Request for information on funding for recycling initiatives

Further to our email acknowledging your EIR request (reference 2022-192), our response is as follows.

You requested information on:

• the funds available ‘for initiatives to recycle items left out as “waste”’
• the sources for the funds available
• whether the same sums or different sums will be available next year.

The £120,000 you refer to in your enquiry is the North London Community Fund. This year the fund was  increased from £60,000 to £120,000 for grass roots organisations to run projects which will reduce waste in our communities. An additional £130,000 is being made available in 2023 to scale up existing projects or run them over a longer period of time, bringing the total budget up to £250,000.

The fund is part of the Authority’s Waste Prevention Plan which sets out the approach to engagement, outreach and communications to enable waste reduction for the next two years up to March 2025. The Authority allocates a budget of around £1m per year to deliver this plan. NLWA is funded by a levy paid by boroughs. The North London Community Fund, and the Authority’s other waste prevention activities, are funded by these levies.

Regarding funds available ‘for initiatives to recycle items left out as “waste”’, there is no provision in place to remove recyclable items for household ‘black bag’ waste collected by councils. This waste includes a large proportion of items like food, nappies, cat litter and sanitary products, which contaminate recyclable items making them unrecyclable.

The Authority does however remove recyclable items like mattresses and wood at the Edmonton EcoPark and waste transfer stations, which would otherwise be incinerated or sent to landfill. It is also increasing the number of items that can be recycled and reused at its Reuse and Recycling Centres, including polystyrene. The Authority is building a new Resource Recovery Facility which will enable more recyclable items to be separated out. The operational costs for reuse and recycling centres and transfer stations is approximately £7.1m in 2022/23. This will increase to approximately £8.8m in 2023/24 as the new Resource Recovery Facility at the Edmonton EcoPark begins operations.

A major proportion of household waste is food, so the Authority is also working with boroughs to trial a scheme to provide food waste recycling to flats above shops, which have not previously had this service.

If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to raise a further information request. If you would like to complain about our handling of information requests, you can do so by emailing this email address (informationrequests@nlwa.gov.uk) or using the enquiry form on our website.