3. What is the Welsh Government’s strategy for eliminating plastic pollution? OAQ53635

I thank the Member for the question. The Welsh Government's strategy is to deploy all the actions available to us in order to help eliminate plastic pollution; legislation, education, grant funding, infrastructure investment and fiscal measures are all strands in that strategic approach. 

First Minister, I'm sure you agree with me that the 2.3 million tonnes of plastic pollution from packaging that is being generated across the UK at the moment is a major public health and environmental issue. We have recently learned that plastic pollution is a very efficient transmitter of E. coli and other waterborne diseases, which would die if they were simply relying on water as a transporter. In addition to that, we know that plastic particles are ending up in a lot of the food that we currently eat. So, in light of these very serious public health and environmental issues, what action can the Welsh Government take, as a matter of urgency, both to ensure that we get a deposit-return scheme introduced across Wales as soon as possible, and to ensure that extended producer responsibility is in place properly in Wales?  

Well, I want to thank Jenny Rathbone for that very important supplementary question. She is right to point to the renewed concerns that there are about pre-production plastic pellets as a source of microplastic pollution. This issue was discussed at the recent British-Irish Council meeting in Glasgow, where Ministers from across the United Kingdom came together to identify actions that can be taken to respond to that emerging concern.

The Member is also absolutely right to point to the importance of extended producer responsibility. Currently in the United Kingdom, it's estimated that producers pay approximately 10 per cent of the overall cost of recycling their packaging waste, and that simply cannot be right. We have to do more to bring the actions of producers into line with the polluter-pays responsibility. That's why we are consulting jointly with the UK and Scottish Governments on proposals to introduce extended producer responsibility for packaging on a UK-wide basis.

My colleague the Deputy Minister Hannah Blythyn has arranged a briefing session for all Assembly Members on the 28th of this month, which will deal both with EPR and with deposit-return scheme proposals. I'm quite certain that the Member will be attending, and I hope that many other Members here will be able to be at that meeting as well.

First Minister, we can see plastics all around us. Just go out into the bay area and you can see plastic bottles floating in the corners of the bay. Despite much of the rhetoric in this institution and beyond, sadly, plastic pollution is a huge issue that we singularly seem to be failing at combating in any meaningful way at the moment.

We just had the cross-party group on forestry, over lunch time, resurrected recently. They highlighted the role that forestry can play in bringing alternative products forward instead of plastics, such as straws, for example. It is critical that the Welsh Government gets its act together on its targets for replantation, especially on the NRW estate. They are 6,000 hectares behind on their schedule. Can you commit the Welsh Government to redoubling its efforts in the forestry sector, so that those alternatives can be developed here in Wales, and the alternatives can then be offered to the public at large, so that they can reduce their plastic consumption? Because without those alternatives, we'll continue to be blighted by plastic pollution.

I thank the Member for that question. I entirely agree with him that we have to make far greater efforts right across the range of actions that Governments can take, that industry can take, and that individuals as well are able to take in our own lives to reduce the use of plastic products. And alternative products to plastic are certainly a very important part of that whole effort. The Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs only last week opened the new Frugalpac manufacturing facility in Wrexham, and that is a facility that produces fully recyclable coffee cups. And just as we see plastic bottles floating around, so we see far too many disposable cups that are left by people where they happen to end up using them.

On forestry, I agree with the Member: of course that has a part to play in creating alternative products that will allow us all to do more—more in our own lives, as well as the way we act together—in order to reduce the use of plastics, the generation of plastic pollution, and the harm that that does in our environment.