Waste & Recycling

• Introduction
• Information For Residents
  • Reduce
  • Reuse
  • Recycle
• Information For Business
  • Waste Prevention
  • Recycling
• Information for Schools
  • Waste Prevention
  • Recycling
• Campaigns
  • No Junk Mail 2010
• How To Get Involved
  • Love Food Hate Waste Roadshows 2010
• Reuse and Recycling Centres

Waste Facts

• Almost 1 million tonnes of rubbish is produced in North London every year (enough to fill 8 football stadiums top to bottom)

• By 2020 we will be generating up to 44% more per year (that's another 4 football stadiums!)

• Throwing away rubbish is expensive - by 2011 the tax alone for sending waste to landfill will be £48 per tonne - around 8 times the cost to landfill a tonne of waste in 1996.

Waste & Recycling

Introduction

The amount of waste produced in north London, like everywhere, was traditionally growing year on year. Over the past three years, however, there has been a decline in the amount of waste produced in north London by 4%. This is great news but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to reach our targets.

Whilst recycling is a fantastic way to turn our rubbish into something useful again, preventing waste is even better. If we reduce the amount that we produce in the first place and reuse things again for a second time we also avoid the industrial processes involved in recycling, and in turn reduce our carbon footprint.

Waste prevention plays a key role in sustainable waste management. There are environmental as well as socio-economic, financial and legal reasons for being concerned about waste prevention:

• Environmental reasons: Municipal waste is merely the final evidence of consumption which entails environmental footprints which are rarely sustainable.
• Socio-economic reasons: Production of waste appears to be the result of wasting natural resources and these resources are both limited and unequally distributed.
• Financial reasons: Reducing the quantities of waste produced means it should be possible to reduce the budget required for the collection, transportation and treatment of waste products.
• Legal reasons: The European framework directive on waste requires national waste prevention programmes to be drawn up.

The 'Waste Hierarchy' has for some time provided the framework for managing waste both locally, nationally and at a European level and has recently been updated in the Waste Framework Directive.

However, achieving the top of the waste hierarchy is not easy. We all have a role to play in preventing waste - right from the product designer to the retailer, to the consumer, and the local authority as collector of the waste.

With your help we plan to reduce rubbish in north London by up to 80,000 tonnes over the next two years. To find out how please look at our  Waste Prevention Plan. The Plan sets out a series of specific actions required, to deliver the strategic objectives for waste prevention, which are within the North London Joint Waste Strategy