London Environment Strategy consultation

It has to go beyond London to solve the plastic packaging problem, though it would be great to see a London-wide co-ordinated recycling and composting scheme. I think we have a great system here in Greenwich and it would be good to know that other boroughs do as much.

Public bins for sorting rubbish would be good - general waste and recycling bins clearly marked for the public to use.

I'm always conscious of the packaging on the food I buy - I only buy Percol coffee as it's the only brand with recyclable packaging in my local supermarket. Even the ones that look like paper packaging aren't recyclable. It's infuriating that Sainsbury's tomatoes are packaged in little cardboard boxes are then wrapped with non-recyclable plastic or film, so I try to buy through my local fruit and veg shop which allows you to buy only what you need in a paper bag!

I'm not sure what influence the London Assembly could have on food manufacturers to change their attitudes to food packaging - I think we have to take some control ourselves and make the right choices.  There are plently of alternatives; environmentally-sound takeaway coffee cups, paper straws, compostable plates or boxed for takeaway food - like those in Greenwich Market.  It would be great to see more outlets being conscious of the alternatives.

But I wonder how many people don't know or care about packaging? I think a London-wide 'rubbish and recycling' education scheme would be useful, followed up by fines for those who don't adhere to the rules for household recycling, or those who litter the streets. And is there any way to encourage food outlets or supermarkets in London to reconsider their packaging? Or have a low-plastic waste zone or encourage Scandinavian-style bottle deposits.

I recycle everything I know can be re-cycled and also put all food waste in the composting bins.  However, I am aware that there are varying re-cycling arrangements around the capital and, indeed, the country, such that no-one knows what can be re-cycled at different locations.  I believe there is a case for standardisation across the country and better education, perhaps in the form of a government education programme, to educate people as to what can be re-cycled, and what cannot.  Finally, I strongly prefer the carrot, not the stick, approach to this practise.

The thing the upsets me the most about London is the rubbish. Most of what gets thrown into the streets is fast food containers and most of this is not recyclable. I would like to see all fast food outlets forces to use recyclable or biodegradable packaging. 

Actually, I’d like that to be the case with all food packaging. 

I have a wormery to compost my leftovers and recycle everything I can. I would choose a sustainably packaged food over the current plastic films/blended products that can’t be recycled. Unfortunately these are very uncommon and staples we all need come in plastic.  

I go out of my way to buy food that has minimum packaging (preferably plastic-free), and always have a full meal plan for every week so that I only buy exactly what I need to keep food waste for a minimum. I've been really pleased that Lewisham has started collecting food waste on top of the usual recyclables, but for some reason we have lost the ability to recycle textiles. I sew a lot of my own clothes so I have a lot of scraps which are too small to use, so I'd like to be able to recycle those.

Food containers should have marks to identify the kind of plastic or card that they are made from. Then sorting by both the general public and the collectors of rubbish would be simplified and the public made more aware of what they are disposing. The amount of polution due to single use plastic is getting to be unmamangable and control of what happens to plastics left laying about should be better handled. After all some countries like Switzerland manage to achieve this aim.

My family is committed to recycling becasue we have seen the environmental damage caused by non-biogradable rubbish in industrialized and developing countries.  Urban rivers in Asia filled with tyres and polystyrene, plastic bottles and fishing tackle washed up on South American beaches, used plastic bags snagged by the wind onto branches of trees and bushes in Africa, and debris from toilet paper to plastic straws floating among the coral when snorkeling.  We are poisoning our planet and this is unsustainable.  The only way to begin the long road to resolving this crisis is to convince everyone to 'do their bit'.   

My heart bleeds when I see all the fruits in supermarkets senslessly packaged in plastic containers. We are first world country yet we are so backward in terms of being ecology friendly. We should try to force supermarkets to have fruits and vegs loose and give out either compostable bags for them or even better - encourage customers to use reusable bags. Customer would weight fruits either themselves or it can be done at the till, no problem with that.

Also as someone else already said, there should be London-wide composting and recycling requirements. I work in Southwark and in our office we don't have composting bin or even a bin for paper, this is unacceptable.

Glass and plastic bottles - can we come up with collection points and pay few pence for each? Can supermarkets arrange collection points?

I recycle as much as I can, vegetable peelings in the wormery, food waste and tin, glass,cardboard,paper and plastic recycled by Merton Council.  But what I find very annoying is all the wrapping on foods.  I gather the black plastic trays for meat cannot be recycled, so why use them!  Why can't all plastic food trays be replaced with cardboard?  Supermarkets are the biggest culprits when it comes to producing plastic waste - a cucumber does not need to be wrapped in plastic, cauliflower does not need to be in a plastic bag, mushrooms do not need to be in plastic trays etc.  The supermarkets need to be forced into cutting down on all plastic wrappings and find something more environmentally friendly.  The one time use plastic bag should be banned for all retailers this would encourage consumers to take their own and stores to only use paper bags.

I think about the environment a lot when shopping, however it is very difficult to make good choices given the amount of packaging on all products in supermarkets. I recycle whatever I can, but of course most plastic is single use and can only be recycled once so I would prefer not to have plastic packaging in the first place. Lots of clothing is also made using plastics that create greenhouse gases and use large amounts of energy and water. Producers need to change their practices so that we are able to make better choices as consumers, instead of asking us to recycle once it’s been made, this is unsustainable.

We try to buy seasonal foods, and minimise food-transport miles.  We also try to avoid over-packaging and look for packaging that is recyclable.

We compost food waste, and recycle all recyclable packaging.  Wandsworth, where we live, won’t recycle plastic bottle tops; I know this is done and would welcome that small change here. Maybe this is the kind of thing GLA could make work? Working towards a set of standards for waste disposal and processing that must be observed by all LAs.

I def think about the environment- I am vegie for environmental reasons, always cook from scratch to limit packaging, and grow as much as I can, obvs doing my own compost (being a rare beast with an allotment in London).  But- having to watch the pennies it annoys me that cheaper veg is always packaged (at least in supermarkets where I shop) so you have to throw out single-use packaging.  There isn't enough recycling (because there are so many different types of plastics and many of them aren't recyclable anyway), and the fact it varies from borough to borough is nonsense.  It annoys me also that some of the packaging which used to be reusable (eg ice cream containers from robust plastic, which meant you could store rather than trash leftover) is now no more.
I don't know what can be done about supermarkets single-use packaging (a big tax maybe?), but there definitely needs to be community composting, especially on estates.  I also see loads of green waste left after street markets which goes in with regular rubbish (and likely happens in supermarkets too)- a proper community compost would mean it's easier to get that stuff recycled.  I think there should be way more cooking classes covering absolute basics- realising you can mash almost any starchy veg and just curry/satay/sauce pretty much anything else means we're rarely throwing out gone-off food these days.  I also think people need to be helped to know that growing a bit of your own food is brilliant (and it's a helpful way to start thinking about the waste around food).  Windowsill schemes- a tumbling tomato for every terrace!

Why do Supermarkets have to sell so much fresh fruit and veg in perfect matching shapes and sizes and all wrapped in plastic? I accept that suprmarkets give their customers what they but surely by now consumers must be wondering what happens all the "mishapen" and "ugly" fruit and veg? It would also surely be fairer on the farmers too if supermarkets took fruit and veg as it came rather then the perfect looking pieces.