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Mayor of London > Mayor's Priorities > Environment

Environment

Parks and open spaces
GLA group
Waste and recycling
Reducing emissions
Public involvement
Research

Parks and open spaces

Priority Parks programme

The Mayor believes parks and open spaces are key to the capital’s quality of life, and will invest £6 million into improving the quality and safety of London's parks, funded by efficency savings.

Further information on parks and open spaces

Help a London Park

The Help a London Park programme has been launched, where Londoners had the opportunity to vote to decide which parks will receive £400,000 funding.

Watch a video of Boris introducing 'Help a London Park' and encouraging Londoners to vote.

The Mayor's Premier Park

The Mayor has announced the winner of his Premier Park award — a grant of Ł2 million. This is Burgess Park in the London Borough of Southwark. More about The Mayor's Premier Park.

Plant 10,000 new street trees

The Mayor is working with the Forestry Commission's London Tree and Woodland Grant Scheme to promote street trees. His initiative will fund 10,000 street trees over the next four years in 40 areas across London that have few street trees.

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GLA group

Encourage GLA group staff to volunteer on environmental projects

The Mayor wants to actively promote volunteering in London, especially time spent improving open spaces to the benefit of everyone. He believes the GLA group should lead the way with all staff volunteering one day a year to this cause.

Ban bottled water across GLA group

The Mayor does not believe public bodies should be spending taxpayers' money on expensive bottled water that is environmentally unsustainable and will ban it immediately within City Hall.

Support trial of retrofitting existing GLA buildings, and extend across group

The Mayor believes buildings owned by the GLA should lead the way in retrofitting. He will extend the existing C40 scheme to all buildings owned by the GLA.

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Waste and recycling

London Waste and Recycling Board

The Mayor will allocate £24 million earmarked by the LDA for a separate waste management strategy to a single, streamlined recycling body, the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWaRB). The Mayor believes this will help minimise waste transport movement that accounts for up to 10 per cent of London's traffic movements.
The Mayor does not believe it is sensible to have two separate waste funds for London.
The Mayor believes that one condition of providing LDA funding to the LWaRB should be to more effectively manage restaurant waste so that less is sent to landfill.

Lobby for a ban on single use plastic bags

The Mayor wants to see the Government take a far less cautious approach to banning single-use plastic bags and supports proposals that the Government should negotiate a voluntary agreement with producers and retailers.

Champion schemes like Freecycle that enable goods to be re-used

The Mayor will champion boroughs operating Freecycle and encourage all London boroughs to have a Freecycle outlet whereby to match people who want to get rid of goods with people who want them. He believes this will help reduce the number of re-usable items entering the waste stream.

Encourage boroughs to work with organisations like Recyclebank

The Mayor will champion recycling and wants to make it easy for Londoners. He will investigate the US scheme, RecycleBank, which pays to recycle whilst reducing the amount of waste to (and connected expense of) landfill.

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Reducing emissions

Commit to 60 per cent carbon reduction target by 2025

The Mayor believes London needs to set an example to the world as a sustainable, green city, and will work with national and local government towards a target to reduce the capital's emissions by 60 per cent from their 1990 levels by 2025. He published his draft London Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for consultation in August 2008.

Oppose Heathrow Expansion

The Mayor does not believe the economic benefits of the third runway match the environmental costs. He believes the consultation on Heathrow was flawed and should be conducted again, as it failed to make any noise assessment of flights moving to all-day rather than half-day. He is also concerned that by 2010, at its current size, Heathrow would breach mandatory EU air quality limits. For these three reasons, the Mayor will lobby the government to withdraw plans to expand Heathrow.

Watch Boris talking about the Heathrow decision

The Mayor held a special meeting to discuss the expansion of Heathrow Airport on 21 January 2009 at The Beck Theatre in Hayes.

Encourage more hybrid buses

The Mayor believes London's bus fleet should be converted to less carbon-intensive fuel, and will monitor closely technological developments in this area with the intention of deploying it within London's bus fleet when possible. He will push the other C40 cities to maximise their collective purchasing power when the price is right.

Review remaining stages of Low Emission Zone rollout

The Mayor believes improving air quality must be a GLA priority. He will review the Low Emissions Zone (LEZ) to ensure it is working effectively and achieving its aim of improving air quality without impacting on small business.

Exempt ambulances from Low Emission Zone

The Mayor is concerned ambulances fall foul of the £200 LEZ levy and will exempt them completely from the next stage of the rollout.

Working with Government on air quality

There are concerns that some parts of London will not meet the European targets for air quality. The UK Government and the Mayor of London have committed to working together to identify further measures, to ensure the UK will meet the limit value for PM10 in 2011. These measures could include national, London and local measures as necessary.

Further information on air quality – working with Government

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Public involvement

Increasing green spaces to grow food

The Mayor has launched 'Capital Growth', an innovative scheme to turn 2,012 pieces of land into thriving green spaces to grow food by 2012. The project aims to identify suitable patches of land around London and offer financial and practical support to groups of enthusiastic gardeners or organisations who want to grow food for themselves and for the local community.

Watch Boris on the launch of 'Capital Growth'

Insulation schemes

The Mayor is concerned that few Londoners have signed up to existing home insulation schemes and believes evidence from around the UK shows that a one-off Council Tax rebate is the biggest incentive for people to install insulation. He will work with British Gas and the boroughs to introduce a Council Tax rebate.

Environmental crime phoneline

Provision of a non-emergency number for reporting environmental crime will make it easier for people to report and track fly-tipping and other offences in their local area.

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Research

Commission study on hydroelectric power for electricity on the Thames

The Mayor will commission the study as part of a drive towards using London's existing natural and man-made infrastructure to provide heat and power to meet some of London's needs.

Mayoral prize for low carbon technology

The Mayor will stimulate research within low carbon technology by introducing the first Mayoral prize of £20,000 open to all London graduates and judged by a panel of academics.

Investigate geothermal heat pumps in Crossrail tunnels

The Mayor believes considerable decentralised heat can be generated using existing infrastructure, such as Crossrail, being built across London. He believes exploring geothermal heat pumps will complement discussions with Thames Water on providing decentralised heat to homes built in the Thames Gateway by using supply channels to the Barking Power Station.

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