The environment has been one of the most discussed topics of the last year, all of it leading to the United Nations summit on climate change which aimed to get world leaders to come to some binding conclusions about carbon emissions. Although the summit was a failure by most accounts, it did force countries to take a harder look at themselves to see the ways in which they were failing to do their part to reduce waste and increase recycling. The United Kingdom is one country that realized it had a lot of work to do, especially in London, which ranked near the bottom of the list of major cities when it comes to recycling rates. Mayor Boris Johnson hopes that a new scheme he is backing will get the recycling rates in London to a respectable level.
The scheme, which is an idea that comes from America, is called Recycle Bank and it allows households to get shopping vouchers or give donations to charities in the amount of the value of their recycling. In his proposal for waste strategy Johnson estimated that the average household in Britain would get about fourteen pounds per month under the new scheme. Johnson said that his aim was to get London on the same level with other major international cities when it comes to recycling, and that he hopes to save nearly ninety million pounds per year through better recycling and more investment in green technology.
In London only about a quarter of all rubbish gets recycled while the majority of the remainder ends up in landfills or going to incinerators.
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