London Environment Strategy consultation

Where We can we recycle food packaging. However if it’s soiled it can’t be done.

Would prefer biodegradable food packaging.

We don’t use compost however it would be great if we could recycle food waste with rubbish collections if we could have hygienic secure bins.

I would love the Mayor to ban styrofoam packaging London-wide. This is the beige-coloured packaging used mainly by kebab shops and takes over 80 years to decompose and is very dangerous to wildlife. McDonalds stopped using it for food packaging in 1990. It is already banned city-wide in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C

UK recycling is a complete tragedy of inefficiency. If proper recycling is to be achieved there HAS to be penalties against those (individuals, companies, schools, householders, everyone, etc.) that don't fully recycle. As I teacher I believe schools should be at the very forefront of recycling every itty bit of ‘school waste’. I see at school lunchtime a single bin taking all sorts of food, cans, plastic and cartons. This to me is criminal. Of course, there has to be infrastructure in place that is able to collect the minutiae of all items to be recycled right down to bottle corks, foil from confectionary sweets, house building and renovating that chucks copper wire cuttings from electric repairs into skips. It’s easy to choose to recycle paper and card and plastic bottles and the varied cartons and ‘tins’. What’s just as important is the little bits of ‘material’ that should be recycled as well.

I do think about the environment. I like it that our local vegetable stall wraps in paper bags and will use your bags on request. Plastic is useful but only if it can be used again and again and again... I wish supermarkets would avoid one use plastic packaging. I'm very lucky and have my own Compost bin. What will i do when i can't do the laborious work  of seiving my compost? What should i do if i downsize and can't have a compost bin? Many in London mudt be in this position. How do we reduce food miles? I can grow fruit and herbs in my back garden. But l can't feed myself from my small garden. How do we educate our children that we can't keep hoping that it will be alright? Eating meat is delicious but how do we justify the land footprint required to support our meat habits? How do I know that the clothes I buy are not made on the back of mistreatment of others?  When I cycle to work are the exhaust fumes of vehicles safe? Thank goodness for our parks and commons. And a public transport system that covers much of London compared to  other capital cities. And why do we not have blocks of flats without drying rooms ( unlike the DDR)? Why do we allow so many cars to be resident in London? That is a starting point. There are many more questions.

I always try to waste as little as possible and recycle as much as possible. But I live in Wandsworth and food composting isn't a service that's offered. I like someone else's suggestion of standardising how things are done across councils. And I would be willing to pay slightly more for food composting and better recycling - couldn't councils offer more additional add ones than they do?

buying products out of season or from the other side of the world is very bad for the environment and even for your health because that veg or fruit has been picked unripe from the plant in order not to arrive rotten in the Uk so there are no nutirnts in it. I try to buy as much as possible food in recycled packaging but supermarkets overwhelm you with unnecessary plastic wrapping all the time. I also buy organic and fair trade as much as possible so I know the food I'm eating had less of an impact on the envirnment and on the people growing it.

I buy no vegetables, other than onions, as I grow all the rest myself ( Allotment holder )

Meat, fish all come form shops with a known-source policy.  Cheese comes form specialist shops.

Milk & Butter from supermarkets, but the butter is always also form a "known source"

My digestion is in excellent shape!

In our London borough, flats aren't provided with blue recycling bins; it seems shocking that, with all of the recent publicity about plastic & the need for much greater levels of recycling, we can't get access to ordinary recycling bins.

I agree, I would like to be able to compost food waste but our borough don't do it.  Leftover food goes into the general bin, I don't have a garden compost as I am concerned about rats/foxes.

There is also a lot of confusion about Tetrapaks, plastic trays, broken glass etc... we need some a London-wide, clear strategy.  Seems ridiculous that recycling is a postcode lottery.

I recycle as much as I can - more recycling bins in london , plastic bottle deposit machines, weigh rubbish bags and charge households / business for non recycling waste , more faith things r recycled often I see bin men and cleaners mixing up bags of rubbish and recycling. Smaller portion sizes on takeaways , less packaging used , more free water everywhere, 

It really annoys me that there aren't proper recycling bins everywhere in London. I try to take stuff home if it's recyclable but it's not always possible. I still buy food in plastic packaging but given the choice I would choose food that is sold in less or recyclable packaging. We have composting in our borough. We stopped composting for a while due to its popularity with our resident ants but we've started up again. We buy compostable caddy liners/bags which are £4+ per roll. It's mad that the price of these products means composting is a kind of niche pursuit for the well off. A lot of people just couldn't pay £4 for these bags and then they'd have loose food in the composting bins which could get quite smelly in the warm weather - especially in London where space is at a premium.

I always sort my waste and prefer less packaging where possible. Biggest bug bear is when the rubbish is collected and what us dropped is left on the road. Our roads are only swept every 12 weeks where as before they swept after the rubbish was collected. We also need more rubbish bins in picnic areas for people. This would all contribute to saving the environment.

Why don’t you explore behavioural economics to understand what nudges you can implement to encourage more environmentally friendly behaviours?

also, this message board sucks. What’s with the dated tech from 1997?! Not user friendly!

Move over large stores such as Tescos and Lidl that require people to drive or to have deliveries and enable smaller independents to flourish again - reignite the high street with local produce, encourage people to buy local.  There are some great farms and markets that we should be proud of - some are dwindling, from Romford market to Petticoat Lane.  Enable these to grow again.  Cycling with a basket on the back of the bike whilst having a regular chat with a stall holder - community at its best. 

As for recycling, there are way too many inconsistencies which lead to confusion even amongst the best intended folk.  It's also not easy to get recycling bags.  Create consistencies and standards.  No rocket science.  Promote it - not just on bus shelters but ensure private developments are aware of what they're meant to be doing.  Follow the rest of Europe's lead.  With council tax issuances, via email, in local press, on bus shelters, just keep it simple and make it doable.  Then people will follow. 

Just to add  an idea - where supermarkets cannot avoid packaging (e.g. punnets for berries), it would be great if I could return the packaging to them once used. Perhaps making such packaging re-usable (wooden punnets?), rather than single use plastic, would help too (a la milk bottles).