Speaking at the Association of London Government's Summit, Dr David Davies said that having 26 councils miss their targets was a “massive” shortfall. He claimed that it demonstrated that London is unlikely to achieve the Mayor's target of recycling 45% of its waste by 2015.
Dr Davies said the funds given to the councils by the London recycling fund were not nearly enough for them to “seriously” improve recycling rates. He said that the 45 million given to the London boroughs was “insignificant” when looking at other councils. Fife council has received 70 million towards recycling from the Scottish Executive strategic waste fund, he said, despite being a comparatively small council.
New York
Dr Davies said that London's nearest comparison as a large city is New York which has not been able to reach a 25% rate, let alone 45%.
He said: “New York has had mandatory recycling since 1989 and a weekly multi-material kerbside service is available to 100% of households. But the recycling rate has never exceeded 21% and the city believes that 25% is probably the highest rate achievable.”
Dr Davies claimed that it was unlikely that London could achieve a significantly higher recycling performance than New York. He said: “No major conurbation or city anywhere achieves recycling rates even approaching 45%. London may aspire to be the first: aspirations are fine things, but the evidence points in the opposite direction, my view is that London will do well to achieve 25%.”
Response
In response to Mr Davies' comments John Duffy, policy director for the Mayor of London on the environment, has said that he believes London is capable of achieving a much higher recycling rate.
Mr Duffy said: “We believe that 45% recycling is achievable in London. Dr Davies's comments look closely at kerbside collection systems, but fail to look in detail at the role that new technologies can play to further recover recyclate from the residual waste stream.
“New York is to be congratulated for reaching 20% recycling through kerbside collections of recycling alone, however we do not believe that the level of recycling achieved in New York is a ceiling,” he said.
Mr Duffy also said that the city would be utilising new ideas to combat waste. He explained: “London is a growing world class city and we need to be more imaginative in dealing with this growth in order to meet recycling targets.
“Waste and other resources in London need to be managed with a more sustainable approach in the future, rather than relying on the traditional end of pipe solutions of the past,” he added.
Mr Duffy said that through increased kerbside collections, improving recycling on estates, increasing the collection of organics, improving recycling at civic amenity sites and improving the technology connected with recycling it is possible for London to greatly improve its level of recycling.
Register for free to comment