At the event in Haringey, the NLWA laid out plans that would see the London Boroughs of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest working together to tackle their 921,000 tonnes of municipal waste in a sustainable manner.
However, some of the London Boroughs involved expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of progress being made in the strategy.
 NWLA council members at the “launch” of the joint waste strategy (from the left): Narinder Matharoo, Waltham Forest; Bridget Fox, Islington; Bill Price, Enfield; Ray Dodds, Haringey; Francis Ingham, Enfield and Vincent Spots, Hackney |
Francis Ingham, a Conservative councillor from Enfield, said the proposal was “unambitious” and “unimaginative”, and that it is too late in coming.
“Seems to me it's pretty late coming,” Mr Ingham said. “One of our targets kicks in next year, but this plan won't be finalised until the end of the next year or the year after, so it does seem we're doing far too little too late.”
Andrew Lappage, the head of waste strategy and contracts at NLWA, denied that the proposals were unambitious. He said: “The strategy will look ahead 15 years and will look at the new facilities that are needed, consider wholesale changes to the way in which we organise ourselves, consider pooling targets, consider joint working at a much more significant level.”
Proposal
The NWLA have said that their 70 million project would see around 100,000 tonnes of material being recycled through kerbside collection schemes by 2005-06, 50,000 tonnes being recycled through bring sites and estate facilities and 40,000 tonnes through CA sites.
However, as the waste authority looks to reduce landfill to zero, it was made clear that incineration will be a large part of their strategy.
“The authority line is very much that we're following a waste hierarchy, and that energy from waste is better than landfill,” Mr Lappage said. “If we hit a point where we're at zero landfill then we'll be looking at recovering less in energy terms. And that's something we will be happy to do.”
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