The amount of waste recycled and composted fell in almost half of London’s 33 local boroughs according to data published this week by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The data shows the biggest fall was in Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea which both saw a 7 per cent decline and that recycling rates were down 5 per cent in Lambeth and Wandsworth.
The Mayor has set a target for 45 per cent of household waste to be recycled by 2015, however the capital currently only recycles 34 per cent.
DEFRA’s figures also show that the proportion of London’s household waste incinerated in 2012/13 was 40.9 per cent, an increase of over 5 per cent on 35.7 recorded in 2011/12.
The increase is one of the fastest since DEFRA started publishing this data thirteen years ago.
London Assembly Member Jenny Jones said the increases were “disappointing” and “undermine the drive to treat waste as a resource and just reinforces the idea that it’s ok to just burn as much as you can get away with”
She added: “There is great potential to convert food waste into green energy and compost through anaerobic digestion, but this has hardly got started.”
