We’re a bit like the Real Madrid of Europe”, the new Welsh Minister for Natural Resources, Carl Sargeant, tells me, referencing his country’s (nearly) world-beating recycling performance. “Certainly, UK-wise we should be incredibly proud of what we do in Wales.” And the boast is well earned: to date, Wales is the only country in the UK that has surpassed the 50 per cent recycling mark, achieving 54.3 per cent recycling in 2013/14 and now pushing on towards 60, with figures indicating a rate of 58 per cent in the first quarter of this year. The achievements mean Wales sits fourth in the overall European table.

To extend the football analogy a bit further (bear with me), Carl Sargeant is like the new-in-post manager, having taken over the wide-ranging Natural Resources portfolio in September from caretaker manager John Griffiths, who in turn took the helm following the sacking of Alun Davies. Throughout the recent changes at the ministerial level, the country’s performance has remained impressive, and Sargeant has spent some of his early days meeting with his team – the 22 local authorities whose combined efforts to meet the challenging targets will determine the country’s overall performance.

And it’s clear that this gaffer will listen to his players, while keeping overarching strategy in mind and pushing his team in the right direction: “I’ve met some of the authorities that are challenged by some of these targets, and they say to me, you know, ‘Give us a little bit more space and we’ll get another one per cent that we need, we’ll get there.’ That’s an interesting discussion, but I’m saying we shouldn’t be having that actually, we should be thinking about how you’re going to get to 10 per cent more rather than the one per cent – just creeping over the edge isn’t going to be helpful for next year or the year after. So, let’s start thinking about the big leap we’ve got to make, have the honest conversation and figure out the timeline from those discussions. I think it is a bit about leadership, that’s why we’ve been successful, they’ve delivered – it’s a partnership approach, and that’s what I’ll continue.”

Sargeant, who joined the Welsh Assembly in 2003, after cutting his teeth in local politics, has previously held the Local Government and Transport brief and was most recently in charge of Housing and Regeneration. His background suits him well for his new role, he feels, as he got into politics partly from challenging his local council on litter and to improve the general conditions of a local park for his daughter. He also worked for a chemical company in the local area and trained as a quality and environmental auditor and an industrial firefighter during his time in industry, something he says was imbued with “responsibilities to look at not just site safety but actually the bigger impact in terms of the environment”.

And now in his new role, he’ll have plenty of opportunities to make an impact on the environment and protecting Wales’s plentiful natural resources. In the realm of recycling, with the aim of delivering ever more unprecedented achievements – reaching 70 per cent recycling by 2025 and becoming a ‘zero waste nation’ by 2050 – Wales is taking a slightly more prescriptive approach than other UK countries, and in March 2011 released its Collections Blueprint, which specifies a clear preference for kerbside sort over co-mingling. Sargeant seems keen to stress that ‘one size does not fit all’, and notes that there are “differences between urban and rural authorities and how they operate”, but notes that “that’s not beyond the wit of man” to overcome.

To date, though, some of the co-mingling authorities are performing as well or better than those that source separate, with the latest figures showing Denbighshire achieving an impressive 71 per cent through its co-mingled collections. “I accept this”, the man in charge of overarching policy tells me, “that [some authorities] are running a slightly different line in terms of the way they co-mingle, and they’re still achieving. The interesting point will come when they start to struggle either financially or on target issues… there will be a time when, I believe (because we’ve evidenced this), they will probably have to start coming into line. So, while people are delivering, I can’t ask for more than that. I hope they can continue to achieve, but if they can’t, then perhaps one of the reasons is because they’re not following the blueprint, and the transition period will be about that honest discussion. I accept that getting from one place to another is challenging under the difficult financial settlement they find themselves in as well.”

Looking at it from a householder’s point of view, Sargeant, who grew up on a council estate in Flintshire and still lives in the area, has personally gone through the transition from someone who could bung everything in one bin to someone who, along with everyone else in the community, takes more responsibility for his waste: Flintshire’s specification is now largely source-separated, with glass kept separate in a blue box, paper and card in blue sacks, plastic and metals in white sacks, and a separate food waste collection. “It didn’t come without pain”, the minister admits, noting how important ease of use is. He adds, though, that the move to source separation was the “game changer” that has allowed so many Welsh local authorities to reach such high recycling standards.

Key to future improvement, Sargeant insists, will be community engagement through simple messaging that really explains the reasons why resource protection – through recycling and other measures – is so important. Engaging with people in general, and getting children on board early, he says, will be vital: “I think young people, children, are fantastic at this, and I remember, again from my own personal experience, about my daughter coming to me on a Sunday morning. There were some tins of beer and plastic rings that hold the cans of beer together, and my daughter came in and she cut them all into pieces. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and she said, ‘If that goes into the sea that will kill a dolphin.’ And I just thought, that’s my daughter saying that, and that shows young people realising the impact on the environment. I think that’s where our key is – it’s generational; if we can get this right at the young age, we will do it forever.”

It’s also important to make it as easy as possible for people to do the right thing, once you’ve convinced them to do so, Sargeant says, and key to that will be providing some consistency: “You could have it so that wherever you are in Wales, you know that a can goes in the same type of box, whether you’re in Caerphilly or whether you’re in Caernarfon. It’s about ease of use and consistency of message, giving one message everywhere as opposed to different types of recycling… we’ve got to make this as easy as possible for people to do.”

He suggests that having one or two systems, rather than 22, could also help councils with costs, especially when procuring big bits of kit like vehicles: “We’ve done the evidence work around the potential to save significant amounts of money in terms of doing things the same. We have 22 local authorities in Wales with many different ways of recycling — that can’t be value for money. In terms of even just procurement of vehicles, et cetera, there’s a principle generally if you buy more you get it for less. That is something that we should think about very carefully.”

In these straitened financial times, councils should also start looking at opportunities to make money from their recyclate and get value out of the materials they’re collecting, according to Sargeant, who asks: “How do we maximise on the sale element? Rather than the market driven for 22 local authorities, what is it that we can do together to maximise the benefit?” Whether Wales will go down the same route as Scotland in launching a materials brokerage site, remains to be seen, but he says there are “huge opportunities there”.

Sargeant also indicates that the private sector and the traditionally strong Welsh third sector have “a big role still to play” in helping councils achieving resource efficiency through innovations arrived at through partnerships (though again, in these straitened times, he stresses “it doesn’t always mean cash from government”).

And, as Wales pushes ahead in the UK and Europe, the good news for those of us who don’t live in this progressive environment is that, unlike Carlo Ancelotti, the man at the helm of the Real Madrid of European recycling, is “one for sharing best practice”, so we can (in theory) all learn from and emulate Wales’s success: “Wales is a clever place… Just because we are devolved doesn’t mean we have to be different for the sake of being different. We’re willing to share with our colleagues, but also listen and understand what other people do as well. We’re showing that we can be the best in the UK, and pretty damned good in Europe, too.”