensures that 97 per cent of all their containers are recycled. 

So, I hope that Members will consider this as an effective form of legislation. 

I have many speakers and this is a half hour debate. Therefore, contributions will be no longer than three minutes, and we'll try and call as many speakers as possible, with the exception of the Minister, of course. David Melding.  

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I commend the Member. I know she has a passionate interest in this area, and is amongst the most authentic and early voices, indeed, in urging better public policy. I completely agree with the basic concepts of the circular economy, and packaging, in particular, is a real challenge, and we need to rethink. I'm old enough to remember when you used to go to the fruit area and just take a bag in, an old Hessian bag, and there was nothing around the fruit and the veg—it was just weighed and piled in. And it does need a different outlook to do that, but it's this slower food movement coming to slower shopping, perhaps.

I also want to commend the Welsh Government in terms of its initiative in the summer on making us a refill nation, just looking at drinking water, where we access water, having more free points where water bottles, preferably non-plastic ones, can be refilled. I want to commend Llantwit Major, which I believe is the first town to adopt this on the coastal path route. Other councils have looked at schemes. I know Penarth Town Council were doing this, and encouraging various shops and cafes to be part of the scheme. What I think there is really interesting is that town and community councils can be in the lead, and that's, I think, very innovative.     

Can I also commend the British Heart Foundation? I recently visited their furniture store in Canton, where they take in donated furniture and clean it up, re-upholster it and make it ready for reuse. I was amazed when I went in there by how professional that service was, how good the products are and how reasonably priced. So, it can meet many social objectives in allowing people access to good-quality furniture at a tenth of the price, often, of what they would pay retail. Obviously, for that charity, they can get some of their core messages across as well. So, I thought that was a very, very innovative model. 

Finally, to come in under three minutes, I believe the Commission took up plastic-free July. I know the Welsh Government has been looking at this as well—how we can eradicate single-use containers, and that's, I think, now at a pace, use of straws, and the like. So, there are many, many little wins that I think we should be making individually, and encouraging wherever we work, whether it's out there in the private sector or other public agencies, to adopt these sorts of policies, and it will add to big shift in our performance in this area. But well done, Jenny. 

Thank you, Llywydd. And may I also welcome this motion from the Member and say that myself and Plaid Cymru will be fully supportive of this? Indeed, Plaid Cymru tabled a similar motion ourselves last year, so it’s no surprise that we will support the principle today. We do need urgent action in order to prevent plastics from further polluting our rivers, seas and environment. It’s important in this context, too, that we remember the principle that the polluter pays.

The polluter pays principle, of course, which means that if you create the waste, then you should be the ones who pay the cost of dealing with its consequences. And in this case, I think it's right that we should introduce extended producer responsibility, and require the companies who are responsible for producing so much of our waste to contribute to the costs of treating that waste. We've all heard from the Marine Conservation Society how, if we don't change things by 2050, we could have more plastic than fish by weight in our seas, which is a very sobering thought. 

Now, there are serious concerns, of course, regarding where our recycled plastic waste goes, and we heard some of that in the opening contributions, so I won't repeat it. But it does remind us, and increasingly show us, that rather than just recycling, we have to prevent the use of plastics, particularly single-use plastics, in the first place. And action should be taken at all levels of Government, with the aim of achieving zero waste.

We believe this should include a levy on single-use plastics to work alongside a deposit-return scheme for bottles and cans, in order to prevent waste from occurring in the first place, and to reward reusing and increasing recycling where that is necessary. The carrier bag levy, of course, was first introduced in Wales, and it shows how a small step can make a big, big difference. And deposit-return schemes have also been found to be very effective. In countries with such schemes in place, of course, we've seen high levels of bottle recycling: over 90 per cent in Norway, Sweden and Finland, and 98.5 per cent in Germany, which are levels at the moment that we in Wales can only dream about. 

