|

Waste minimisation, recycling and the use of products with higher recycled content are practical ways to make more efficient use of materials, reduce demand for finite natural resources and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. They are often cost saving, or at least cost neutral. Moreover, performance can easily be measured to demonstrate a significant contribution to sustainability.

Construction clients, developers, public bodies and planning authorities are increasingly setting requirements for reused and recycled content on their projects. 

Benefits in helping clients to set and meet recycled content requirements:

• Achieve exemplar status, with a cost neutral or cost saving effect on project construction cost;
• Meet the requirements of planning authorities;
• Provide a competitive edge through differentiation; and
• Implement a quantifiable and easily auditable measure of sustainability within a development.

WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) is government-funded. It works in partnership to encourage and enable public sector bodies, businesses and consumers to be more efficient in their use of materials and recycle more things more often.

WRAP's construction team has developed a web-based toolkit to help determine the percentage of recycled content in a project and to provide assistance to construction professionals in the setting up and implementation of good practice in reducing the depletion of material resources and waste. The on-line recycled content toolkit is free of charge and enables users to:

• measure a project's performance on recycled content;
• identify the top 5-10 cost-neutral product substitutions to increase recycled content; and
• demonstrate good practice to clients and planners.

  Speaker: Marie-Louise Schembri, Sustainable Design Consultant, Entec UK Ltdis a warranted architect (in Malta) and civil engineer with a specialisation in environmental design and engineering of the built environment. Her recent project experience includes several levels of advice on environmental sustainability issues with respect to urban design, building design, construction and operation of buildings, with a particular focus on energy and materials. Marie-Louise is currently the expert adviser on materials, pollution and climate change adaptation for the Carbon Challenge, for which Entec is commissioned lead advisor by English Partnerships as part of a partnership with CLG, EP and other advisory bodies such as the Building Research Establishment (BRE), Energy Saving Trust (EST) and WRAP.