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Demolition contractors urgently needed to take part in sampling process
THE Wood Recyclers’ Association (WRA) is making an urgent appeal for waste wood samples from the demolition of buildings built before 2007 in a bid to avert what it sees as a potential crisis that could cost the demolition sector over £100 million a year.
The trade body is calling on demolition companies to take part in a national sampling programme, led by the WRA and supported by the National Federation of Demolition Contractors (NFDC), aimed at identifying which demolition waste wood items are hazardous.
Without these tests taking place, the WRA says the Environment Agency (EA) will assume all demolition waste wood from this period is hazardous, and it will be the responsibility of the waste generator to prove otherwise before the waste can be moved from their site.
Julia Turner, the WRA’s executive director who is leading the project, said: “If the demolition contractors don’t actively engage with us now and allow the testing
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of these specific waste wood items to take place, it will have a catastrophic effect on the whole industry - and indeed, environment - by increasing hazardous disposal.
“We know there is actually less hazardous material in the demolition sector based on the chemical wood treatments applied at that time than any of us originally believed. However, if we don’t prove what is hazardous now, the demolition sector will be left footing the bill to prove it themselves on a job-by-job basis. By far the simplest and cheapest way forward for everyone concerned is to do the testing now as part of the bigger project,” she added.
The WRA and the NFDC are looking for samples of structural timbers, tilling battens and external joinery from pre- 2007 buildings to test for their potential hazardous content.
There is already a sampling process in place which has been approved by the EA as part of the wider project. However, time
is running out, as the Regulatory Position Statement (RPS) which allows this project to take place, runs out at the end of July 2020.
Once the RPS is withdrawn, the situation will revert back to normal Duty of Care where the producer, (ie, the demolition contractor) will be responsible for ensuring compliance with the law. This will mean they will either have to provide evidence that their waste wood materials are non-hazardous prior to being allowed to move them from their site, or they will have to pay additional fees to send the material for energy recovery in specialist incinerators.
The WRA and the NFDC are now appealing for any company that can help, to get in touch with them as soon as possible. They are also interested in speaking to major construction and demolition companies who they believe may already have historical data as to the content of waste wood from demolition projects that could be useful for this project.
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