As stated in Eunomia's report on options for extended producer responsibility in Wales, if the Westminster decides against implementing a deposit-return scheme or a beverage container tax, the Welsh Government could still bring about a Wales-only deposit-return scheme. The Welsh Government has stated that it intends to work with the UK Government on a Wales-and-England basis on measures to tackle waste, but, of course, we're still waiting to see how far measures from the UK Government will go in this area. Yes, it's welcome news, as we've heard, that there will be a tax on single-use plastics, as announced in the 2018 UK budget, however it's disappointing, as far as I'm concerned, that there won't be a tax on disposable cups, and we await the outcome of their consultation on extended producer responsibility.

If the UK Government isn't ambitious enough in its plans to stop plastic pollution, then the Welsh Government should take the lead, as it did with the carrier bag charge. And I'd like to ask the Minister, therefore, what discussions she's had with the UK Government on this issue recently, and what progress we can expect to see, because if it's clear that the UK Government won't be introducing the radical changes that we need to tackle this problem, then the Welsh Government needs to commit to introducing its own legislation. We need behavioural change at a pace and scale that we haven't previously seen in order to tackle this problem. In Wales, we can and we should go further and faster than the UK Government on this, especially when we have a clear consensus across this Assembly Chamber. And, so, I am pleased to give my full support to this legislative proposal.

I also support the motion. I agree that it is the producers of the packaging that need to be responsible for their part in the creation of the vast amounts of waste that end up in the bin every year. For too long legislatures have been content to burden householders with the responsibility for recycling and waste disposal of packaging, even though they have almost no control over what most of that waste is because they don't choose the packaging they receive.

The EU landfill directive did nothing to reduce the use of packaging, and actually very little to reduce the waste going to landfill. Whilst the fines on councils slowed the rate of rubbish going to UK landfill sites, we all know that much of it was shipped to China, creating huge carbon emissions from the container ships used to carry all that waste across the globe to be dumped in landfill there. When we see images of thousands of plastic bottles in the ocean, we can apportion a fair amount of blame for that to the EU landfill directive. However, that's an argument for another day.

I'm entirely in favour of a system that holds manufacturers responsible for the disposal of the packaging they use, but we seem to be behind the curve on this. This proposal helps us to catch up, but, ideally, we should be ahead of the curve. Just a couple of days ago, Walkers started an initiative that allows and encourages customers to return empty crisp packets to them. And, for a while now, Costa has accepted not just their own used disposable coffee cups back for recycling, but also those of any other coffee outlet. These initiatives have come about to appeal to customers in response to demands from the market. They can't have come from any Government initiative because there haven't been any.

A packaging tax is not the answer in my opinion. Its cost will simply be borne by the consumer. We have to introduce proper legislation to deal with the scandals that see an online retailer send a tiny book in a huge box, or where a toothbrush is sealed by a manufacturer in a huge rectangle of near-bullet-proof plastic that requires a saw to open it.

I would like to see this proposal encompass more than just food packaging, and take the opportunity to address some of the significant concerns about food waste in the environment. For example, nothing is being done in this proposal, or elsewhere, to tackle the food waste that sees 86 million chickens—more than one chicken for every person in the UK—being thrown into landfill every year. That's a shockingly high figure. That contributes as much greenhouse gas emissions as 290,000 cars a year, according to anti-waste charity WRAP. And in coming up with that figure, WRAP took into account the cost of rearing, feeding and transporting the live birds, along with the releases of gases if they're placed in landfill. It's also been estimated that UK households throw away 34,000 tonnes of beef every year—the equivalent of 300 million beef burgers. In fact, the average family throw away £700-worth of food every year. That's an awful lot of waste that isn't addressed by this proposal. And perhaps there's going to be another one in the pipeline, and maybe you'll tell us about it, if so.

Neither does this proposal address the issue of packaging for non-food items. We're probably all familiar with the mountain of polystyrene and cardboard that accompanies a new washing machine or tv, or actually most goods, which has been used by the retailer to ensure safe arrival, but then it's down to the consumer, via their council tax, to deal with it. I hope this proposed Bill will eventually include action to tackle the excess packaging of those non-food items, and also the immoral level of wasted meat. Turning back to the packaging issue—

You do need to bring your comments to a close now.

