Recent data (table below) obtained by Green Party Assembly Member, Darren Johnson, reveal that ten London councils do not yet provide any separate food waste collection for residents, resulting in food waste being mixed with general waste and sent for incineration or to landfill.
Thirteen councils provided more than half of their households with either separate food waste or combined food and garden waste collection, with Kingston upon Thames coming top, extending this to 95% of its households.(1)
Darren Johnson commented:
"The public generally supports separate collections for food waste as well as for recycling. I congratulate those boroughs that have begun introducing separate food waste collections but it should be the norm right across London. We need to work to ensure all food waste is composted, and either turned into organic fertiliser or converted into green energy in anaerobic digestors. It’s unacceptable that it still ends up being incinerated, or sent to landfill producing the potent greenhouse gas, methane."
He added:
"As well as collecting food waste, of course, we also need to ensure the facilities are in place to reprocess it. The Mayor is planning to build two new anaerobic digestors. However, he will need to build an additional sixteen by 2015 to deal with London’s increasing food waste arising from less landfill capacity, to avert a food waste crisis" (3)
Editors Notes:
Food waste collection schemes by London Councils
Data collated June – July 2010 Percentage (%) of borough households provided with separate food waste or combined food and garden waste collection.
Kingston upon Thames 95
Harrow LB 85
Bexley LB 81
Richmond upon Thames LB 81
Hounslow LB 77
Ealing LB 76
Haringey LB 72
Greenwich LB 71
Camden LB 66
Hackney LB 61
Waltham Forest LB 57
Brent LB 56
City of London 51
Barnet LB 44
Islington LB 43
Tower Hamlets LB 27
Bromley LB 20
Lambeth LB 14
Merton LB 13
Enfield LB 10
Sutton LB 3
Croydon LB 2
Westminster LB 1
Barking & Dagenham 0
Hammersmith & Fulham LB 0
Havering LB 0
Hillingdon LB 0
Kensington and Chelsea – RB 0
Lewisham LB 0
Newham LB 0
Redbridge LB 0
Southwark LB (2) 0
Wandsworth LB 0
1) Information was obtained through freedom of information requests sent to Boroughs in June 2010. Camden have provided updated information since original data was received.
2) Since the data was collected, Southwark Council has announced a food and garden waste pilot starting beginning in October 2010 http://www.southwark.gov.uk/info/200084/recycling_and_waste/1799/new_garden_and_food_waste_collections/1
3) The Mayor’s Draft Municipal Waste Management Strategy, London’s Wasted Resource, January 2010 (Page 31), ‘Recycle for London has set a provisional target to reduce 68,400 tonnes of uneaten food waste produced from London households by 2013′. Page 41, ‘Each year London sends approximately 370,000 tonnes of municipal food waste to landfill’.
The Mayor’s London Waste and Recycling Board’s business plan for 2010/11 (page 10) indicate that unless new food waste facilities are built, such as anaerobic digestors a 900,000 tonnes shortfall of waste treatment capacity for London’s food waste will exist in 2015 (1). The business plan indicates the board will fund two new anaerobic digestors at a cost of £6million, each estimated to have a capacity of 50,000 tonnes per annum.