0.Wasteland Waste Management
Waste management assistance for suppliers
The construction industry is the largest user of materials in the UK and produces the biggest waste stream in terms of weight. In 2016, 63 % (120 million tonnes) of the total waste stream in England (189 million tonnes) was attributed to construction, demolition and excavation waste.
An efficient waste management on construction and demolition sites is crucial for a long term sustainable and circular economy. The entire building profession needs to collaborate closely towards reducing its tremendous waste production by improving its means of communication and collaborative work processes. Nille Juul-Sørensen, Arup’s Global Architecture Leader says: “we need to get the whole supply chain together to identify overlapping obstacles, remove the barriers, show the opportunities and discuss how to work together. Contractors might see the benefits of CE (Circular Economy) but mainly they see the risks; we need to remove these and show them the opportunities. We need to engage with them about where they get their materials, how much they use and what can be reused.”
0.Wasteland is a platform that allows builders, architects, and developers to exchange materials waste generated by construction and demolition sites. This platform will manage and pick up the waste from multiple construction and demolition sites and transfer it into a physical storage where the materials will be organised and then re-distributed for re-use on other construction sites. This project aims to create a collaborative framework for waste management on construction sites. Also, it will create an awareness on the impact of construction waste on the environment and carbon footprint as well as promote the economic value of salvage materials among the building profession.
This proposal will introduce the first phase of the waste management process of 0.Wasteland. This first stage aims to collaborate and guide the suppliers in the deconstruction of a building. It pre-designs how the waste is organised in the first place on the construction site before it get transferred to the physical storage. This initial waste organisation phase is fundamental for the general efficiency of the process. It allows to preserve the quality of the waste and its re-use potential in the long term. Nowadays, the construction industry is driven by “time and money”, most clients and contractors cannot afford to spend time on waste management issues. Usually, the waste is sorted on site in a complete anarchic way, the fastest possible. Entire buildings are razed by excavators, the waste material is smashed and then send to landfill. 0.Wasteland aims to encourage the construction profession to collaborate to deconstruct buildings in a planned way as it can bring every
one economic profits in the long term. Indeed, valuable parts of the building such as floorboards, ceramics, doors, windows as well as structural elements, bricks, concrete, metal and timber are lost.
Why is it difficult to manage waste on construction site? Why is it fundamental for 0.Wasteland to primarily anticipate the waste quality and its organisation before it arrives into the physical storage?
First, this proposal will examine the issues of contemporary construction sites waste management and their impact on the entire material recycling and re-using processes. Secondly, it will show precedent methods of collaboration between builders, architects and developers allowing efficient waste management. Thirdly, this proposal will determine the design of the initial stage of waste management of 0.Wasteland.
CHAPTER 1:
The contemporary issues of the construction industry and waste
THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE CONSTRUCTION WASTE
Nowadays, the amount of construction waste is globally and continuously increasing. According to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, the construction and demolition industry generates one third of the global material waste and consumption. Worldwide, 11% of the total Co2 emission is due to the construction industry and in Europe, 54% of the construction and demolition waste is landfilled or burned. The construction industry reduces entire mountains of valuable material that could be re-used to rubble each year. For instance, the UK produces per year 70 151 260 tons of building material waste and the EU produces 385 580 000 tons. There is an urgent need for the construction industry to realise its impact on the environment and become a circular economy.
THE PROBLEM OF DEMOLITION AND CONSTRUCTION WASTE IN A MASS PRODUCTION ERA
Since the 20th century, the development of mass building production and the increasing population in urban areas transformed existing building elements from valuable assets into waste that should get rid of in landfills. Because of the lack of space in contemporary cities, the location became more worth than the building itself. Nowadays, buildings are too often demolished and replaced in order to create new profits. Those building needs to be demolished as quick as possible in order to reconstruct a new building and inhabit it. The collateral environmental impact is huge, it generates continuous extraction of raw materials, it affects the natural ecosystem and emits carbon gases into the atmosphere. Most of the waste is placed into landfill and burned. The waste can be crushed and recycled however this industrial process requires a lot of energy too. (ROTOR, 2020)
Fig.2
CHAPTER 2:
PRECEDENT EXAMPLES of circular material waste management on construction site
ANCIENT HAND MADE DECONSTRUCTION AND WASTE MANAGEMENT
1) Demolishing companies
We can observe interesting processes of building demolitions in history that could be adapted into contemporary models. Indeed, for thousands of years, every piece of stone, brick or wood was valuable and re-used for several construction as long as possible.
