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.