Waste in the contstruction industry
Waste Management and the Construction Industry in Wales
2010
Ioan
Prydderch
20 I 01 I 10
2010 is set to be another
year when waste hits the top of both the political and
environmental agendas and those not up to speed with the ambitious
and challenging plans afoot to tackle waste management in Wales,
should read on.
Last year saw a number of
announcements by the Welsh Assembly about their plans for Wales to
become a ‘zero waste’ nation by 2050. A Zero Waste nation is
defined by the Welsh Assembly Government as having a ‘100%
resource-efficient economy where material flows are cyclical and
everything is reused or recycled harmlessly back into society or
nature’.
The Welsh Ministers have
made no bones about the fact that they want Wales to lead the way
globally in terms of developing sustainable development strategies
to tackle climate change, including waste management plans.
The culmination of this
was the launch last summer of the consultation, ‘Towards Zero
Waste’, which sought views on the proposals put forward to deal
with the growing problem of what to do with all types of waste
generated by the country.
Municipal waste aside,
however, it is the construction industry which is bearing the brunt
of scrutiny over its waste management practices, and although we
avoided the introduction of mandatory Site Waste Management Plans
that came into force in England in April 2008, the construction
sector in Wales faces an ongoing challenge to manage waste.
EU Waste Directives have set targets and actions for Member States
to meet and Wales is no different.
Indeed, the development
of the Site Waste Management Plan Regulations in Wales is already
in hand at the Department for the Environment, Sustainability and
Housing and those involved in construction projects without
provision for such plans will need to be prepared for these
regulations when they come into force.
The idea of Site Waste
Management Plans is not a new one, having come into focus under the
Clean Neighbourhoods and Environmental Act 2005. Such plans
have proved effective to date in helping to reduce waste generated
by construction and demolition works.
Site Waste Management Plans are considered to
present best practice and ensure that prior to works commencing, a
plan is in place to identify what waste will be generated by the
project and how it is to be dealt with. The larger the
project, the more detailed the plan and the aim is to improve
resource-efficiency generally within the construction and
demolition industries.
Where Site Waste Management Plans are being
adopted, it is important for the parties to be clear in their
contract documents and arrangements:
- When the plan is to be produced, (it must be
before commencement of the works); and
- Who is to benefit from any cost savings
generated by any reductions, recycling or reuse?
The Welsh Assembly
Government is also keen to promote the idea of waste minimization
obligations and is working with Constructing Excellence Wales and
WRAP Wales, who can offer waste minimization advice to the
sector.
In addition to waste
reduction, the focus of the Welsh Ministers is very much on the
vast array of possibilities presented by waste for recycling and
reusing waste itself as a resource. Construction waste has
become an enormous problem for Wales and although parts of the
industry (notably in the civil engineering and major contracting
sectors) have been successful at learning their ‘Three Rs - to
reduce, reuse and recycle’, there is still a significant amount of
work to be done, particularly by construction companies and the SME
sector.
In order to reach the
goals set out in the various strategy documents, the Welsh Assembly
Government has made it clear that over the course of the next few
years, the construction industry can expect a number of things to
happen:
- Producers of waste are to become more responsible for the waste
they produce or cause to be produced:
- Landfill sites are to be phased out
- Waste will be classified in terms of environmental
benefits. Those with a high benefit include food, paper,
card, wood, metals and plastic.
- Increased numbers of regulations, targets and monitoring to
track waste management
- Support for sustainable development and design options
prioritizing waste reduction
So, is this likely to all
be plain sailing – probably not. The cost benefits of using
recycled materials are far from clear, given the ready availability
of new materials and price of recycled materials. And lets
face it, in the current economic climate, financial considerations
are much more likely to be at the top of the agenda in construction
organizations than green issues.
Cultural changes too,
within the industry, from a high-waste profile to a high-recycling
one, will take time and commitment and dare I say it.
The hard facts, as
confirmed by studies by the Environment Agency and WRAP, are that
the construction and demolition industry is still sending millions
of tones of waste to landfill each year, with no notable signs of
those amounts being reduced. There are only 8 years of
landfill space left in Wales, so the clock is ticking.
On the bright side,
however, the appetite for good corporate social responsibility
credentials has grown over the last few years. Many of our clients
have been dealing with waste strategically and responsibly for some
time. In my view it is likely that the construction and demolition
industry will surprise itself further with what it is able to
achieve in response to developments in the legislation. However, it
probably remains to be seen whether the sea change appearing at the
top end of the industry will successfully filter down to some of
the tens of thousands of SMEs operating within the sector in
Wales.
Certainly, the work of
WRAP and Constructing Excellence Wales in advocating change, in
terms of more aggressive waste management, has been very well
received. When WRAP launched its campaign to halve waste to
landfill by 2012 last year, many would not have predicted the
strength of support. Hundreds of signatories to its
initiative have committed themselves and their organizations to not
only working on waste management for their own operations, but to
using their commercial leverage to insist on similar action down
supply chains.
All this then, must surely mean
that 2010 will continue to see us moving closer to those stringent
EU Directive goals and fulfilling the aspirations of the Welsh
Assembly Government Waste Management Agenda. As always,
however, success depends on communication and the effective
dissemination of information to those critical stakeholders who
have the power – and the will - to make change happen.
For more information
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Ioan Prydderch
Partner, Head of Construction, Energy and Projects
E ioan.prydderch@hughjames.com
T 029 2039 1127