MAIN FEATURE
vehicles. And with increasing extreme weather events like flooding, protecting the natural environment as well as people’s homes will become imperative. Huge investment in flood and coastal defences (£5.2 billion through a six- year programme) as well as biodiversity improvements should help. But will our children thank us for all of this? And, more importantly, will it be enough?
Whowill help in this sustainability drive?
The Construction Leadership Council (CLC) was formed to develop better ways to deliver lifetime value through infrastructure and buildings and to make best use of innovations delivered through the Construction Sector Deal. The Green Construction Board is actually the sustainability workstream of the CLC and it focuses on the framework required to deliver a zero carbon, zero waste built environment. It does lots more too in the construction sector, too much to include here.
A report just out by the online website edie says that the circularity gap is not closing, probably partly due to last year’s Covid pandemic with its huge increase in single-use items. The Circle Economy in this report claimed that for the first time ever, our global
8
economy is now consuming more than 100 billion tonnes of materials each year; it described this as ‘circularity stuck in reverse.’
WRAP on the other hand estimates that one- fifth of the UK economy is already operating in a circular fashion. The ideal would be a closed loop system, where products are recycled back into themselves infinitely, such as aluminium cans, but examples of closed loop systems are currently rare, and most are open loop systems (recycled into a poorer quality product). In the drainage industry, it is not always possible to rework an often highly specialised item into another exactly the same for reasons of quality control in materials, performance and processing issues, and so on.
The construction industry accounts for approximately 60 per cent of materials use and about a third of UK waste arising from it, so there is potential here for much more waste to be designed out of the construction process to improve the lifecycle of buildings. Although drainage is just a part, it is a very relevant and vital part. From using more sustainable and longer-lasting materials to reducing work needed on site, saving energy and fuel – all of these aspects count towards a more sustainable drainage industry. The recent pandemic catapulted some newer techniques
| July 2021 |
www.draintraderltd.com
into more common use, like offsite fabrication to ensure quality and reduce the need for more people working in close proximity on site, and those new-found systems will probably persevere into the future. They make sense both from an economic and from a ‘sensible use of time and materials’ standpoint, although of course in this industry there are many operations that cannot be carried out off-site. It’s a hands-on business by necessity and a vital one to keep our sewers functioning and our water supplies clean and reliable.
In terms of how each company involved with the industry can play its part – as with any business plan or project – by starting with a small pilot scheme and then scaling up, improvements can often be made incrementally. Perhaps a mindset is gradually created that means more people get on board with it, so that in time everyone wants to support the sustainability drive.
For those unsure of where to start, Reconomy’s Zero Waste Index is a tool that can help companies baseline and plot their journey towards reducing waste and maximising existing resources. Here’s the link: https://
www.reconomy.com/article/reconomy-launch- leading-tool-to-measure-zero-waste-status/
People – customers – could be crucial to
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92
