Last week, the Green Construction Board released a roadmap identifying ways the UK’s construction sector can reduce its waste. Currently, the sector is the biggest producer of waste in the whole of the country, contributing two thirds to its overall waste. According to the map, waste costs the construction industry £11bn per year, and contributes 3.5m tonnes of CO2 to the country’s overall emissions.
Given the significant scale of the waste footprint, tackling disposable products from the industry is a crucial step in the UK’s achieving its net zero emissions targets – yet as it is an industry that has seen no reductions in waste for nearly a decade, it is not a simple demand.
In the new Routemap – prepared in collaboration with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – strategies to implement recycle and reuse schemes are laid out. Initiatives include designing buildings according to ‘end-of-life’ principles – promoting the dismantling and repurposing of materials over disposal.
“For existing buildings and structures, as they approach the end of their current use we should seek to repurpose them for new uses, and if not possible, demolish them in a way to ensure the maximum amount of product and material is reused, recycled or recovered,” a press release on the subject reads.
“We emphasise that to meet a target of Zero Avoidable Waste robust measurement systems are needed to enable consistent and regular monitoring which ultimately feeds into the development of a National Materials Strategy,” it adds. “At that point we can begin to realise a true circular economy.”
In the same release, Construction Leadership Council (CLC) co-chair Andy Mitchell said the Routemap ‘sets a way forward’ for the industry’s waste reduction.
“It will encourage many in the industry to take a fresh approach to what might be seen as a familiar topic, but it’s one which we need to see some real changes in,” he said. “The CLC supports GCB to help improve our overall resource efficiency, and through the Performance Framework we will be able to demonstrate industry progress on this important topic.”
The new Routemap sits in the wider context of the UK Government’s push to eliminate all types of ‘avoidable waste’ by 2050, as laid out in its 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy. Among the targets set out in the Routemap, there is the aim to reduce costs by 10% by 2030, eliminate construction and demolition waste from landfill by 2040, and reduce soil to landfill by 75% by 2040.
