London Waste Action

London generates an enormous amount of waste, and deciding how it should be managed has been a priority for the new Mayor of London.

In early 2000 the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, issued a draft plan for dealing with London's municipal waste. London Waste Action, a voluntary group advocating solutions to the capital's waste problems, decided to convene a consortium of voluntary groups, London Boroughs and private waste companies to produce a response to the Mayor's plans.

Dialogue by Design was asked, through The Environment Council, to run a consultation process to gather and collate stakeholder comments on the Mayor's proposals. The document was some 250 pages long, so we knew this was going to be a challenge. Fifty-three people made detailed comments on some or all of the document's thirty or so sections, generating a total of about a thousand comments.

We collated and grouped the results to produce a response document. This was reviewed in a small face-to-face meeting and a number of recommendations added to the final response document before it was presented to the Mayor and the London Assembly.