Mayor does his bit for recycling by launching his own Freecycle scheme
Boris Johnson set out plans to create a City Hall version of Freecycle today as part of his strategy on waste.
The Mayor's "Reuse Network" will put Londoners in touch with charities and groups that repair items or help pass them on. It will tap into established schemes such as Freegle and Freecycle and will collect, store, refurbish and sell on everything from furniture, books, carpets and bikes to cookers and fridges.
Mr Johnson believes 1.7 million reusable household items could be diverted from landfill every year, representing 40,000 tonnes of waste.
The £8 million scheme will provide a single "reuse hotline" and web portal serving the whole of London.
The first "cluster" will be set up by Western Riverside Waste Authority which manages waste from Hammersmith and Fulham, Lambeth, Wandsworth, and Kensington and Chelsea.
Mr Johnson said: "It is a common sense use of our natural resources that we provide ways for people to hand in items they no longer need, but which still have plenty of useful life in them.
"This will help slash the mountain of waste being sent unnecessarily to landfill and cut the heavy economic costs of doing so."
James Cleverly, chairman of the London Waste and Recycling Board, added: "Re-using products saves the energy associated with manufacturing new ones, which has an enormous impact on reducing carbon emissions."
The plans, set out in the Mayor's draft waste strategy, also include giving councils incentives to use re-cycling methods with lower greenhouse gas emissions, rather than basing them on weight. In practice, this will encourage an increase in plastics and metal recycling as well as food and garden waste composting.
City Hall estimates the plans could save 1.6 million tonnes of carbon a year, including energy saved from lower manufacturing levels. This is the equivalent of £90 million off the capital's £4.4 billion electricity bill and £24 million off the £2.5 billion gas bill.
By 2015, the Mayor wants the capital to be recycling at least 45 per cent of its municipal waste rising to 60 per cent by 2031, sending no municipal waste to landfill by 2025.