Just one more line.

Very quickly.

Perhaps an obligation on retailers and manufacturers to take back the packaging they choose to use in their business may focus their minds on whether the packaging that is currently being used is really essential. And that's it—thank you.

You can tell a good Bill proposal, by they way, by the number of people who want to speak. Jenny Rathbone has recognised that local authorities are at the front line when it comes to delivering the success that has been the Welsh Government's recycling policies over the last 10 or so years. But I do need to draw the Chamber's attention to a plant in my constituency, called Bryn Compost, that has had difficulties. I know it's not directly related to packaging, but it had food waste recycling that had in-vessel composting rows that were creating odours for the nearby community. They then moved to an anaerobic digester facility, which reduced the odours, but those things continued to cause great outrage in the community, to the extent that people stopped recycling their food waste, in protest. And I have to say, it was a protest I supported because of the strong odours caused by the problems. But that was a short-term resolution to the problem.

The reason I'm bringing this to the Chamber's attention—we're still working on those problems in that area—is because we need to look at the technology that we use, but also the regulation, and this is what this Bill is about: it's about regulation, and effective regulation, and changing the way you regulate. I think, therefore, if you are putting the onus on the private sector, who create the waste, to deal with the waste, you can only then support that. In order to address those public concerns, two things: you need to get public buy-in, which I think this Bill would achieve, but also you give the power to the public sector to regulate the private sector. That's one of the problems we had in the Bryn Compost situation: the Natural Resources Wales regulator didn't have enough power. And I think, if this Bill is to be successful, you've got to have that regulatory statutory power behind it. But I would like to give it a welcome, and recognise that it does achieve those two things.

Just a few quick points. I really welcome this proposal and congratulate the Member on bringing it forward. I agree, it's very difficult to go much further with recycling—we've got to reduce, reuse, and recycle. I'm very pleased that the Member mentioned the deposit-return scheme issue, as did Llyr Gruffydd. Because I think that it is a bit of a no-brainer, really, that we should bring in a deposit-return scheme. And I'd also like to ask the Minister whether there is anything that she can say to update us in relation to what is going on in working together with England about bringing in a deposit-return scheme. I had some dealings with the Llangattock Litter Pickers, who gave statistics—which I'm sure the Minister and the Member have seen—about the number of plastic drinks bottles, which are easily the biggest component of any litter that is collected. So, that's the one point, that I'm very pleased about the deposit-return scheme, and wondered whether we could have a comment about that.

And then the second point is really—Hefin David referred to it—that we need public buy-in. I do think that there would be public buy-in for this bit of legislation. I know the Minister has visited my constituency, where we launched plastic-free Rhiwbina, along with our MP, Anna McMorrin, and that has spread to different parts of the constituency. And last week I went to Llysfaen Primary School, where they've got an eco committee who have got a whole list of proposals that they would like to bring in, and one of them is about reducing packaging. One of their commitments is to try to ensure that their parents don't buy food that is heavily packaged. So, I think there is that wish and that goodwill there, so I thoroughly support this proposal.

I call on the Minister to contribute—Hannah Blythyn.

Diolch, Llywydd. Can I first thank Jenny Rathbone for bringing forward this proposal and everybody who's contributed to this debate? I think my colleague Hefin David was correct that you can tell the strength of a proposal by the amount of people who want to contribute to it. It's such a shame, on this occasion, that we do only have a short amount of time to discuss it. But I'm sure that this is something that will be revisited in this Chamber in the not-too-distant future. 

You're absolutely right that packaging, particularly plastic packaging, is a really high-profile issue at the moment and one that we know that we need to take action on before it's too late. I welcome the opportunity to have this debate today to take forward people's ideas on how we can tackle that in Wales.

We've been working closely with the UK Government on reforming the producer responsibility regime for packaging—so, extended producer responsibility. We know that currently producers contribute around 10 per cent of the end-of-life packaging costs, which is unjust, unfair and fails to incentivise these producers to use more recycled content or easily reusable packaging that can be reprocessed. As other Members have also pointed out, it also places the cost of the burden of managing our packaging waste onto our local authorities and citizens. So, on this EPR, which we will be consulting on jointly for England and Wales, that will also include modulated fees in it, which would actually help to contribute to local authorities as well, to redress that balance.

