How Do You Solve a 135m Tonne Waste Problem?
Being top of a league table isn’t always welcome – particularly when that league involves the production of waste. Around 60% of the UK’s waste (that’s around 135m tonnes of it) comes from the construction, demolition and extraction industry.
Construction waste takes on even greater significance when you consider every tonne of material that could have been recycled or reused, but isn’t, has to be substituted by virgin materials that consume large amounts of energy in production.
A 135m tonne problem doesn’t have a simple solution. Finding answers means looking at how we build, how we manage resources and how we view buildings that no longer fit their intended purpose. It needs different ways of thinking and different types of accountability.
Digital Construction
Making the entire value chain more resource efficient is a key challenge. Digital construction should bring greater precision to the quantities of materials needed and make it possible to design buildings that meet performance criteria with less material input. Digital construction also makes it easier to control building dimensions to match standard product sizes.
It should also be possible to improve the extent to which buildings are designed to be dismantled. Valuable components can then be more easily recovered.
Reduced waste is one of the potential benefits of offsite construction, which also has the advantage of building to precise dimensions and retaining any waste within a controlled environment and chain of custody. Osborne has specified the use of Structural Insulated Panels from our Innovaré subsidiary on many projects.
Concrete Waste
Concrete is a particular problem. Some concrete waste is currently crushed and used in road bases, for example, but there are opportunities to use it in higher value applications. Much of it goes to landfill, even though the technology exists to separate it into constituent parts and reuse it. We have to get over the perception of recycled concrete being an inferior product.
Plastic Waste
The construction industry makes a 50,000-tonne contribution to the plastic waste created in the UK each year. We are working with materials suppliers to reduce plastic wrapping materials without compromising health and safety or material protection. Meanwhile, the immediate focus is on better waste management.
Through our membership of the CECA (Civil Engineering Contractors Association) Environment Group, we are part of a Plastics Working Group. We have engaged with some mutual suppliers, starting with Lee Brothers to look at where the main sources of non-recyclable plastic are and where we could substitute with other solutions.
We’re also involved with the ASBP (Association of Sustainable Building Products) and will be focusing on a few unique initiatives to reduce the use of plastic in construction projects. Whatever we learn we plan to share as widely as possible.
We are at the early stages of this journey but we are collaborating to make a difference.
The Circular Economy
Tackling construction waste is part of a growing awareness of the benefits of a circular economy. A UKGBC working group has published a client guide on how to put circularity principles into projects.
The circular economy has three main principles:
- Design out waste and pollution
- Keep products and materials in use
- Regenerate natural systems
- Point 1 is addressed through modular construction, BIM and digitalisation.
With regard to point 2, Osborne is actively pursuing ways to put materials back into the material flow stream, such as routing waste glass cullet from a social housing window refurbishment project to a glass manufacturer to be remade into float glass. This at an early stage.
Re-use portals such as Globechain or our own internal tool allow projects to post surplus materials. These are also important initiatives. Globechain is very successful across many sectors as is Synergie 4.0 which we are investigating.
There are many solutions that need to be coordinated to make a significant impact on construction waste. Osborne is determined to play its part and we are improving our ability to plan waste handling into all of our projects. This involves predicting what types of waste will be created and in what quantities, and identifying beforehand how they will be managed.
