London Mayor sets out new recycling standards

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson has proposed new standards of recycling as part of his draft municipal waste strategy 'London's Wasted Resource'.

New proposals will encourage boroughs to focus on recycling methods which achieve the greatest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions associated with the collection, recycling and disposing of their rubbish.

It will also aim towards no food or garden waste being landfilled, and will instead encourage less waste to cut the emissions involved with manufacturing, and recycling them in the first place.

These proposals, taking account of savings from avoiding emissions involved in manufacturing virgin materials and generating energy from fossil fuels could save London 1.6m tonnes of carbon annually.

The Mayor is working with the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) to allocate £5m for projects to help adapt flats to boost recycling facilities.

He is also helping to develop a London-wide reuse network to ensure people have access to organisations that repair items or help people pass items on to others, which could divert up to 1.7m re-useable household items from landfill every year.



The Mayor wants London to recycle at least 45 per cent of its municipal waste by 2015, rising to 60 per cent by 2031, sending zero municipal waste to landfill by 2025.

A key strand of doing this involves LWARB funding new infrastructure to increase capacity and reduce reliance on landfill and incineration, and they have already committed £4.5m to extend a recycling facility and £8.9m to a gasification plant, both in East London.

The Mayor also wants to tackle litter and focus on making London's streets as clean as possible for 2012.

The municipal strategy covers waste collected by boroughs coming from households, some small businesses and litter from streets and parks, which costs approximately £580m yearly to manage.

Johnson, said: "My waste plans seek to maximise the economic value of London’s waste material whilst moving away from environmentally damaging methods to dispose of it."

Further information:
Greater London Authority