London Environment Strategy consultation

I think about the environment all the time. It is important to my being. I try to grow vegetables and when I buy try to buy locally at Turkish greengrocers without packages. When I do have packaging I recycle it and food waste too. I think plastic packaging should be banned on food.

I live in Hackney and we have recycling collections every week for food waste and other recyclables, and every two weeks for garden waste. One of the main problems with food waste recycling is storing it. If you leave the caddies outside, foxers tend to come and get into it, and if you have it indoors, it gets smelly by the end of the week and takes up too much space. I know quite a few of my neighbours do not recycle food waste for these reasons. Personally I think food waste should be recycled, but I wonder if there is a more effective and efficient way of doing it. I also think it would be good to try to stop people wasting food in the first place.

I find the whole system complicated and unworkable - i try to empty things into the correct bins, food and garden is the easiest to work out - but the unrecyclable and the recyclable are not very clearly marked, and in every single borough in the UK the rules seem to be different about what you can mix up!

UK needs a clear unified national system......to be instigaged...so everyone body knows what they need to do, including marking of plastic  / reclyclable items, where to put them, and a national system of separating things....ie what goes in what bin.....even a national colour code for bins would be useful.

The food I eat is not defined by the packaging, although I prefer not to eat processed food where possible. 

I choose to buy my fruit and vegetables from a local vendor. No plastic involved. And I also support local farmers by having a fruit/vegetable box delivered to us. It works better for us: cheaper and more enviromental-friendly. I have also switched to making my own laundry/washing cleaners with natural products.  Thanks God our borough takes recycling from us every 2 weeks (for how long? no idea). Food waste is composted for our garden so we also save money on buying products for the garden. The truth is that as we have to tighten our belts because of the economy uncertainty, we have devised ways of saving money that result in minimum waste at our household.

I do try to recycle everything. Unfortunately there is a lot of packing materials that are nonrecyclable and that\s the problem we have to attack. Packaging should be done in a way that it can be recycled so people does'nt have to throw it to the normal garbage. On the other hand, I believe that yes, compost should be mado and maybe used in order to lower the pricing of the ones sold in the street.

As already stated London needs a city wide composting scheme, We do not have a container for food waste, so my food waste goes in the public bin, I would keep it for the dustman for unfortunently they only collect once a week.

Also the packageing on fresh fruit and veg is just disgraceful, I go shopping once a week and end up with a carrier bad full up with wrappings from the food I have just bought, all the good things we are suppose to eat like fresh fruit and veg, are all covered in plastic, and some of them 2 coats of plastic, it is a nightmare !!!!

I do my best to buy fruit and vegetables produced in this country hoping that less energy is used transporting them. I also have a compost bin which works very well and put meat, bones, bread in to the food waste bin provided by my local council. Glass, plastics and paper and general rubbish are also taken away by the council having been sorted in to the appropriate containers.We have six bins in total.

Packaging: I try to buy produce that is not packaged although this is increasingly difficult to find - in particular with online deliveries where the retailers want us to buy a pack of 4 items and so on.  This should be prohibited as much as possible.  All produce should be unpackaged or packaged only in fully recycable packaging, which mostly is not. All small rolls of plastic bags in grocery retailers (used to put your produce in) should be replaced by cheap recycled paper bags or with recyclable food bags (such as those used for refuse collection food bins.

Food waste: Again the multipack drive means that you might be forced to purchase more than you need - increasing food waste.  Similarly there are a lot of 2 for 1 offers etc. which again encourage consumers to buy larger quantities and create more food waste. I think the 'Best Before' date should eliminated as consumers perceive that to be a date after which they should be discarding the produce.  Often that's not necessarily the case. An example of that is milk / dairy products, which can be find several dates past those dates.

I believe we should be forcing retailers/manufacturers to do more to invest in recyclable packaging / having no packaging by having heavy tax on those products that do.  This would make the products with recyclable packaging/ without packaging the cheaper alternatives driving consumption for the mass consumer into the right direction.  Typically money speaks.  Education would be nice but we know from other debates such as healthy nutrition that the impact is far lower on actual behaviour.

Agree that all boroughs should also recycle food waste and collect food waste.

Food choices are made on what i like, want and can afford.  My council has a 5 bin collection which is difficult to manage but has to be done.  Then the council where i work has a 3 bin collection - both are operated by Veolia - and i wonder if all the waste goes to the same operational plant for processing.  Recycle packaging and food waste at home and work would be 'yes' but i am not sure if Veolia resort the waste at the processing plant.  

We recycle as much as possible along with compost. In Southwark we have a great recycle centre for all the big or large items. 

Napkins could do with a change. Currently a napkin comes in two half's. We cut in half and one use half each. Don't need more. If simple and has little impact except on ribs night. 

Encourage more bars and restaurants to stop serving with plastic straws. 

We recycle as much as we can.  However, the packaging of ALL food stuffs needs to be reduced to the absolute minimum.  What is wrong with selling foodstuff loose like we used to do many years ago?  There was very little food poisoning and the like then.  There is no justification for excessive wrapping of these products.

A lot but choice is limited. We have a greengrocer who sells mainly loose fruit in brown paper bags and veg, but is not open outside working hours. We have our own compost (smelly but rewarding) and the Council collect bones, cooked and baked food etc weekly. 

Could not supermarkets (who are open when we want to shop) use cardboard packaging and brown bags ? Is there no clear packaging that is recycable ?

How about reusable or swappable packaging ? It seems absurd to throw away egg containers, and why not have similar for other loose fruit. Plastic is acceptable when it is reused and eventually recyclable,

We live in a larger modern tower in Tower Hamlets and the council doesn't seem to provide composting options for us. So the organic waste just goes into the normal waste - which really hurts. I think it should be mandatory for councils to provide organic waste collection.

I always think about the environment when buying food, and recycle wherever possible.

I do my main grocery shopping online and it's nigh on impossible to get vegetables in anything other than plastic wrapping. 

All plastic wrapping should be scrapped, especially as we now know there are viable alternatives.