I think you've been clear from the outset, as I have, that it's one of the things we see—. Julie Morgan mentioned plastic-free Rhiwbina and we're seeing communities across the country taking action and the onus is on Government to take action too, but also on all of us as businesses, producers, and retailers as well. So, I want to see reform and change to the current regime, ensuring that producers take more responsibility.

Last month, I met with my Scottish Government counterpart to collectively press for that reform, and that the increased revenue generated will properly flow into Wales and other parts of the UK. And I'm obviously happy to update Members in more detail, I'm just conscious of the short amount of time that I've got to speak today, but I'm happy to update Members further on that as we progress. This will obviously enable us to drive further and faster in terms of our recycling.

Alongside this, Julie Morgan and others mentioned deposit-return schemes. We'll also consult on a deposit-return scheme as well for England and Wales, but as you've already said, we're open to doing this as well separately—to consulting Wales. 

I'm keen specifically to making sure that the joint consultation takes into account the specific set-up that we have in Wales. We're the only nation that has statutory targets—so, making sure that that fits into the regime that we already have and complements and builds on that success as well. 

We'll also be consulting on Part 4 of the Environment (Wales) Act 2016. As a Member across the Chamber said, we take responsibility as households now with our recycling, and businesses need to do the same and separate their waste for collection, as we have been doing for years now.

On the basis that there's imminent significant activity in this area, the Welsh Government will be abstaining on this motion today, but the proposals are sound and I think it is an excellent proposal. As environment Minister, I place a strong focus on waste management and on building on the record that we already have on recycling. As the Member said, recycling is just one end and it's actually about looking at reusing, reducing and how we start to tackle things at the start of their life as well as at the end of their life.

David Melding mentioned—I didn't catch the name of the venue in Canton, the reuse place. I've visited a number of reuse places in the last few months and I'm pleased that the Welsh Government have been able to commit funding to support those sorts of initiatives as well, because as you said, not only does it have environmental benefits, but you see the broader social and economic benefits that these initiatives bring. You can find some amazing bargains as well—I actually had a look through the vinyl in the last place I went to while I was there.

We were talking about the circular economy, and the circular economy is key. I want us to be the most circular nation in the world when it comes to our economy, so that we're not only investing in our environment, but investing in the prosperity of our country and our people as well. I think it's one of the things we've been working on long before it became quite a fashionable term, but it has actually now solidified in the areas the Member has suggested as well, and in the work that we're doing in investing with Welsh businesses to help them to try and move to a more sustainable alternative as well. 

Ultimately, we want to see people recycle, we want to see non-necessary packaging reduced to an absolute minimum and make sure that any recyclate is able to be reprocessed and recycled. So, in concluding, I just want to reiterate my welcome for this proposal put forward today, which resonates with the Welsh Government's strategy towards zero waste and our pathway towards a more circular economy in Wales. Diolch yn fawr.

Jenny Rathbone to reply to the debate. 

Well, I'm very pleased that Members from across all four parties have supported this proposal. I didn't look at food specifically, because I think a lot of it is to do with getting the public on side and getting them to eat real food at all. So, I haven't addressed food waste, and I haven't yet worked out a way in which we could apply EPR to food waste, although it's a very interesting area. The 86 million chickens thrown into landfill I'm still reeling from.

We clearly have very large support for the deposit-return scheme and also for extended producer responsibility, and I think we need to move on that quite quickly. In the meantime, whilst we get these deposit-return schemes up and running, I do think that there is a role for Government to ensure that all local authorities are separating their glass from the rest of their recycling, because, at the moment, all the glass is doing is contaminating the recyclables with shards of glass, because, obviously, in the compacting that is what happens.

So, thank you very much indeed for the support and I hope we can move forward on legislation.   

The proposal is to note the motion. Does any Member object? The motion is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.