For instance, at the end of the 18th century, demolishing a building was a profitable and collective operation. The demolisher would pay to buy the right to deconstruct a building and a team of builders would dismantle its elements by hand to preserve their quality and clear the site. Then the demolisher sold the buildings parts in public auctions to big construction companies, smaller artisans or individuals. The resource was equitably re-distributed throughout all sectors of the construction industry. Indeed, those deconstructing interventions were very dangerous and precarious for builders, but adapted to a contemporary professional model, this example could inspire an alternative plan of circular waste management economy.
Fig.3
2) Salvage yards
In addition, in his book “Whats old is new again: inside the war on construction waste” Chris Crerar explains the standards practice of demolition in Australia at the end of the 19th century. Similarly to the previous example, the demolishers would pay for demolishing the building and would make profit out of the sales of the building elements deconstructed. The interesting idea is that those demolishers would create salvage yards where the waste material would be stored. Those salvage yards were full of corrugated iron, bricks, timber, stones, doors, windows and rubble. Those second- hand materials where a considerable part of the construction economy.
CONTEMPORARY WASTE MANAGEMENT COMPANIES
1) A growing public interest in building deconstruction and material re-use
Chris Crerar describes a contemporary awareness towards a better waste management is growing in the public. Deconstruction of building elements rather than demolition is increasingly seen as the most efficient way to reduce waste and material extraction. Also, the recovery and re-purpose of building materials would contribute to the environmental preservation. Despite some lack of regulating government policies on the matter, some firms are acting ahead and dedicate themselves to sustainable deconstruction.
For instance, Hobart’s Resource Cooperative is the largest Australian non-for-profit cooperative that salvage and resell valuable found materials in the city. In 2018, the project manager Rebecca Ramage was charged of the deconstruction arm and competed with traditional demolition companies. The cooperative was contracted to resell 1180 square meters of ancient floorboards from Hobart City Hall. Rebecca says : “The council in coming under increasing pressure from the public to recycle materials from their buildings. There’s enormous interest in goods that have history…We’ve sold every metre of those floorboards, so great was the level of interest”.
2) Waste management strategies — Collaboration — Communication — Organisation
To reduce waste many designers and architects have designed building embracing re-used materials. Indeed, ancient materials have a nice patina, an aesthetic to them and moreover are sustainable. Second life materials can give character to a space, a history.
The cooperative ROTOR specialises in deconstructing, organising, and selling building waste material. By trading this building waste, ROTOR reduces demolition waste while providing good quality materials that have a low impact on the environment. Moreover, they collaborate with architects, builders and developers to provide guidance on the reusable materials of as the existing building as well as how to integrate them within a future architectural project. Also, many of the materials they sell are cheaper than the new ones. They are often of great quality, have a history and a beautiful patina. They have a greater value than new and generic building materials.
Fig.4
Jeremy Spencer from Positive FootPrints describes its approach to waste management. First, he places a series of separate black bins on the construction site. This worked however it requires an induction to the building team at the beginning of the project on how to use those bins. Everyone should understand what purpose is there, what is achieved through this. For larger sites he uses a firm called Mobius Materials Recovery which sorts and recycles the construction waste on site. Mobius provides bins which are massive cages and then collects them at the end of the construction or the demolition process. It keeps the site clean and organised.
Similar recycling companies provide bins to construction sites to manage their waste. Bingo is an Australian recycling facility that recycles construction waste. They install a large bins on construction site that they transfer into a large warehouse. In the warehouse a preliminary sort is done. Heavy materials such as bricks, concrete, rubble are placed on one side and lighter materials such as timber and plastic are placed on the other. The material is then sorted by employees on a conveyor belt and then made into materials that the company sells. With the heavy materials they make road base of crushed rock and the timber into mulch. “Once you see that good product you say: that’s not waste, that’s stuff that people genuinely want” the plants operation manager says.
