Written Statement (Wales): Welsh Government action against litter and fly-tipping - Jul 18

Huw Irranca-Davies MS, Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs: Our ambition is for a litter and fly-tipping free Wales, and we can achieve this with everyone playing their part. Litter and fly-tipping can harm our wildlife, damage our natural environment and blight our communities. It also reduces the number of valuable materials that could be recycled and reused. 

Our continued success with household recycling rates, including becoming the second-best recycling nation in the world, has demonstrated our ability to make positive environmental behaviour the norm. We must build on this momentum. We will continue to build on our strong working relationships with businesses, local authorities, town and community councils, environmental groups and regulators to promote actions which prevent litter and fly-tipping from occurring in the first place. 

We established five areas to focus our actions to help achieve our vision. These are reducing waste, enforcement, education and changing behaviour, evidence and monitoring and operational support. To help deliver these we have continued to provide funding to Natural Resources Wales for the Fly-tipping Action Wales (FtAW) programme (£1.2m between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2025) and Keep Wales Tidy (KWT) (over £1.4m since 1 April 2023). Both organisations have enabled us to have a direct connection with local authorities, businesses and communities across Wales, helping to deliver projects on the ground to improve the quality of local environments and raise awareness of the impacts of this type of antisocial behaviour.       

In relation to waste reduction, we have taken important steps to shift market and consumer behaviour away from environmentally damaging products. The Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Act 2023 has meant we have reduced the amount of unnecessary single-use plastic products being littered and polluting our rivers and seas. With our proposed ban on wet wipes containing plastic means we will further reduce the amount of microplastics entering our waterways and the proposed ban on single use vapes will address the recent alarming rise in vaping litter. Further consideration will be given to banning other single-use plastic products, for example sauce sachets, should evidence support such actions. 

Allied to this we are introducing an ambitious new packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme which will require packaging producers to pay for the management of their packaging when it is littered and support litter prevention campaigns. By moving the end-of-life management costs from the taxpayer to the packaging producers we will incentivise producers to minimise this cost through the redesign or avoidance of packaging materials, thereby reducing the amount of unnecessary packaging placed on the market and the likelihood of packaging being littered. 

To address the unsightly impact of chewing gum litter, the Welsh Government is part of the UK wide Chewing Gum Task Force, a scheme which brings together some of the UK's major chewing gum producers. As the scheme enters its third year, Welsh local authorities have benefited from £350,000 in funding which has been used to provide funding to the removal of chewing gum litter from UK high streets and supported initiatives to prevent future littering.

We will also be rolling out a nation-wide Deposit Return Scheme for beverage containers which, when introduced, will help drive recycling rates even higher and prevent these products ending up as litter in our environment. As a form of EPR, we want businesses to take responsibility for the end-of-life management of these products. 

During this financial year we will explore with KWT the establishment of a voluntary code of practice for the fast food and takeaway sector, seeking to address the ongoing issues associated with the littering of “on-the-go" food products.

Through introduction of legislation and our support of FtAW, we have strengthened local authorities' and NRW's enforcement capabilities to deal with fly-tipping. 

We have funded two FtAW enforcement officers who directly support local authorities with fly-tipping incidents. Our funding has enabled FtAW to offer local authorities' free access to legal advice from specialist environmental lawyers and provide additional training and guidance. The FtAW team has also been instrumental in helping local authorities in tackling some of the most notorious fly-tipping hotspots in Wales. This has been achieved by coordinating partner interventions, providing technical support and assisting with successful enforcement actions.

Going forward we will continue to bring together local authority partners to develop new methods for sharing intelligence relating to fly-tippers who operate across geographical boundaries. This will support more effective enforcement action against these criminals.

Raising awareness and changing people's behaviour is a key driver in helping combat poor local environmental quality issues. I believe the best way to achieve this is by developing an integrated, national approach to campaigns and messaging. Through our funding of FtAW and KWT we have delivered several successful campaigns including the award winning “It's your Duty to Care” which raises awareness of the risk of passing your waste to unregistered waste carriers and, “Not Up Our Street”, a campaign which focused on students, landlords and housing associations. Other campaignshave focused on chewing gum litter, littering from vehicles and encouraging responsible dog ownership to address dog fouling. Through education programmes such as Eco-schools and the establishment of “Litter Free Zones” around school grounds in Wales, we continue to encourage children and young people to take pride in their local communities. The lessons learnt from these campaigns will be used shape future targeted messaging.

It is essential to have a good understanding of the scale and nature of the litter and fly-tipping situation in Wales. Therefore, we will continue to work with partners to enhance and utilise the data we collect. 

Through FtAW we are spatially mapping fly-tipping incidents in Wales and have developed guidance to support local authorities with their reporting requirements. 

Littering trends are monitored through annual street cleanliness surveysundertaken by KWT and local authorities. Current reporting shows littering levels have been relatively stable recently, however this often does not reflect public perceptions and these surveys can only present part of the picture. To help address this, we are working with KWT to consider a new monitoring system which would extend the current recording of litter beyond our streets to cover a broader range of environments, for example urban and rural greenspaces. This could then be used to gather more detailed evidence on littering and help inform future policy interventions.  

Finally, we continue to empower our communities to take direct action in preventing and removing unwanted waste. 

I am continually humbled by the passion and dedication shown by the army of volunteers across Wales who seek to protect and improve our beautiful landscapes. Between January and March this year KWT recorded over 2000 clean-ups and nearly 9000 hours of volunteer time from their Litter Champions and supported local groups. To allow this to happen, our funding has helped establish a network of over 200 Litter Picking Hubs, community focal points which provides everyone with the opportunity to easily access and use litter picking equipment across Wales. Through our continued funding of these activities, we continue to help bring people together and strengthen the connection between communities and their local environment. 

By providing cleaner, more accessible green and blue spaces it will encourage more people to enjoy and protect the natural beauty Wales has to offer. I want to ensure our activities across all levels of government and business, allow people to take responsibility in ensuring we become a cleaner and exemplar nation.