What happens to North London’s waste at present?
The North London Waste Authority (NLWA), covering Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Waltham Forest, managed 892,000 tonnes of municipal waste in 2009/10. This is the waste collected by local authorities, which mainly comes from households and also some businesses.
In 2009/10 the NLWA and the seven boroughs recycled and composted just over 23% of municipal waste.
However, there is some way to go to reach the overall Government target of 30% recycling by 2010 and the authorities’ jointly agreed targets of 35% recycling and composting of municipal waste by 2010 and 45% by 2015, which is in line with the Mayor of London’s plans.
A new composting facility opened at Edmonton in 2005, enabling the composting of an additional 30,000 tonnes of green and kitchen waste each year.
In 2009/10, 36% of the waste received by the NLWA was used to generate electricity at the Edmonton Energy from Waste Plant. This prevents over a quarter of a million tonnes of North London’s waste from going to landfill every year.
Most of the remaining waste is transported to landfill sites outside London, by road or rail. The main transfer stations, where waste is deposited before being transported to the landfill sites, are in Islington, Hendon, Edmonton and Enfield.
Municipal waste represents only about one quarter of all of the waste produced. Of the remaining three quarters (approximately 3 million tonnes), about one million is comprised of commercial and industrial waste while there is about two million tonnes of construction, demolition and excavation waste each year. A higher percentage of this waste tends to be recycled.
At a London level, approximately 44% of commercial and industrial waste and 85% of construction, demolition and excavation waste is recycled.
However, the Mayor’s draft Business Waste Management Strategysets an ambitious vision for achieving at least 70 per cent recycling or composting by 2020 for commercial and industrial waste, at least 95 per cent recycling and reuse by 2020 for construction, demolition and excavation waste, and generating energy from any waste that cannot be recycled, using non-incineration based technologies.
Further information on the management of waste in North London is available on theCapitalWasteFacts website and in the North London Waste Authority’s Annual Monitoring Report 2009/10.