Diolch, Llywydd. Wales is in a great position to lead globally on significantly reducing single-use plastic waste, using the best international practice, evidence and research, using our new powers over taxes and levies to drive behavioural change, and by bringing forward a cross-Government action plan with a comprehensive suite of measures, targets and milestones. We can stop the rising plastic tide and we must, because it is increasingly seeming more like a tsunami than a tide.

Around 40 per cent of plastic is used in packaging in the UK, and the UK generates around 2.4 million tonnes per year of packaging waste, of which around 1.7 million tonnes is from households. Over 90 per cent of plastics are derived from fossil fuels, so they account for 6 per cent of global oil consumption, equivalent to the aviation industry. According to a 2016 report, around 237 million coffee cups and 183 million coffee-cup lids are consumed annually in Wales, representing 2,600 tonnes of coffee cups and 550 tonnes of lids. It's estimated that only 0.25 per cent are recycled. And, shockingly, 72 per cent of plastic packaging is reported to be leaked into the environment or sent to landfill worldwide.

We know that macroplastics are polluting our rivers and soil, our beaches and seas, from surface waters to deep ocean trenches, and microplastics are contaminating our pristine arctic ice and snow in the high Pyrenees, remote lakes in Mongolia and the Great Lakes of North America, floodplain soils in Switzerland, the sands of the Sahara, and the very groundwater and rainwater that feeds our crops and gives us water to drink. Having wrapped our food and everything else in plastic, this wonder material of twentieth-century science, we're now wrapping the planet in plastic too. And microplastics have been found in mussels, in fish, in chickens and even in honey—in honey. With the notable exception of vegans, this carries a whole new twist on 'You are what you eat.' 

Plastics are so useful in so many ways, yet in our throwaway culture single-use plastics are now destroying the planet we love, and are trashing the environment we see around us and the microenvironment we can't see so easily. So, let's look at some of the ways in which legislation can help turn the tide on plastics.

Complete bans on single-use plastics like carrier bags, done in Bangladesh and in Canada, have worked; plastic straws have been banned in some US states, and cutlery banned in France have proven the easiest way to make a dramatic effect. In Wales, we should actually take a broader approach, and we should include cotton bud sticks and cutlery, beverage stirrers and straws, plates, sticks for balloons, expanded polystyrene food containers, beverage containers and cups, wet wipes, plastic sauce sachets, and we should consider now phasing out all single-use carrier bags totally.

We should act on the significant confusion over the recyclability of materials in Wales, despite our great success in improving recycling rates, and find ways such as Ellie's Fund to raise awareness of how to recycle more difficult materials like pens, crisp packets, toothbrushes and cleaning bottle tops. Introducing a 'made in Wales, recycled in Wales' trademark and logo would drive reuse and recycling within Wales, as would proposals to require businesses to remove and recycle the plastics in delivered items, from food packaging to washing machines, or hay bales wrapped in plastics, as we saw earlier on today.

Funding initiatives to promote the switch to reusable sanitary items could help engage with schools and GPs and prenatal support centres. Considering mandating water fountains in public spaces could bolster Wales's ambition to be a water refill nation. And, let me say, financial mechanisms work. Introducing a 5p paper cup levy led to a 156 per cent increase in the use of reusable cups in just six weeks in Starbucks in London. It works. Evidence shows the greater the plastics levy, the greater the impact. In Wales, we could extend this to harmful products that fall outside the extended producer responsibility and market restrictions, so plastic clothing and balloons, chewing gum, single-use pens, protected postal packaging and wet wipes. Deposit-return schemes are globally proven to increase recycling rates, reduce contamination and simplify materials' use. Whilst the UK mulls over this, a deposit-return scheme centrally administered here in Wales could create jobs, spur market demand, and ensure the benefits of such a scheme are kept in Wales, and we should, in doing this aim, ensure that all containers of all sizes are within these DRS measures.

We could introduce a carefully targeted single-use plastics tax based on the proportion of recycled material in the product and with penalties for virgin plastic use. We could offer as well tax incentives, such as temporary tax relief or reductions for support of sustainable procurement and bulk purchasing in business improvement districts for zero-waste towns, or for other organisations pursuing zero-waste status, such as schools and hospitals, or even individual zero-waste retailers and businesses and reuse and repair initiatives. And we should bring forward an action plan on single-use plastic reduction, addressing different sectors appropriately, much like, I have to say, the current Welsh Government decarbonisation plan, focusing on key areas like social care and farming, tourism and construction. In tourism, for example, Presiding Officer, a zero-waste Wales could be our destination offer to the world, not just an ambitious waste policy. On procurement, we could develop revised and strengthened guidelines to promote sustainable procurement through our anchor institutions, like health boards, education authorities, housing and social care services, and get rid of anomalies like plastic milk cartons being used in schools. We could introduce a requirement for all publicly funded events, programmes and projects to ban single-use plastics, and go further to ensure that all events, including food festivals and sporting events, should commit to a ban on single-use plastics as part of their permitting requirements. And in respect of targets and milestones, we can go further than the single-use plastic directive and introduce in Wales a measurement of how this affects carbon emission reductions and analysis of litter data and waste composition.

Now, these are just some opening thoughts on what this legislation could do. I look forward to hearing from fellow Assembly Members and the Minister too, before I conclude what I'm sure will be a very constructive debate on how to stop the plastic tide.