Recyclable materials

I agree with the comment by

@WillRouth

"The Mayor needs to take stronger action and be more ambitious in tackling single use plastic. London should be a World leading environmental city - part of which should mean no single use plastic.

We must create and normalise a refill culture in London, facilitated by massively increasing the availability of free drinking water, and placing refill points in Transport for London stations is the best way to do this. I fully support the campaign asks and justification of Water for London and suggests the Mayor adopts this as it would have a massive impact on designing out disposable plastic waste from London."

---we need recycling yes, but more than that need a stronger stance on businesses so single-use plastic isn't used in packaging in the first place

The Mayor needs to take stronger action and be more ambitious in tackling single use plastic. London should be a World leading environmental city - part of which should mean no single use plastic.

We must create and normalise a refill culture in London, facilitated by massively increasing the availability of free drinking water, and placing refill points in Transport for London stations is the best way to do this. I fully support the campaign asks and justification of Water for London and suggests the Mayor adopts this as it would have a massive impact on designing out disposable plastic waste from London.

I believe my council will charge to remove furniture, but when I needed to dispose of a wardrobe which was still in good reusable condition, I booked a collection with the British Heart Foundation as donation, and not only did they collect it for free, they managed to sell it.

Maybe this is not possible yet but sometime in the not too distant future, I’d really love councils to collect all waste & recycling and to work with companies that process waste on top of the usual recycling, such as Paper Round.

I am very keen on recycling. A few further comments..... 1) the large wheely bins outside London's small houses are HIDEOUS and a blight on the appearance of our streets. My preference might be for a communal area within easy reach - perhaps on each street and ideally close to a bicycle store or central area of electric vehicle charging points. 2) Home composting should be encouraged 3) I think we are generally pretty ignorant of what happens to our waste once it leaves our homes, so more education on this might encourage more recycling.

I think it's hard for those that don't have cars to take waste to recycling centres so much just gets put out with the general waste or dumped in the street. Bulky waste collections should be cheaper or free so people don't see it as prohibitive cost. It would mean less fly tipping?
Small electrical goods could be collected at local recycling centres.

I agree with a lot of the comments; improved and more frequent services from the council re collection of food waste (takes up a decent amount of space in the general waste bin, and yes if the general waste bins outside are full; it's party night for the local foxes) other items like batteries, printer cartridges etc. I live in a block of flats and separate collection of these items is currently not available to us. We have a recycling centre nearby, but that is only accessible for vehicles, so that's no good for people who don't drive

My Borough, Enfield, used to include plastic bags in its recycling - it no longer does and has people checking our recycling bins to ensure we don't put these in!! This is ridiculous. Plastic bags must have a recycling value so why doesn't Enfield allow them?

Hello The Mayor's office & Everyone,

I have just completed my project of cycling ON the river Thames and picking up plastic litter from Lechlade to Tower Bridge and I am appalled by what I saw. Really sad ;( Findings here: https://www.thethamesproject.org/

What about the following ideas?
1. Have a Litter Czar of London?, just like our London Night Czar have (my friend's idea)
2. Schedule a "Londoners Cleanup Challenge", like a game just to offset everyone's plastic footprint of the month ?

What do you think guys?

I am very glad to hear that The Canal & River Trust is planning great things already.

When I was a child most fresh produce was wrapped in paper or paper bags. Newspaper was used for the outer wrapping and packages were usually wrapped in brown paper and tied with string - all less bulky and more recyclable than moulded plastic, polystyrene, etc. But then retailers would have to pay store assistants to do the packaging!

London likes to see itself as the forward thinking innovative city, whereas we are actually so far behind on a lot of environmental initiatives its ridiculous! I can't believe we don't have plastic bottle take back schemes here at all. Coffee cups need to be desperately tackled also due to the sheer amount that are sold on a daily basis. I can't believe that we are still not targeting zero waste to landfill in 2017!

Cooking oil. Where does it all go?! We must be in a serious minority as a family who collects our cooking oil and takes it to the dump a couple of times a year? We need to be able to recycle it easily. Our drains a thick with built up grease and fat.

I wish Camden would collect food waste from us in Covent Garden. We used to live in King's Cross in mansion block flats. They were able to collect from there, so I don't understand why they can't collect from here - especially as there are loads of restaurants here. It's crazy to put all that food waste into bins. Also, people need educating on how to recycle, as my neighbours dump all kinds of things in the bin that can be recycled and often dump their rubbish in the recycling bins. It seems unbelievable to me, but I was educated by my parents to recycle, so I had a head start,