Any initiative that reduces our carbon footprint is, of course, welcome, but, yet again, we are seeing a proposal that is wrongly blaming the consumer over the manufacturer. I would like to see a proposal that puts the emphasis on those who can actually prevent the production of waste in the first place, and that can only be done by those who are making and selling the products—coincidentally, those who make a lot of money out of the Welsh consumer. It is always better to preserve the use of energy than to try to militate against it, and a reduction in waste is much more preferable to recycling, which often uses a lot of energy itself. Often, the greenhouse gases caused by the process of recycling are forgotten, as people consider recycling as environmentally friendly. It's as if we consider recycled material as being carbon neutral, whereas it clearly isn't.

Manufacturers make great play of their recyclable packaging, hoping the consumer will ignore the fact that it would be much better for the environment had the packaging never been made in the first place. A reduction in packaging would not just save on the original production, but would also mean more of the product could be transported at once, and a reduction in the need for transporting waste to recycling plants. Manufacturers and retailers have been given a free pass on this issue, as the cost of disposal and recycling has always been passed on to the consumer. The consumer has no meaningful choice of a lower-packaged option at the shelves, so it is vital that much more is done to force manufacturers to lower their use of packaging. So far, all the initiatives have protected big business and hammered the consumer. I would like to see this reversed. Let's stand up for the consumer, who, after all, has to pay for a bag to carry the packaging in and council tax to get rid of it, and make sure those who are in a position to do something about it, i.e. the manufacturer and retailer, actually do something.

An example of the wrong impression that can be given is over the carrier bag charge. It is disingenuous to use the figures that are bandied about on the reduction of bag use, because it does not necessarily reflect a comparable drop in the amount of plastic used. The 5p bags from some retailers have significantly more plastic in them than the old single-use bags. So, the reduction in the number of bags used does not necessarily reflect a corresponding reduction in plastic disposed of, and all of those bags for life, which have a lot more plastic in them as well, will have to be disposed of at some point in the future anyway. Let's set a meaningful target that relates specifically to the carbon footprint.

The motion also ignores some other major factors creating waste and greenhouse gases. Estimates suggest that discarded food produces more than 21 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year. The amount wasted of just one food product, chicken, equates to greenhouse gases equalling those produced by 290,000 cars a year, yet we are doing next to nothing to tackle this issue. The amount of food that households in Wales throw in the bin is less than the rest of the UK, and that's very good, but in 2015, households in Wales threw away £13 billion-worth and over 300,000 tonnes of food. Think about what the food banks would have done with all that food if it had been donated to them on the way out of the supermarket instead of sitting in a fridge and then being put in the bin because it's out of date. It's a waste of food, of the energy and resources that went into producing it, and, in the case of meat, a huge waste of life. Where is the Welsh Government's policy on this?

The proposals outlined in the motion are fine in themselves but are simply not enough and seem to be more about targets Welsh Government can use to boast, rather than boost our tackling of greenhouse gases. Aiming to be the best country in the world for recycling is a target that essentially means nothing. It would be possible to be the best country in the world for recycling and have the worst carbon footprint at the same time. If the Welsh Government go down this route in an attempt to look like the king or queen of recycling, the risk is that we will instead end up as the emperor of the environment wearing some rather questionable clothes. Thank you.