I'm very pleased to support Huw Irranca's initiative, because we really can't go on eating plastic and breathing in plastic particles in the air we breathe. We cannot stand by and do nothing to prevent the plastic mountains we are creating from increasing further, according to the briefing we had from the various charities that are supporting this initiative, because of our failure to find more sustainable alternatives for everyday low-tech items, when there are so many other alternative materials we can be using.

We can be proud of our recycling record in Wales, being third in the world, but we need to do more—we cannot stand by and see our oceans being poisoned. In the Public Accounts Committee on Monday, we were looking at our performance on municipal recycling and two things we heard stick in my mind. One is that the corn starch bags for food recycling that are handed out for free by many local authorities, but charged for by others, were, in fact, clogging up the machinery used to process food waste, and that many local authorities were now going to be reverting to asking people to put them into plastic bags instead, which they were then going to extract at the recycling plant. Now, that seems absolute madness to me. What's wrong with a bit of newspaper to wrap up your chips or your food waste? That seems to me a much better way of lining the food caddy, and I don't understand why local authorities aren't moving straight to that much more sustainable and less harmful material.

Secondly, we heard that the recycling of rubbish on the go at major public events like sporting events was really in its infancy—that people hadn't really got the idea that just because you've got a bottle in your hand, you can either just chuck it on the floor or that you put it in the residual waste bin. It was great to see at the Eisteddfod that there were separate bins provided so that people could put it into the plastic, the paper or the residual waste, but it does need quite a lot of supervision.

So, just want to applaud the people who organised the Cardiff Half Marathon that was held earlier this month, because they're put a great amount of effort into ensuring that when we do have these large events—and obviously, a marathon doesn't just involve operating in one field, but over quite an extensive area—they really thought about the sorts of things they needed to do. For a start, they were employing a cleansing team to work at the event with participants, to ensure that waste wasn't contaminated, preventing it from then being recycled; putting food into the hard material recyclable waste is an absolute no-no; and they also worked with their water partner, Brecon Carreg, to offer smaller water bottles made of recyclable plastic, to enable people to understand the importance of recycling and sustainability. They have—