Greening Whitechapel

City market leads the way in waste recycling

London’s bustling and colourful Whitechapel Market, selling everything from salmon to saris, has suddenly gone greener and cleaner – as the first market in the country to recycle nearly 100% of its rubbish. The council has given each stallholder two lockable bins. One is for green waste, and gets hauled off for composting twice a day. The other, for everything else, is sent for sorting and recycling.

"This is the best thing to happen to the market,” says Atiqur Rahman, a fruit and veg trader there for more than 20 years. “The floor is much cleaner… it’s good for the environment and it’s good for business."

While supermarkets attract most of the blame for excessive food and packaging waste, it’s easy to forget that a street market can generate waste equivalent in weight to 55 double-decker buses every month. The weekly yield from the Whitechapel initiative is nine tonnes of food for composting and a similar weight of cans, plastic, paper and glass. Tower Hamlets council alone is responsible for nine other street markets besides Whitechapel, more than any other London borough. How long before its plans to roll out the scheme to all ten are matched across the capital? – Julia Sussams

21 August 2008

Julia Sussams