Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:31 pm on 3 March 2020.
I thank the Member for those supplementary questions. Llywydd, can I begin by paying tribute to the efforts of Caerphilly County Borough Council, as other local authorities in Wales, in responding to the impact of flooding on their local residents? I'm aware of the point that local authorities have raised—those many local authorities that have provided immediate relief to householders, providing skips free of charge, without the need for permits and so on, and the anxiety that that may have an impact on their recycling rates. I want to give those local authorities an assurance this afternoon that they will not be penalised for having done the right thing; that where costs have been involved, they will be able to reclaim those costs from the Welsh Government, through the emergency financial assistance scheme, and, reputationally, where local authorities are anxious that it will look as though their recycling rates have fallen, we are working with NRW to be able to record the impact of flood-affected waste in a different way, so that that reputational damage can be mitigated.
As to the action that we can take through the circular economy, Llywydd, there are a series of actions in the plan that is currently being consulted upon. My colleague Hannah Blythyn, right across Wales, is carrying out meetings with members of the public and organisations with an interest in this. Here are just three ways in which we will assist the residents of Islwyn in the efforts they already make to maximise recycling: we're going to provide new infrastructure, so that material that currently can't be recycled will be able to be recycled in the future; we're going to put a new focus on the recycling of electrical and electronic equipment, which currently can be difficult to collect and difficult to recycle—the circular economy plan puts a new emphasis on that; and we are going to make sure that businesses in Wales are treated in the same way as householders are, so that commercial, industrial and construction waste separated by those businesses can be recycled in the way that household waste can be recycled, and further boost the reputation that Wales already has as the leading recycle nation in the United Kingdom, the second in Europe, and third across the whole world.