Better recycling facilities for people who live in flats and support for new projects to make energy from rubbish are among proposals to divert all of London's waste away from landfill by 2025.

London Mayor Boris Johnson's draft waste strategy aims to reduce to zero the amount of waste going to landfill, in a bid to save money for councils and taxpayers and reduce the greenhouse gases of the capital's bins.

Londoners generate four million tonnes of "municipal" rubbish from homes, some small businesses and street litter, which costs £600 million a year to deal with.

Much of it goes to landfill sites which are filling up and getting more expensive, as a result of rising taxes aimed at stopping too much waste ending up in the ground.

As well as costing money through landfill taxes, the rubbish can produce greenhouse gases such as methane as it breaks down, while recycling materials such as metal uses less energy and resources than creating new products from scratch.

The capital has the worst recycling rates in England, at 25 per cent, a figure which is also lower than other major world cities such as Berlin, New York and Sydney.

But cutting landfill, boosting recycling and generating energy from waste could save London £90 million a year, the draft strategy said.

It lays out ways the Mayor can work with boroughs to raise recycling rates, efforts to increase the number of innovative facilities to get energy from waste and measures for cleaning up the streets, cutting packaging and boosting the amount of goods which are reused or repaired.

Mr Johnson also plans to ask the Waste and Recycling Board, which he chairs, to contribute funding to help reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

The strategy sets London-wide targets for boosting recycling from current levels to 45 per cent of waste by 2015 and 60 per cent by 2031, and the Mayor has written to borough leaders to urge them to redouble efforts to boost recycling.

With half of London's homes consisting of flats or multi-occupancy buildings, more needs to be done to make it easier for those households to recycle. Funding from the WRB could be used to help change bin chutes in blocks of flats so they can take recycling as well or put collection points near doorways or other convenient spots.