London: Mayor's Waste Strategy

Better recycling facilities for people living in flats and projects to save millions off city waste bills form part of major proposals to tackle the city’s rubbish mountain, improve the environment and cut carbon published by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

‘London’s Wasted Resource’, the Mayor’s draft municipal waste strategy, contains a raft of measures to work with the boroughs to boost London’s recycling rates, to embrace less polluting waste technologies, make more money from our waste, ensure streets are cleaner ahead of 2012 and save up to £90 million per year. This saving could be made by sending no rubbish to landfill, recycling as much as possible, and extracting energy from what is left over.

London produces four million tonnes of municipal waste every year and although the city’s recycling rate is steadily improving, it is still the lowest of all English regions and compares badly to other international cities. The Mayor is writing to all borough leaders to ask them to redouble their efforts to boost recycling if we are to avoid massive landfill taxes and therefore more expensive council tax bills in the future.

Boroughs face a range of challenges in providing good quality, convenient and cost effective collection services especially for flats and multi-occupancy buildings, which account for 50 per cent of London’s housing stock. The Mayor will urge the London Waste and Recycling Board – which he chairs – to allocate funds to help adapt London’s flats to boost recycling facilities such as putting newly designed collection points near doorways or supporting changes to bin chute designs. The Mayor will also be calling on the boroughs to work jointly to be more coordinated in their approach to recycling.

By 2015, the Mayor wants the capital to be recycling at least 45 per cent of its municipal waste rising to 60 per cent by 2031, sending zero municipal waste to landfill by 2025. With landfill rates set to increase from current associated costs of around £245 million to £307 million by 2013, these proposals seek to help boroughs to minimise pressure on future council tax bills.

The Mayor wants to improve Londoners’ quality of life by making streets cleaner, tackling litter especially the blight of chewing gum, with a focus on making London’s streets as clean as possible for 2012 with better access to ‘on the go’ recycling facilities. The Mayor will work with boroughs to do so, and is calling on government to request national funding for litter campaigns to ensure London is ready to showcase itself to the world.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: ‘Some of London’s boroughs are taking pioneering strides forward to boost their recycling rates, however overall in London we are really lagging behind. It is not only detrimental to our environment, but economically a backwards step to be sending our rubbish to landfill and I am writing to all the borough leaders to urge them to pull out the stops to boost our recycling efforts.

‘I want to work with borough councils to harvest the massive economic potential coming from London’s waste both to save money off the city’s bills and to improve our environment. This will be achieved through reducing the mounds of waste generated in the first place and expanding on the emerging trend for the reuse of household items through networks such as Freecycle.

‘We must also seek to unblock the remaining barriers to recycling making it easier to take this option rather than simply chuck unwanted stuff in the bin, for example, providing better collection facilities in flats and multi-occupancy dwellings.

‘With the focus of the world turning to London ahead of 2012, I also want to see a re-doubling of efforts by everyone in the capital to make our streets cleaner and more pleasant. I am calling on Government to provide the additional funds required to do so.’

The draft strategy includes the following key proposals:

Reducing and preventing waste – with a rising population, the Mayor is committed to ensuring growth does not result in an increase in household waste and is proposing a 20 per cent reduction in the amount produced per household by 2031 equaling approximately 40,000 tonnes a year: this will involve working with businesses and manufacturers to reduce packaging, includes a proposal for a competition to ‘design out’ waste from an end product; the London Waste and Recycling Board has allocated £5million until 2012 to Recycle for London for a series of reduce, reuse and recycle campaigns;

Reuse of waste materials – developing a strategic reuse network across London to ensure people have access to organisations that repair items or help people pass items on to others – for example furniture reuse schemes or support for Freecycle or Freegle; a well resourced, coordinated and publicised network could divert up to 1.7 million reuseable household items from landfill every year, representing 40,000 tonnes of waste and saving £5million off London’s annual waste bill – it could also create jobs and help alleviate poverty. The London Waste and Recycling Board will allocate at least £8.5million until 2012 to support reuse infrastructure;

The Mayor will work with boroughs to provide incentives for Londoners to recycle and compost; the Mayor also wants to work with partners including the private sector to provide ‘on the go’ recycling bins;

Support moves away from old-style, polluting waste disposal methods by boosting the use of cleaner, low carbon methods to produce greener energy from waste such as CHP, anaerobic digestion, gasification and pyrolysis. The London Waste and Recycling Board has already pledged financial backing for a gasification plant with planning approval in Dagenham, which will be the largest in the UK and provide clean energy for 10,000 local homes; if all municipal waste that couldn’t be recycled were used for energy production, it could generate enough power for 210,000 homes; and

Tackling climate change through the introduction of a greenhouse gas standard for waste management – the municipal waste London sends to landfill generates around 520,000 tonnes of carbon emissions each year. The Mayor’s proposals – taking account of savings from avoiding emissions involved in manufacturing virgin materials and generating energy from fossil fuels – could save London 2 million tonnes of carbon per year and save £82 million off the city’s £4 billion electricity bill and £24 million off London’s £2.6 billion gas bill.

The Mayor’s strategy covers waste collected by boroughs coming from households, some small businesses and litter from streets and parks. The cost of managing this waste is approximately £600m every year.

The Mayor’s draft municipal waste strategy is open to consultation with London Assembly and GLA functional bodies such as Transport for London until 15 March 2010. It will be followed by a strategy for public consultation in summer 2010.

Links
The Mayor is chair of the London Waste and Recycling Board. For more information on the London Waste and Recycling Board, click here.

Suzanne Phillips - 19/01/10

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