The plan aims to speed up the 4 billion in investment that London Remade believes is necessary to build London's waste treatment infrastructure to meet its targets.
” We believe it is a timely, innovative and practical initiative. It has the opportunity to move ahead of current trends. “
– Daniel Silverstone, London Remade
The capital's recycling development organisation, which already has eight projects in the pipeline, is encouraging businesses to apply within the project for assistance building a range of plants to process recovered material.
This could include reprocessing projects to recycle plastics, wood, cans, glass and other materials as well as plants to deal with residual waste streams – anaerobic digestion, gasification, pyrolysis and a range of mechanical biological treatment options.
Support
In particular, the plan focuses on projects that may be too small to gain support through the government's Private Finance Initiative. Prospective projects are likely to be worth between 5 and 30 million.
London Remade will act as advisors to proposed projects, and help interested parties to identify projects, sites, partners and markets for their materials.
Speaking at the launch of their new plan at the Tate Modern yesterday, London Remade said it aimed to help London reach its aim of processing 85% of its own waste by 2020.
The initiative is also timed to coincide with the publication of the new English waste strategy due in a few weeks' time and also the increasing pressure for councils to meet targets under the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme.
London Remade believes boroughs are facing costs of 30 million to purchase sufficient permits to cover their landfill needs up to 2013 under the landfill allowance scheme. However, the projects will also seek to divert commercial and industrial waste from landfill.
“Opportunity”
London Remade chief executive Daniel Silverstone said: “Leave no footprint is our contribution to London's infrastructure problem. We believe it is a timely, innovative and practical initiative. It has the opportunity to move ahead of current trends.”
The Leave No Footprint plan has backing from the Greater London Authority, London boroughs and the Environment Agency as well as the national recycling development organisation, WRAP.
Mr Silverstone said that although the programme was not a “simple solution” to London's waste problems, it aimed to provide additional capacity to help with London's targets “at the same time as providing a se-risking element to investors.”
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By working with London councils, disposal authorities, businesses and investors, London Remade hopes to make projects more bankable for businesses and capitalise on a growing interest amongst banks to invest in smaller projects in the waste sector.
Companies wishing to apply for support under the Leave No Footprint project can do so via the London Remade website.
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