Thank you, Llywydd. In February 2019, we as a Youth Parliament chose littering and plastic waste as one of our priority issues. As Members, we have been having conversations within our constituents, with our partner organisations, at eisteddfodau and at our residential and regional meetings to try to understand the views of young people on the problem. Unfortunately, COVID pushed everything online, and so we gathered all of our data and drew up our report during the pandemic. In spite of this, we persevered with virtual events such as Youth Parliament Week, and the National Eisteddfod helped us to ensure that the voices of young people were heard.

In November 2020, we published our report as a committee, and it contained 10 recommendations. We called for a greater emphasis on educating young people across Wales and the negative impacts of littering and plastic waste, and how young people could help address these issues. We believe that local authorities should review their procurement processes in order to ensure that the criteria used to choose suppliers reflect environmental and well-being objectives. This includes schools, in order to ensure that educational institutions can support the work of achieving sustainability targets. The ultimate goal is to reduce as much single-use plastic waste as possible. We also call on the Welsh Government to take significant and urgent steps to halt the production of single-use plastics, with some crucial exceptions, and to consider approaches such as banning the production of single-use plastics and a deposit-return scheme.

I would like to thank the Minister for environment for her response to our recommendations. This shows young people across Wales that our voices really are being taken seriously. However, the plastic problem is clearly not solved. Therefore, we need to drive forward the agenda and ensure that it is a major issue for the next Senedd. It would also be great to see a plastic-free Senedd—something that would again emphasise the importance of our work and set an example for other institutions to follow. We are calling for decisive and urgent action within the next six to 12 months.

Finally, we'd also like to call on the next Youth Parliament to continue to call for changes in line with our recommendations. We have only served a two-year term, but in that time, we have ensured that the voices of young people are being heard and that the plastic problem is being taken seriously. Our only hope now is that you will all continue to address this problem and keep our work alive. Thank you.