Since Mayor of London Sadiq Khan's London Environment Strategy (LES) was published in draft for consultation this August, commentators have pointed to the strategy's broad reach and ambition - as well as its detailed analysis of the environmental challenges faced by the city of over 8 million people. The LES covers air quality, green infrastructure, climate change mitigation and adaptation, noise, the transition to a low-carbon circular economy, but most importantly for SectorWatch - waste.
While the Mayor's preface foregrounds the improvement of air quality, a recurring theme of the LES is the overall intention to ditch the 'linear approach' in favour of a circular economy in a number of areas. The waste section updates a 2011 strategy on municipal waste, and points out the looming problems: landfill will run out by 2026, only half of the 7 million tonnes of waste produced can be recycled, food waste is not being valorised. Of these 7 million tonnes the largest proportions are: 22% food and green garden waste; 60% common dry recyclables paper, card, plastics, glass and metals; 18% other materials including textiles, waste electricals (WEEE) wood, furniture and household cleaning chemicals.
Integrating waste into the Circular Economy
Another highlighted statistic is that London produces around 1.5 – 1.75m tonnes of food waste with a value of £2.55bn a year. One curiosity here is the expression of the amount of food waste, which is financial. Whether this portends a circular economy strategy which seeks to give organic waste a saleable value, or is merely a method of demonstrating scale is not clear. A question for procurers and others in the European municipal waste sector might be, "does the transition to a circular economy in waste necessarily mean attaching financial value for organic waste?"
" Single use packaging materials" are also identified as an area of focus, with UK national figures from WRAP extrapolated to demonstrate the pressure this puts on London's 33 municipal waste authorities.
Waste targets and challenges
The headline waste target of the LES is "by 2026 no biodegradable or recyclable waste will be sent to landfill and by 2030, 65 per cent of London’s municipal waste will be recycled". The LES points to a number of actions which will help achieve this, which angle the focus of the Strategy at this stage more towards the 33 municipal waste authorities than directly at the citizen, reflecting who is most likely to submit responses to the consultation.
The breadth of the LES and its reliance on the buy-in at local government level within the London region means that the results are really in the hands of the local authorities and agencies who will have to implement the strategy.
What will be interesting to observe as the consultation and political processes behind the LES continue is how high a priority waste will have in comparison with other aspects. This week the Mayor announced a new emissions charge for a much wider area than the original congestion charge, and issues of infrastructure (air, rail and underground) around London often dominate regional and national political agendas. Waste is one of seven areas identified, and up until now the main challenge has been achieving compliance with European level regulation. With Brexit looming, the impact of the European Waste Package and Circular Economy agenda might be felt less in the UK capital.
For further analysis, see the Zero Waste Europe website
The consultation is available here