Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:15 pm on 24 September 2019.
I very much welcome the report because of the ambition it demonstrates, because it isn’t sufficient for us to just be third best in the world. We do need to move to a position of zero waste Wales. As we've seen in the last few days, young people going on strike—they are demanding that we do something serious to save the world from the climate emergency. So, we have to ensure that all our citizens are contributing to our ultimate goal of zero waste Wales, and that must include businesses as well as people at home.
I wondered if you would congratulate St Teilo’s secondary school in Cardiff, which has abolished all food-on-the-go offers, and, instead of plastic waste, paper waste—you know, wrapping up things for people to run off with—all students have a choice of nutritionally balanced meals, but they have to eat them sitting down, with a plate and a knife and fork, which, obviously, is reused. I wonder if we—. Wouldn’t it be nice if all secondary school caterers were following St Teilo’s example? Because the tendency towards the junk food provision is really deplorable on many fronts, but particularly, in terms of today’s debate, in terms of the amount of rubbish that gets used as a result.
Last Friday, I was out with Pentwyn litter pickers, who are a fantastic group of volunteers in my constituency, who are cleaning up our woods and streets of litter dumped by, I’m afraid, other residents. One of the challenges is crisp wrappers; I saw one of them in the dining room just now. And they are a serious problem, because, to my knowledge, they can’t be recycled. Is there any consideration to put a tax on crisp wrappers, because they are absolutely everywhere on the streets, and why is the polluter not paying to clean them up? Equally, it would be very good to know, Deputy Minister, what the timescale is for the deposit scheme on bottles and cans, because it is essential that we do do this doorstep recycling, because otherwise it contaminates all the other recyclables.
I remember, when the environment Bill was going through the committee I used to serve on, that we had a detailed look at the obligations—we were going to ensure that businesses as well as residents were taking part in the recycling business, because it’s completely unacceptable for businesses to be flushing food waste down the drain, as I have seen when inspecting schools, as it is to flush chicken excrement into the waste water system, because, obviously, it contaminates; that makes the job of Dŵr Cymru that much more difficult. Both of these things can be reused. We don't need to—. Because, obviously, any animal excrement is a really useful use of nitrogen for enriching our land. And food waste—I heard some experts in Brighton this week talking about using food waste: instead of burning it in anaerobic digesters, that we should be thinking of using food waste to give to animals as an alternative to importing soya and corn from the Amazon and other places, which is a particularly harmful climate activity. So, I appreciate there are delicate matters to consider in this, but I wondered what thought the Government is giving to recycling food waste for consumption by farm animals—as always happened in the past—instead of burning it.