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  BBC 27 Jul 06
The forgotten front in war on waste
VIEWPOINT Paul Drechsler

Recycling rubble may not be sexy, says Paul Drechsler of Wates Group but in this week's Green Room he argues that a concerted effort is needed to stop 36 million tonnes of construction waste ending up in UK landfill sites each year.

Thousands of column inches are devoted to the environment, the threat it faces and how we must act to reduce our impact on it now and in the future. One of the issues at the centre of this debate is the question of how to cut waste.

While household waste is being addressed, the UK continues to ignore a sector that creates three times more waste than the nation's 21 million households put together - the construction industry.

Recycling rubble isn't sexy, but it is the foundation on which an effective UK waste strategy must sit.

Pressure from the EU and an understanding that changing individuals' behaviour will create a trickle-down effect through society has naturally led successive governments to focus waste initiatives on households.

However, domestic refuse accounts for only 10% of total waste in the UK, while the mountain of waste from construction remains a peripheral issue. The result is a situation where the construction industry continues to create 36 million tonnes of landfill waste each year, which is more than one third of the UK's total. If standard-size skips filled with this rubbish were laid end-to-end, they would form a two-metre-high wall stretching round the equator one-and-a-half times.

Environmentally, we are now at a point where swift and meaningful action to break down this wall has to be taken.

Knowledge is power

The limited understanding about waste from the construction industry has been partly driven by a lack of meaningful data. The opportunity for change would be greatly assisted by sorting out the information that flows into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and publishing it on an annual basis so the industry can monitor progress.

The commonly held perception is that measures do not exist to reduce, reuse and recycle construction waste, a view underlined by the lack of industry-wide targets. However, a glance across the English Channel reveals that Germany and the Netherlands reuse or recycle 80% of construction waste, while Denmark has passed 90%.

It is not only possible for our industry to reduce construction waste, but there are isolated examples of excellent practise that demonstrate that the knowledge, expertise and solutions required do already exist.

What made the difference to attitudes towards household waste was the adoption of targets for reduction. This kind of public declaration sets out a clear commitment to a course of action that consequently fosters confidence in the associated sectors vital to make reduction real.

Resources become more carefully targeted, investment is made in recycling stations and markets for recycled materials emerge more quickly.

This month we published a report called Target: Zero, setting out the obstacles our industry needs to overcome if we are to meaningfully reduce in the construction waste mountain, and committing Wates to eliminate non-hazardous landfill within five years.

The report also identifies simple and effective solutions which we know work.

Simple steps

As with food, packaging of construction materials creates an immense amount of landfill.

Last year Wates Living Space, our affordable housing business, fitted 29 miles of kitchen worktops, which came wrapped in 58 miles of thin cardboard.

By working with manufacturers to create re-usable protective packaging and training people to respect the materials they handle so they don't get damaged, packaging waste can be quickly reduced.

The over-ordering culture endemic across the construction sector has emerged partly due to lack of communication. Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) estimates that this results in 13 million tonnes of fresh materials being thrown away every year.

Involving contractors at the earliest stage of a project would enable more exact calculation of quantities required and the design of just-in-time delivery methods to minimise weather damage.

These steps, along with others detailed in the report, are simple remedies but they will effectively reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill. Furthermore, they can reduce operating costs and have the potential to generate new revenue streams through recycling markets if approached in the right way.

With estimates suggesting that the UK's existing landfill sites could be full in as little as six years, the construction industry must accelerate progress. Wates is working with organisations across the sector to stimulate the leadership that is vital to meaningful waste reduction, with the aim of arriving at an industry-wide target and a timeframe for its delivery.

The public is playing its part by recycling more. I am confident that the construction industry can also rise to the challenge.

Paul Drechsler is chairman and chief executive of Wates Group, a UK-based construction company The Green Room is a series of opinion pieces on environmental issues running weekly on the BBC News website.
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