Waste Recycling in London

There are hundreds of waste facilities around the city, from council run tips and recycling centres, to materials and energy recovery facilities, which are gradually replacing landfill sites. Nearly every Local Authority provides reuse and recycling centres for residents, handling a wide range of reusable items, recyclable rubbish, and general or residual municipal waste.

The local authority run facilities provide the same basic services from borough to borough in addition to offering specialised collections for garden waste, furniture and white goods and clinical waste disposal. Some types of waste, like building materials, are often classed as restricted due to their commercial use, as traders and construction companies have to pay to use the tips, and residents are only permitted to dump small amounts for it to be considered domestic waste. Hazardous waste is also seldom accepted at local civic amenity sites, and most homes and businesses are advised to contact the city of London hazardous waste disposal team, for the disposal of asbestos, oil based paint and other chemicals.

Many councils also provide competitively priced services for the collection, transfer and disposal of commercial refuse, although companies requiring industrial waste management solutions will often turn to the same private companies who are currently contracted by the council to deal with large scale waste. Private waste management organisations work closely with local authorities in London to transfer recyclable waste and sell it onto treatment facilities both nationally and internationally.

The Reuse and recycling centres and micro recycling sites available for public use throughout the city all vary slightly in terms of materials they can accept. Paper card glass tin aluminium and plastic bottles are generally accepted everywhere. Some difficult to dispose of items include paint, tyres, and plasterboard which often have to be transported to specialist facilities to be reused or recycled. Building materials like rubble soil timber garden fences and bathroom fixtures and fittings are also not typically accepted at all civic amenity sites and may require independent waste collectors to ensure swift and convenient removal of items.

Some materials frequently accepted at local authority facilities that cannot otherwise be disposed of for free include fluorescent tubes (energy saving light bulbs) car batteries, cooking and engine oil, and gas bottles. Most boroughs provide micro recycling sites for household batteries, textiles and small electrical items, however residents are encouraged to donate reusable items where possible at charity shops or at the tip, which often has links to resellers and refurbishment programmes such as Recycle my Cycle. Donated items, might include furniture, sports equipment, toys, and bric a brac. For all other waste like large electrical items, white goods, garden waste and soft furnishings like sofas, mattresses and carpets, these may still be recycled however the council often collects them from domestic properties for a fee if residents cannot transport them to the tip.

Standard collection services for general refuse and recycling have significantly improved over the years to accept more varieties of plastic such as tubs, pots, trays and cutlery in dry mixed recycling bins. This has been a progressive step in tackling the problem of single use plastic that ends up in landfills or contaminating the natural environment, and recovering the raw materials ready for reprocessing and remanufacture into recycled consumer goods. The other main area of improvement has been the introduction of kitchen caddies and bins for food waste throughout London, which can contribute to a huge amount of harmful gases in the environment if it gets sent to landfill. The local authority provision of free food waste caddies along with compostable liners and regular weekly collections has meant that it gets segregated service level, and can be transported directly to an energy recovery facility to be turned into biogas, biofertilizer and fuel, which in some areas has already resulted in a 100% diversion from landfill for all food waste.

Other organic waste services include garden waste collection which is offered across most London boroughs for a yearly subscription fee. For those households that do not produce enough garden waste for regular collections some councils offer one off collections, however most boroughs have a home composting guide on their website which they encourage residents to make use of, and to reuse their garden waste to enrich the soil.

Most borough councils in London offer bulky waste collection of furniture, white goods and large electrical items at competitive prices or for free for elderly residents and those in receipt of benefit, limited to a certain amount of collections per year. Some councils direct locals towards charity operated solutions from their websites that remove bulk waste for free, however the vast majority of boroughs are limited to offering their own collection services or inviting residents to transport large waste items to the tip, which is seldom practical in most cases. Instead many households opt for using the wide range of competitively priced independent waste carriers in London that offer the same services. However the choice can be overwhelming, and some unlicensed waste carriers slip through the net and fly tip rubbish on private or even public land that then needs to be dealt with by another waste management company or by the local authorities. The Environment Agency provides a public directory of licensed waste carriers, brokers and dealers which members of the public can use to check that their chosen waste provider is compliant with the statutory requirements for waste management at every stage of the disposal process.

