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Sustainability and the built environment
amount of waste we generate by reducing the amount of resources we use in the first
place. The issues of waste energy needed to create products and packaging, along
with the waste generated by the consumption of the resources themselves, can be
addressed by employing the well-established waste hierarchy shown in Figure 16.
Figure 16 - Waste heirarchy
Solid waste
High volumes of household and consumer waste not only result in loss of materials,
but also create environmental problems and shortages of suitable sites for waste
disposal. There is a steady move towards ‘polluter pays’ taxation and legislation,
which effectively increases the cost of generating waste. In the UK this is increasing at
a rate of 25% per annum. Household waste is increasingly coming under ‘pay as you
throw’ schemes which charge the householder directly for waste generated. The move
towards polluter pays systems will impact heavily on the construction industry, where
the large volume of materials has combined, in the recent past, with inefficient design
and working practices to create large quantities of waste.
Waste minimisation and management programmes can be employed in the
construction process to minimise waste. These systems are gradually being adopted
as industry standards through legislation. It is important that such systems are
adopted at the outset of any project, are co-ordinated throughout its duration and
involve the entire project team; this ensures continuity throughout the phases of
a building’s life. Planning must reflect the broad issues of the disposal process,
including transportation from site and ultimate disposal. Design can accommodate
storage and recycling facilities for both the on-site work and the end user.
Co-ordination up and down this chain can lead to significant overall reductions in
waste and improvements in both resource and operational efficiency.
Information on benchmarks for construction projects is readily available. Organisations
such as WRAP in the UK provide excellent resource documentation along with studies
on product life cycles (see www.wrap.org.uk). Establishing benchmarks benefits us
both environmentally and financially by enabling realistic future targets to be set.
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