3) 0.Waste waste management and collaboration with suppliers
From these case studies we can elaborate a waste management process specific to 0.Wasteland. First of all, architects, builders and developers can order from the online platform a waste management service that help organise their waste on construction and demolition site. Secondly, tools for waste organisation such as large building waste bins are delivered on site. Thirdly, the building waste is organised on site by a construction waste assistant. He provides an induction to the builders on how to organise the waste on site. The bins separate plastic, metal, bricks and concrete, timber and ceramics waste. The construction waste assistant role is to make sure the waste is in good conditions. After that, the waste collected is transferred to the warehouse where the waste will be sorted and sold for other re-use.
Fig.5
CONCURENCE ANALYSIS AND 0.WASTELAND SWOT (STRENGTH, WEAKNESS, OPPORTUNITY, THREAT
Fig.6
0.WASTELAND GENERAL WASTE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY
Fig.7
CONCEPT OF WASTE MANAGEMENT
Fig.8
CHAPTER 3
COSTS AND ECONOMIC BEFENFICES STRATEGIES
WASTE MANAGEMENT PLAN OF WORK
The best way to motivate a worldwide action on reducing construction waste is to show that a well organised construction waste management can produce profit for the construction industry. Indeed, Builders, designers, architects, developers, contractors can save money by reducing their waste on site. Indeed, costs of disposing material in landfill, costs of buying materials that aren’t used, and throwing away valuable materials that could be sold is a tremendous loss of money.
Rebecca Ramage from Hobart’s Resource Cooperative explains how the main problem with competing with traditional demolishing companies is time rather than price. She explains: “For us with a crew of seven or eight people, it will take up to two or three weeks to deconstruct a three bedroom house and reuse, upcycle and recycle up to 95 percent of materials, as it is largely done by hand. Whereas demolition will take only one week from start to finish using large machinery, with almost all materials pulverised and taken to landfill”. The following diagram represent the waste management plan of work that will allow economic benefits for 0.Wasteland.
The Waste Management Plan of Work is lead by the waste management service that assist the suppliers that provides their construction waste. 0.Wasteland collaborate with the actors of the building industry to minimise their construction waste on site and then is able to sell those waste.
The diagram on the right page shows each stages of work in this building or deconstruction work.
Fig.9
Fig.10
Conclusion
While the construction industry has started to realise that building waste is money lost, there is an urgent for governments to create a strict regulation policy to reduce waste a protect the environment. City government could generates fiscal measures, landfill taxes, regulation on material management that encourage resource efficient construction and de-construction practices such as 0.Wasteland. Indeed, de-construction and waste management practices entails high kills level requirements than traditional demolition and landfilling. Many jobs opportunities in this field of the construction industry could be created and produce circular economic prosperity.
Bibliography
BOOKS
Ellen Macarthur foundation. Making buildings with new technics that eliminate waste and support material cycles, ARUP, 2019.
Rainer Zimmann, Harriet O’Brien, Josef Hargrave, Marcus Morrell. The circular economy in the built environment, Arup, 2016.
Chris Crerar, Rebecca Ramage. Whats old is new again, alternative technology association, 2019.
Sophie Weiner. Building without the waste, Alternative technology association, 2019.
R. Deed, Emily Braham. A reuse/recycling revolution, Alternative technology association, 2015.
WEBSITES
https://www.circuit-project.eu/capacity-building https://www.circuit-project.eu/capacity-building
https://rotordb.org/en/news/reuse-common-sense-isntit
https://www.larchitecturedaujourdhui.fr/rotor-arsenal/
https://www.arup.com/our-firm/nille-juul-sorensen
https://www.bingoindustries.com.au/waste-management
https://rotordb.org/en/projects/opalis
IMAGES
Figure 1 : RMIT University (2019) How to stop 20m tons of construction industry waste going to landfill each year
Figure 2 : Curbed (2015) The Kingdome imploded 18 years ago today
Figure 3: Le Monde (1862) Demolition of the Old Luxembourg
Figure 4 : Chronique d’architecture (2017) Rotor ou la déconstruction de l’architecture
Figure 5a and 5b : A packing line to sort waste (2019) Sophie Weiner
Figure 6: SWOT table (2021) Author’s diagram
Figure 7: General waste management strategy (2021) Author’s diagram
Figure 8: General waste management strategy 2 (2021) Author’s diagram
Figure 9: Waste Management Plan of Work (2012) Author’s diagram
Figure 10: Waste Management Plan of Work 2 (2012) Author’s diagram