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Over the years many local authorities have risen to the challenge for the planning and delivery of environmentally sustainable waste management for the millions of people living within the 32 London boroughs. Even as the population continues to expand, increased pressure is placed on public services to produce cleaner waste management solutions through investment, technological innovations and the building of infrastructure to derive energy from waste and ultimately provide channels for decentralised energy provision throughout the greater London area.

Borough councils are combining their financial resources to build state-of-the-art waste management facilities for sorting and transferring waste, materials and energy recovery, reselling and in some cases exporting raw materials back to the manufacturers for reprocessing. As a response to the demand for more effective waste management solutions in the city and proposals in the The London Plan handed down at the local government level, the following authorities have been set up between borough councils to strategize and action events around public waste management.

ELWA (East London Waste Authority) which has been set up between Redbridge, Havering, Barking & Dagenham and Newham.

NLWA (North London Waste Authority) which has been set up between Barnet, Enfield, Haringey, Waltham Forest, Camden, Hackney and Islington.

WLWA (West London Waste Authority) which has been set up between Hillingdon, Brent, Harrow, Ealing, Hounslow and Richmond-upon-Thames.

WRWA (Western Riverside Waste Authority) which has been set up between Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, Wandsworth and Lambeth.

SLWP (South London Waste Partnership) which has been set up between Merton, Kingston upon Thames, Croydon and Sutton.

Several Large scale private waste contractors also work in partnership with borough councils to manage waste and deliver on their objectives for landfill diversion and the increased production of energy from waste. The building of new facilities funded by regional London waste authorities has already started to deliver on the long term sustainable waste strategies proposed by the London Plan and lead to the reclamation of natural landscapes. providing renewed conservation areas that used to be contaminated by man made waste or used for landfill.

At the service level, organic waste removal services such as home composting caddies and garden waste collection are now standard practice for many London Boroughs seeking to avoid the use of landfill sites. Residents are given brown or grey bins specifically for food waste including meat, fish, and poultry waste, which is collected periodically alongside general rubbish. The organic waste is taken to facilities where it will undergo treatment such as pyrolysis or gasification which are both methods used to heat organic waste at controlled temperatures in order to produce by-products such as oil, char and gas that may be used as fuel. These controlled heating methods are relatively new, although they are in the commercial stages of development, and composting remains the most widely used method for recycling organic waste materials collected by Local Authorities in London and the surrounding areas.

In addition to London boroughs pooling resources and investing in waste management solutions for the future, each council runs public awareness initiatives promoting healthy habits around sustainable ways of living in response to climate change, and encouraging engagement with the ‘circular economy’ in collaboration with community organisations charities and businesses. This model of consumption encourages individuals to conserve energy fuel and resources by making small incremental changes to their habits and lifestyle from walking or cycling instead of travelling by car, to buying and using only what they need. This feeds into the circular model of reselling or donating unwanted material goods back into the local economy for refurbishment and reuse, as opposed to the ‘linear economy’ which ends with the disposal of consumer goods and wasted materials.

In recent years London has made many efforts to become an environmentally friendly city and has adopted a practice known as ‘urban greening’ which aims to bring purpose built green spaces into the infrastructure of the city, helping to lower temperatures, prevent flooding and improve air quality. With the population in London set to increase by an estimated 3 million by 2050, and with permanent changes in the weather due to climate, urban greening is mandated to become a key part of building in the city as it expands. This consists of planning permission for green walls and roofs as standard practice for any major developments.

The urban greening factor is included in the New London Plan which is the spatial development strategy for Greater London led by the Mayor of London and the Greater London authority. Other aspects of urban greening are set to include the ‘healthy streets’ initiative, which will not only change the physical environment of London’s streets and pedestrianised areas, but intends to shift public behaviour towards greener methods of travel such as walking and cycling, and increased use of public transport for long journeys. The ‘grey to green’ project as part of the sustainable drainage action plan also encourages communities to advocate for an increase in accessible green spaces by communicating with the local council about where such improvements could be made.