Kathryn Wright, General Manager, Cawleys Waste Management
Waste management practises will polarise – solid, back-to-basics local recycling of a few core waste streams on the one hand and highly sophisticated, science-based solutions on the other.
Here’s why this has to be the case. In 2016 China accounted for 50 per cent of the EU’s paper waste according to the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat). By 2018 it had declined to 26 per cent and will drop further. A bale of paper waste is considered contaminated if it contains 0.5 per cent of the wrong material.
Waste streams have to be segregated scrupulously if they are to have any value and some, such as waste cardboard, are now worth almost nothing at all. It’s hard to see how from an economic or logistics point of a view a busy construction site will be able to achieve anything like the level of clean waste segregation needed to meet the 0.5 per cent contamination level for paper that is required.
But there are other materials on a construction site such as scrap metal, wood, plastics and plasterboard that do have value and need to be stored, collected and recycled efficiently. This is why from 2020 waste systems need to be even more streamlined, and processes re-assessed. Have you got a waste management collection system that reflects the latest market economies? It may actually be possible to achieve higher recycling rates at the same or lower costs through the introduction of new working practices or approaches.
Does your waste management partner pass all general waste through an automated sorting system, a Materials Recycling Facility (MRF)? This will extract all possible resources from any waste that hasn’t been pre-sorted and could save time and space on site.
Do you know where your waste goes and how it is treated once it leaves your site? If not receiving one already, ask for a monthly report of the different waste streams being collected and processed by weight and onward destination.
Most waste management companies will offer a free audit and this can be a very worthwhile where sites are using different building materials or construction approaches, producing
different outputs.
The construction industry is awash with sub contractors of every trade, but how much do you know about your waste contract; what element of it is sub contracted if at all, and what impact does that have on the carbon footprint of your recyclate?
Transport mileage is another key consideration, to identify the distance waste is transported for recycling and reprocessing. If the resource has a very high value or is very rare, then a long journey could be essential, as is the case for example in recycling electric car batteries to extract the lithium ion. But long distance transportation of construction rubble could be less worthwhile.
Carbon footprint of waste and recyclate can vary enormously by geography and another good question to ask is whether the fleet being used is as fuel efficient and well-managed as possible. Ignorance is not a defence and these are easy questions to ask.
The board, shareholders or customers may demand to see transparent waste management practices of materials leaving the site but waste occurs at every stage in construction. It’s important to take a holistic view of resource consumption.
For example, a feature in Science Direct reported that between 10 – 30 per cent of the total weight of building materials delivered to a building site are damaged, lost or over ordered and therefore wasted.
Are over-ordered materials stored and protected so that they can be sold on with all the necessary guarantees and quality standards? The challenge of reusing materials in the construction industry is well known, and is the subject of several of the talks at FutureBuild 2020.
Many of the solutions which enable building materials to be recycled, or used in their original state but in a new application, hinge on technology. Accurate, searchable records of the movement, use and age of material is crucial. But whatever technology enables the resource to be used again, the importance of its clean, temporary storage and transportation cannot be overstated.
Margins in waste management are incredibly slim, as they so often are in construction, and this is why an open and honest dialogue, which aims to streamline systems and services must be the focus for 2020.
Housing and construction companies play a huge part in driving the circular economy and the most innovative waste management companies will want to identify new solutions and options on the journey with you.