In 2004, ICE estimated that by 2020 the UK will need between 1500 and 2300 new facilities to recycle, reprocess, treat, and dispose of its waste at a cost of between £10Bn and £30Bn.
We believe that moving away from burying valuable material in landfills presents an opportunity to recover more value from waste, creating jobs and reducing the burden of the environment.
In tonnage terms, construction and demolition waste is the UK's largest waste stream, accounting for 90M tonnes of material per year in England and Wales alone.
To drive the recovery of demolition material and the use of recycled materials in new structures, ICE, in conjunction with London Remade and Envirocentre, has developed the Demolition Protocol. The Protocol shows how the planning system can be used to improve the resource efficiency of construction.
The Waste and Resource Management Panel has also worked with Envirocentre and Forward Scotland to produce Planning for Resource Sustainable Communities: Volume 1 Waste Infrastructure and Management, a code of practice for the planning and design of waste and resource management facilities within the built environment in the UK.
The Waste and Resource Management Panel has worked within the industry to develop a colour-coding scheme for construction waste that can be used on site. Coding can help to raise waste awareness, separate waste at source, reduce the amount of construction waste sent to landfill, and deliver cost savings. Standard posters for use on skips and other collection systems can be downloaded from the Waste Aware Construction website.
Sustainability
Waste decomposing in landfills around the world is constantly generating methane, which when released to the atmosphere is a much more damaging greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Dumping materials into landfills is no longer an option, environmentally or economically. The waste sector has developed a range of treatment processes to deal with our waste streams. Those materials that cannot be recycled can be used to create a low carbon energy source, avoiding the need for further fossil fuels to be burnt. Waste as a form of low carbon fuel aids our diversity of fuel soruces across the UK and helps provide a level of security of supply for our energy needs.
However, ensuring that reuse and recycling rates are as high as possible will lead to a more sustainable solution to our waste disposal issues. Segregation at the source of the waste streams helps to ensure that recycling rates are higher and a better value is achieved for the recycled material where contamination from other materials is avoided. Encouraging both the public and industry to segregate their waste streams would be a major step forward to a sustainable resources management solution.
Future developments
Ongoing development of newer technologies such as gasification and pyrolisis are likely to develop into the future and are likely to be required to deal with wastes that cannot safely be recycled such as contaminated material, medical wastes etc.
We are also likely to see more Resource Parks, where a collection of recycling and treatment processes sit side by side to ensure the best overall outcome from the waste streams.