Over 200 companies have signed up to WRAP’s Construction Commitments: Halving Waste to Landfill scheme

This is a voluntary industry initiative designed to collectively halve, by 2012, the amount of construction, demolition and excavation waste which goes to landfill each year in the UK.

However, there are only two demolition contractors in their number. This is somewhat surprising as demolition accounts for over 90% of construction waste and managing it is the single biggest cost for the demolition contractor.

The Site Waste Management Plan Regulations (SWMP), which came into force last year, require contractors to estimate the quantity of each type of waste expected to be produced and track their recovery and destination throughout the lifecycle of the project.

Whilst this only applies to projects exceeding £300k in value, in effect this means that all but the smallest projects must have a SWMP.

Signing-up to the WRAP scheme obliges contractors to go much further and set specific targets for reducing waste to landfill, embed these objectives into their corporate policies/procedures and report/publish their performance.

Demolition contractors can thus influence the overall performance of a project by ensuring that the waste generated by the demolition, 90% of the total for project remember, is re-used or recycled or at the very least diverted from landfill. In effect we seek to produce not waste, but product from the demolition process.

With landfill taxes rising at a rate of £3 a tonne every year (by 2010/11 landfill tax will be at a whopping £48 a tonne) it is in a demolition contractor’s interests to recover and re-use or recycle as much waste as possible.

Use of WRAP’s Quality Protocol for concrete aggregate also enables demolition operators to leave greater quantities of graded aggregate on-site (for use in the build phase) and so further reduce costs and CO2 generation of transporting it off-site.

There remains a lot of room for improvement as clients and designers get to grips with the ICE demolition protocol which calls for early design work to seek to make use of the demolition products.

If the demolition contractor can be given clear requirements on the products which might be needed during the build phase, then he can look at the raw material and see what can be generated during the work, be it high grade road sub-base, medium grade fill for voids, for piling mats or for later landscaping to materials such as slate for re-incorporation in the new building.

Paul Clarke Scholes is the HSQE manager for Clifford Devlin