The campaign is to use radio, press and online adverts, and posters on buses and tubes to encourage residents to recycle. The initiative is also the first in the capital to include TV adverts and a downloadable game for mobile phones, in which users have to starve an “evil bin”.
He said: “In London we throw away so much rubbish that could actually be recycled – it is an important resource that is simply being chucked away. I am very excited that the new Recycle for London campaign is using innovative technologies to boost recycling and my message is to starve your bins and recycle, recycle, recycle.”
Speaking at the launch outside City Hall, the Mayor also revealed that his office was progressing with plans to introduce the incentive-based recycling scheme RecycleBank.
A spokeswoman for the Mayor confirmed: “Officers here are in close discussions with RecycleBank representatives – the company are keen to pilot in London.
“We are also in intensive and detailed dialogue with several London boroughs with regard to them being the pilot boroughs for the scheme. The introduction of Recycle Bank would need borough agreement to roll out, and we would envisage participation by householders would be voluntary,” she added.
Campaign
The 12-month Recycle for London campaign received £1.5 million in funding from the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWaRB) in September last year. The initiative was originally launched in 2003, but criticised for its poor delivery (see letsrecycle.com story).
The LWaRB has been charged with allocating £84 million to help build infrastructure and improve recycling and composting performance in the capital by 2011 but has only funded the Recycle for London campaign so far.
The Board intends to allocate further monies from April (see letsrecycle.com story), and Councillor Daniel Moylan, deputy leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and chairman of the London Councils transport and environment committee, said that the scheme was the only financed project to date due to the time it took for the Board to identify its priorities.
Cllr Moylan said: “We have been putting in place a business plan which will allow the funding to go ahead, by law we have to have a business plan in place and we only started our activities in September because we had to wait for the government to give the necessary regulations and I have to think that seeing a business plan by now, just a couple weeks into February, is tremendous.”
“Misreported”
At the launch, representatives of the Board also responded to questions over the recent media furore caused by the Mayor's waste advisor, Peter Jones, appearing on the BBC's Ten O'Clock News calling for greater reviews of the impact of recycling on global warming (see letsrecycle.com story).
Speaking to letsrecycle.com, Cllr Moylan said: “Peter Jones's comments were misreported. Review is constantly needed, review is good. Recycling and waste and energy-from-waste are very complex issues and he didn't say anything like what was reported. It was just taken to be put into things that could be taken to be made into a good headline.”
The third meeting of LWaRB is set to take place this week (Thursday February 12), when the Board is expected to unveil its business plan.
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