Reinvigorating London’s recycling

London faces a number of unique challenges in its efforts to increase recycling. The UK’s capital is a complex, dense urban environment with 9 million residents and counting – and is split into 32 boroughs and the City of London, each of which operates its own waste and recycling services.

While some outer London boroughs are already recycling more than 50% of their household waste, others struggle to reach 30%. A number of factors need to be taken into consideration as we try and improve recycling rates:

• Highly transient population – low levels of home ownership and growth in privately rented, short-term accommodation are having an impact across the capital. Homeowners tend to recycle more whereas communities with larger numbers of highly mobile renters don’t.
• A high percentage of flats – whether high-rise, house conversions or flats above shops – presents challenges both to residents and to council collection teams. Flats account for up to 80% of housing stock in some boroughs and those numbers are set to keep rising.
• The density of housing in London means fewer households have gardens, so there is less garden waste available to recycle than in more low rise, rural areas.
• Audience research shows that the audience segments that recycle least and contaminate the most make up a disproportionately high percentage of the resident population in inner London boroughs. These segments are made up of higher proportions of younger people (18 – 34-year-olds), who recycle less than older, more settled demographics.
• Deprivation levels – the lowest performers in London tend to be those boroughs with the highest levels of deprivation, as well as high population density.
• London is culturally diverse, with more than 100 different languages spoken in almost every borough, making it a much more challenging environment to communicate recycling service information to residents.
• London has a huge swell of daytime visitors (c. 1 million daily commuters plus tourists), creating extra litter and waste for collection.

When we recycle, used materials are converted into new products, reducing the need to consume natural resources as well as the carbon emissions associated with materials extraction and production. Right now, recycling in the UK saves us around 18 million tonnes of CO2 a year, which is equivalent to taking 5 million cars of the road.

Recycling is a simple contribution that a business can make to help tackle the climate crisis. Regardless of the sector you work in, or the size of your organisation, there are recycling facilities and collections available to you. Depending on where your business is located, you may be able to arrange these with your council, or you might prefer to set up a contract with a private waste company.

Make sure that you have the right tools in place for your employees to recycle and speak to your waste collection company for help on how to recycle more of your rubbish. Put separate bins in place for recycling, as well as posters so employees know what can be recycled. Ensure that you have systems in place (including cleaners or caretakers trained up) to ensure that the separated waste ends up in the correct place

Find out more, and download helpful toolkits, on our London Recycles Business website.

Recycling is one of the simplest things you can do to help our economy become more circular. Whether you live in a house, a flat conversion or a block of purpose-built flats, there are recycling facilities and collections available to you, run by your council.

Make sure that you have a separate bin inside our home just for your recycling – when we spoke to Londoners about this, we discovered that over one third of us would recycle more if we had more than one bin at home. So get a separate bin, or ‘hack’ one out of a cardboard box, bag or other container that you’ve got at home. Recycling is so much easier when you have a separate bin, bag or box to put it in. Don’t forget your bathroom bin too!

Find out more on our London Recycles website.

While every London borough can set its own rules for what can and can’t be collected for recycling, there are some standard materials that every council collects:

• Plastic bottles
• Tins and cans
• Paper
• Cardboard

Most London boroughs also collect glass, plastic pots, tubs and trays (such as yoghurt pots, fruit trays and margarine tubs) and food waste.

Check our handy London Recycles ‘services at a glance’ guide to find out exactly what you can recycle where you live.