The city of London, England’s capital, recycles a lower proportion of its waste than many other major UK cities, the London Assembly has heard.

At a meeting of the Assembly’s Environment Committee on Wednesday (27 November), Chair Murad Qureshi highlighted figures compiled by London councils that showed that in 2011/12, London recycled 30 per cent of its waste – less than Leeds (36 per cent), Greater Manchester (42 per cent) and Bristol (43 per cent).

Indeed, looking at recent Defra figures for the financial year 2012/13, on average, the recycling rate for local authority collected waste (by London collection and unitary authorities) was 31 per cent.

However, despite being the seat of the UK government, Westminster City Council recycled the least amount of waste in London – just 13 per cent. This authority collects all recyclables in one co-mingled box, and does not include food or garden waste collections.

In contrast, the collection or unitary authority in London that recycled that most waste, the London Borough of Bexley (49 per cent), sees waste management company Serco collect waste in five separate streams: food and garden waste; paper and cardboard; plastic bottles and cans; glass bottles and jars; and residual waste.

Not comparing like with like

Speaking of the figures, Mark Banks, Westminster City Council’s Waste and Recycling Manager, told Resource: “This is a case where just looking at statistics doesn’t tell the full story because we’re not comparing like with like here.

“Unlike many local authorities, about half of the waste we collect comes from businesses. Many of them have separate recycling contracts for glass, cardboard and paper with other collectors but use the council for general waste services. So that effectively skews our overall recycling rate.

“Furthermore, it used to be the case that we could compost leaves collected from our streets but that is no longer allowed, which dropped our overall recycling rate by approximately two per cent.”

Banks adds that in terms of household recycling, Westminster City Council recycles around 23 per cent of waste, but that as there are few houses with gardens in the area, rates for green waste are ‘minimal’. He estimated that if Westminster had an ‘average’ number of properties with gardens, the household recycling rate could ‘almost double’.

He added that as part of the council’s waste and recycling consultation earlier this year, recycling officers ‘knocked on over 40,000 doors to promote recycling and ask for residents’ input into our waste strategy’.

Communication is key

Looking to London as a whole, London Assembly’s Environment Committee was told by the Mayor’s Environmental Advisor Matthew Pencharz, that a range of issues affect recycling rates including population churn, types of housing, and the proportion of people whose first language is not English.

He also noted that the Mayor, Boris Johnson, does not have responsibility for collecting waste, which is done at borough level. The Mayor has however set a target that London should recycle or compost 40 per cent of its waste by 2015 and 60 per cent by 2031.

Guests attending the meeting, including the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB), told members that one of the best ways to boost recycling is through communicating its benefits clearly to residents, especially if they are told that savings made through avoiding landfill can be used for other services.

Murad Qureshi AM, Chair of the London Assembly Environment Committee, said: “There are clear benefits – environmental and economic – to recycling more of our waste and preventing it going to landfill, so it is disappointing to see other cities are doing better than we are.

”We heard from experts… that communication is key to improving rates, so we hope that all the organisations involved in tackling the capital’s waste will do everything they can to get the message across to Londoners that we need to recycle more.”

Speaking to Resource, Chief Operating Officer of LWARB Wayne Hubbard, pointed to several initiatives running in the capital to improve recycling. These included ‘the £1.2 million Driving Up Performance fund, the £800,000 Borough Communications Support fund and the £400,000 Textiles Re-use and Recycling fund’.

He added: “LWARB also operates an Efficiencies Programme designed to provide savings to boroughs to enable them to continue to support waste and recycling services and to improve recycling performance. This follows LWARB’s successful Flats Recycling Programme ,which enabled boroughs to provide around 525,000 households with new or improved recycling facilities.”

Over reliance on residual waste infrastructure

Several commentators have spoken out about London’s recycling figures, with Green Party member of the London Assembly and recently-introduced peer in the House of Lords, Jenny Jones, writing on the Guardian website: ‘Almost half of London's 33 London councils recorded a fall in the proportion of household waste they recycled in 2012-13 compared with the previous year, with a further five boroughs flatlining…

‘Sadly, this is not surprising as the much-needed recycling and composting infrastructure such as anaerobic digestion, the natural breakdown of organic materials, for dealing with food waste has not come on stream fast enough. This is despite nominal backing from the previous mayor of London and the current mayor, whose revised strategy identified it as the optimal treatment method for food waste, after waste reduction.’

Adding that ‘only genuine "residual waste" – the element that cannot be recycled or composted – should be considered for energy generation’ (which Jones says ‘should be no more than 30 per cent’ of household waste), she continued to say that Johnson needs to now provide ‘effective leadership’ to ensure London deals with this ‘growing waste crisis’.

Jones’s position mirrors the findings of a Eunomia report – released earlier this week – which found that an increasing reliance on residual waste infrastructure could limit England’s recycling rate to just 60 per cent.

SELCHP begins exporting heat

In related news, London’s first energy-from-waste heat network officially opened this week, as Veolia Environnement’s incineratorat Southwark began exporting heat, nearly 20 years after it was built.

However, Pencharz said that recovering energy (and heat) from waste should only be done ‘after maximizing waste reduction and recycling’.

The scheme will run for 20 years, after which the council will decide whether to retain the scheme or revert back to the traditional supply of gas.

It follows on from news that a consortium led by SITA UK has signed a public-private partnership (PPP) contract to recover energy from West London Waste Authority’s residual waste over the next 25 years.

Read more about recycling in London.