Since February 2024, the council and its contractor Veolia have operated two night-time recycling rounds in Covent Garden, Soho and parts of Fitzrovia and Victoria.
To date, the council has collected an additional 1,650 tonnes of mixed recycling through the new service, equivalent to an additional 1% on the council’s waste recycling rate.
This equates to 50 tonnes of mixed recycling and cardboard collected directly from businesses every week – which otherwise would have been disposed of with general waste.
The operation uses quiet electric refuse vehicles in an effort to avoid disturbing residents.
In October, the council also added night-time food waste collections directly from restaurants, bars, pubs and hotels. It estimated that food waste equals about a third of all waste produced at night.
The waste is taken to an anaerobic digestion facility in Hertfordshire to be turned into biogas and biofertilizer.
The council said that its next challenge is to find a solution for collecting waste glass at night without creating excessive noise levels for its residents.
The council estimated that about 20% of the waste generated at night by the hospitality industry is glass.
‘Working closely with hospitality’
Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, cabinet member for city management and air quality, said: “We are committed to increasing commercial waste recycling and diverting more waste away from incineration which will reduce costs to the council and make it easier for businesses to become more sustainable. We are working closely with the West End hospitality industry to help them segregate their food, glass and cardboard so that they can be collected separately.
“Finding a way to collect glass waste at night is proving more difficult, because of the noise impact of loading bottles into the refuse vehicles, but we are looking at different options and working with the hospitality industry to find practical solutions.
“Westminster is at the heart of London, the greatest city in the world, and the council aims to deliver first-class public services 24/7, 365 days a year.
“Thousands of West End residents are able to sleep soundly as the waste is collected by quiet electric refuse vehicles.”
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