Charles Newman reports on the opportunity for community waste organisations to tap the largely overlooked potential of construction and demolition waste

When we talk about waste, it's usually about the materials we as individuals find ourselves dealing with. However, as most readers of The Waste Paper probably know, household waste only accounts for about nine per cent of the UK's total waste arisings. What's more, commercial waste - the other main area of activity for the community waste sector - only makes up another 12 per cent of the total.

Obviously, this means that there is a lot of material that third sector enterprises are not involved with. Much of it is because it results from industrial processes, and as such, those producing the waste deal with it themselves or they need large-scale contractors. The same goes for mining and quarrying. And until now, many thought was the same was predominantly true for the biggest waste producing sector, the construction and demolition industry.

Those familiar with the stats already cited will know that this sector accounts for almost a third of all UK waste arisings, approximately 90 million tonnes. What is perhaps less well known is the potential for small-scale operators to play a part in using these waste materials as resources. This is one of the primary concerns for the Defra funded initiative BioRegional Reclaimed, which is challenging the prevailing approach to sustainably managing waste in this sector.

"The construction industry, as it currently is, tends to start about halfway down the waste hierarchy by focusing on recycling. There is still little talk about the reuse of construction products," notes the project's coordinator, Jonathan Essex.

He's keen to emphasise that we are talking about products, not just materials. A significant issue is that there is a real focus on recycling, which means most of the funding for infrastructure is spent on this instead of reuse.

"What we would say is if you recycle something you avoid the waste going to landfill, if you re-use something, say bricks, as well as saving that same waste to landfill you also save the energy."

For example, every tonne of bricks manufactured results in the equivalent of 878 kilogrammes of carbon emissions. However, currently there is a real focus on recycling bricks and making aggregate from them (to be used in road building, etc.), instead of trying to reuse these bricks. While producing a tonne of aggregate from conventional sources only results in 15 kilogrammes of carbon emissions.

From October of this year, all building and demolition sites will be obliged to Site Waste Management plan. This has the potential to act as a real driver for change, though as Essex acknowledges, much will depend on the contractor because the process is one that involves self-certification. However, the opportunity is there for those that want to take it.

A key ingredient for success has to be raising awareness of the potential for reuse. According to Jonathan Essex, part of the problem is that it's quicker to recycle and this is currently seen as desirable. This is something he feels is at odds with the overall process: "At the moment you've got clients who structure contracts that require demolition contractors to take down buildings very quickly. Even though they might have spent three years in a planning process, suddenly they've got to be taken down in two weeks rather than four weeks."

So what's the scope for reuse or reclamation, and is there a typical method for doing this? "I don't think there is such a thing as a typical building site because every demolition project is different. When we engage with a housing estate built in Edwardian times, pretty much all of that is going to be tiles, bricks or timber, which could be reclaimed and reused.

"When you knock down a 1960s town centre made of concrete and steel and glass, the opportunities of reclamation are limited it's more a question of can all of the glass be segregated and recycled. There are opportunities to reclaim steel and that's probably about it; the concrete could be recycled into aggregate or into gravel type ones, but the opportunities aren't that high. So it really does vary from project to project."

The Arkenside Hotel

Significantly, although a reclamation plan will normally take longer than one for demolition and recycling, this does not mean it is worse financially. A good example of this is the recent dismantling of the Arkenside Hotel in Cirencester undertaken by the Minchinhampton Architechtural Salvage Company. The 12 week systematic deconstruction of the Victorian building cost £34,000, but brought in £80,920 income through the sale of materials, primarily its Bath 'Ashtar' limestone. This meant the process had a net income of £46,920.

The alternative approach of mechanical demolition (not taken) would have required far less time, cost less (£29,000), but brought in no income as crushed materials would instead be taken to landfill. It's not difficult to see why dismantling is the preferred option.

Jonathan Essex notes that the real costs and benefits are not always recognised: "It's not really down to labour costs, it's down to the way in which clients want the minimum time for a building to come down. Quite often if you allow more time to take a building down you can actually have more labour involved and less heavy machinery. In doing so you can then reclaim bricks, which when reclaimed from houses London could be resold for £1 per brick. So the labour cost isn't the constraining factor."

In America, this approach has developed in a major business for the third sector organisation Habitat for Humanity. Over 150 cities there now have material re-use centres, or 'restores', all run by a combination of paid staff and volunteers, accounting for 20 per cent of all DIY sales in the US.

Stocks come through a mixture of sources: individuals, site deconstruction and notably the construction industry itself. The latter channel is encouraged by tax rebates that construction companies receive for passing on their unwanted building materials, something Essex would like to see mirrored over here. Irrespective of this, existing waste legislation, notably the landfill tax, has the potential to drive this market forward in the UK and this is the current focus of the BioRegional Reclaimed programme.

As part of the Defra funded initiative, the organisation will soon be running two events in conjunction with WasteWise. Open to anyone, 'particularly those interested in taking this agenda forward', these events will take place at the Bioregional HQ, Beddington, Surrey on 10 September and Cambridge on 11 September. For community waste organisations, this represents an opportunity in many respects comparable (and compatible) with wood recycling projects.

Those wishing to find out more can download A reclamation led approach to demolition from http://www.bioregional-reclaimed.com/Case%20Studies.htm

This event is FREE to all CRED-funded projects.

For further information on the forthcoming events email gemma@wastewise.org.uk or call 01223 411494.