Boris Introduces New Recycling Scheme

Love him or hate him, blonde haired, bumbling, posho Boris Johnson wants to introduce a new scheme to the UK which rewards recycling efforts by handing out shopping vouchers to people.

Boris Johnson hopes the scheme rewards recycling households as he aims to cut the amount of rubbish going to landfill sites to zero within 15 years.

Johnson is backing a London-based trial of an American scheme called Recycle Bank, which gives householders shopping vouchers or donations to charity to the value of how much they recycle.

Johnson estimates a typical London household would make £14 a month under the scheme, one of a series of proposals contained in a draft municipal waste strategy.

Figures show the capital’s recycling rates lags behind both the rest of the UK and other international cities.

Johnson, who chairs the London Waste and Recycling Board, wants to save £90m per year through more recycling, better coordination and greater investment in less polluting technologies to either dispose of waste or convert it into a local source of energy.

Just 25% of the 4m tonnes of household waste generated each year by Londoners is recycled, with half going to landfill sites. The remainder goes to incinerators.

The cost of managing this waste is approximately £600m every year, with wide variations between boroughs’ recycling rates.

Johnson is writing to all London borough leaders to ask them to redouble their efforts in recycling and – with landfill rates set to increase from current associated costs of around £245m to £307m by 2013 – reminding them of pressure on future council tax bills if they fail to act.

The Tory mayor believes the carrot, rather than the stick, should be among the strategies applied to improve London’s ranking by rewarding those who opt to recycle rather than imposing penalties on those who don’t.

The American Recycle Bank scheme is in line with Conservative interest in the “nudge” theories of American sociologists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and has so far been adopted by Tory-led Windsor and Maidenhead council.

Other incentives to reduce landfill include schemes to encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable bags in an attempt to turn London into Britain’s first plastic bag-free city in time for the Olympics in 2012.

The mayor wants the capital to be recycling at least 45% of its municipal waste (which includes street litter, grass cuttings and some waste from small businesses as well as household waste) by 2015, rising to 60% by 2031, sending “zero municipal waste” directly to landfill by 2025, with any residue from other waste processing being banned from landfill by 2031.