London Mayor Ken Livingstone has declared war on waste as he begins to draw up his strategy devised to increase "sustainability" in the capital.

Environment reporter RICHARD SIMCOX reports.

TWO extra planets would be needed to support life on Earth if everyone lived like Londoners according to a new report.

A group of researchers found every resident of the city eats so much and produces so much waste it takes the space of five football pitches to support each person.

Early results of the City Limits study, commissioned by the Institute of Wastes Management and launched recently, suggest each year in London we eat 730,000 tonnes of vegetables and produce eight million tonnes of sewage.

Londoners also discard 18 million tonnes of rubbish annually and this is why London Mayor Ken Livingstone is concerned.

Last week he unveiled his plans for the future of waste management in the capital and he says we need to recycle and clean up the streets.

At the moment, London only recycles or composts about nine per cent of its rubbish, below the national average 12 per cent.

Launching the draft Municipal Waste Management Strategy, Mr Livingstone said: "I am a keen recycler myself but we all need to start thinking about how much waste we produce and what we do with it."

Last week the News Shopper reported Mr Livingstone had written to the Department for Trade and Industry asking it to turn down plans for a massive incinerator in Belvedere because it has not been proved it would be the "best practicable option".

And he fears the amount of rubbish the average Londoner produces each year could double in the next 20 years unless we take action.

This is echoed by Best Foot Forward, the environmental consultants carrying out the City Limits project.

Director Nicky Chambers said: "This is an exciting opportunity to measure the sustainability of one of the world's greatest urban populations and provide people with an understanding of what ecological sustainability actually means."

The researchers plan to map out an "ecological footprint" of London, a measure of the city's impact on the environment, by collecting data on energy and material consumption, waste production and transport use.

Mr Livingstone said: "I warmly welcome this initiative. Ecological footprinting is a vital tool we can use to measure our progress towards achieving a sustainable future."

His draft strategy is now being looked at by the GLA's environment committee and the public should be consulted some time early next year.

Strategic keypoints

WHAT is in Mr Livingstone's waste management strategy? It includes:

l Plans to extend kerbside collections of recyclable rubbish. At present only 46 per cent of Londoners have access to this service

l Encourage more people to recycle by opening up civic amenity and community sites as recycling centres

l Establish a "presumption against incineration" as a way to tackle rubbish because of fears over public health

l Start at the grass-roots by encouraging people to think twice about how much they throw away

l Set up a Capital Standard programme to improve street cleanliness

l Set up a single London Waste Disposal Authority for the whole of the capital

July 30, 2001 12:18