Case studies: Waste & recycling in the construction industry

It's been a long time since the UK was labelled the 'dirty man of Europe' because of its inability to deal effectively with waste products. Sterling efforts have been made since then to improve things.

Three weeks ago, the government published its waste strategy for England making clear that the construction industry is in its sights and will be made to improve - and soon. This is understandable, since the construction, demolition and excavation sectors generate more, and more hazardous, waste in England than any other industry, using the highest tonnage of solid material resources.

In the Waste Strategy for England 2007 report, the government says it will ban recyclable waste from landfill sites, increase landfill tax by £8 per year from next year and halve construction waste to landfill by 2012. By 2009, many construction projects will have to demonstrate material resource efficiency as part of the contract.

A close reading of its annex on construction waste shows how ineffective the industry has been in the past at even the simple things, such as segregating waste, managing surplus materials and using recycled products.

The industry is also gearing up for more work from climate change initiatives. In the report, the government warns it will use the leverage it exerts through control of the public sector purse strings to "elicit the desired behaviour change down the line from the main contractors to their supply chain members". Effective site waste management will be the goal. And time is running out for the unwary. By April next year it could be mandatory to produce site waste plans before work starts on the large sites under current proposals out for consultation until next month (CJ 23 May).

Some firms are already cleaning up their act, admitting past mistakes and acknowledging the business benefits, with support from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP). Small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) are also being targeted. But things move slowly. Carl Herrick of Blueberry Homes Group notes: "We get offered all sorts from the big sites. They throw things away to hide them because they don't want people to know they have over-ordered." Now those dirty little secrets will be exposed.

The client's view

The government is intent on using the public sector to spearhead its waste reduction and recycling initiatives. The second largest construction client in central government after Defence Estates is the National Offenders Management Services (NOMS), so it was an obvious target.

NOMS is responsible for the construction, maintenance and refurbishment of the 128 prisons across England and Wales with a capital budget of £500m in the current year. WRAP approached NOMS to show what could be achieved by setting minimum targets.

Faithful+Gould carried out an audit of one of its current schemes, the £29m construction by Interserve of workshop and education buildings at Her Majesty's Prison Ranby, in Nottingham, to benchmark the organisation's current performance. It showed that NOMS is already achieving a good level of recycling content at 23%. This could be increased at no additional cost to 29% by choosing products with a higher recycled content, thus preventing more than 5,000t going to landfill on this one project.

Following WRAP's involvement, NOMS also has a strategy to reduce waste overall. Steven Wheeler, sustainable development officer at NOMS, says: "These were two important issues when we developed our key performance indicators (KPI). There is a large range of materials on the market with higher recycled content that offer similar cost and performance to their peers, so we were keen to set a target that would be challenging, but attainable.

"On the whole, contractors are aware of sustainability issues and are proactive in finding ways to meet these targets."

Based on the outcome of this study, NOMS has implemented a new minimum requirement of 20% recycled content as a KPI for its framework of 12 construction consultants.

The major housebuilder's view

No one likes to throw money down the drain. But that was what Laing Homes discovered when it launched an audit of one of its housing schemes - Langley Park in Beckenham, Kent. The site is one of its largest developments, comprising 43ha, which after the demolition of the existing industrial buildings is being turned into an estate of 75 luxury houses and flats.

As developer and builder, Laing was in a powerful position to control the waste management initiatives. One of its first steps was to train its staff and reinforce the message with site notices. Other visual reminders included colour-coded skips for segregating waste into hardcore, including bricks and blocks, timber and general waste.

Laing instructed its demolition contractor to make available for recycling the materials obtained during demolition. This resulted in half a million clay roof tiles being removed, cleaned and repackaged for reuse, saving around £80,000. Additionally, 40,000t of concrete was crushed on site and used as bulk fill, capping and sub-base, saving just under £500,000 in disposal and material purchasing costs, as well as 3,000 lorry journeys to and from site.

Over an initial six-week period, Laing carried out an assessment of the amount and type of waste arising on site and being dumped in skips and why. The main waste was found to be brick and block, followed by timber, then cardboard and plastic packaging.

Embarrassingly, the timber was mainly returnable pallets for which the company had paid a refundable deposit and was then paying again for disposal. The audit changed all that: efficient storage and re-use of the pallets is now the norm.

Contractual controls enable Laing to bring subcontractor behaviour into line on site. It produced an environmental plan that subbies had to comply with and make allowances for in their bids, including using designated, colour-coded skips to segregate waste, and being responsible for clearing their own work areas of waste and debris upon completion. These lessons are being rolled out across other Laing projects.

The small builder's view

As managing director of a small niche builder, Blueberry Homes Group, Carl Herrick is in pole position to watch and learn. He and his brother have built up the company since 2003 and now have a turnover approaching £1m for their upmarket housebuilding and development operation. They have just won a clutch of awards at the Home and Garden Show at Chester for a penthouse conversion in the county.

Under the WRAP SME initiative, the focus of their recycling has been on the refurbishment of offices for Babor, a professional cosmetics company. Blueberry's unashamedly green approach to the job won favour with the client. It included recycling timber, copper, cable and lead. "The timber is the bulkiest part," says Herrick, "so we hired dedicated timber skips from JWS, measuring 33.4m2 compared with the standard builder's skip of 6.7m2. They cost only £180, compared with £100 for the standard size.

"Normally everything gets thrown into a skip, so there were add-on costs for sorting. Now copper and lead are brought back from sites to our offices to be put in dedicated containers, and we use a local guy to recycle cabling after stripping. Cardboard is recycled back at the office in skips. These are things we never did before. Everything would have gone into mixed skips and ended up in landfill."

Any savings? Definitely, he says.

It will also gain Blueberry more work with environmentally conscious clients, he believes. As work mushrooms, Herrick plans more recycling: the firm has a big demolition job coming up where it intends to recycle the bricks and concrete into hardcore.

One surprise for Herrick has been the enthusiasm of the workforce. "I thought they would not have wanted to do it because it is much easier to throw things into a skip, but they are 100% behind it. Now it is set up, it is much easier to do."