PLUMBING & DRAINAGE
solutions that meet the design specification of the developer/water company,” he says. At Dura Products, managing director Steve Bennett aggress that it’s important to look at material consumption of drainage products. “The construction industry is the UK’s biggest consumer of natural resources, using over 400 million tonnes of material every year, and generating approximately 60 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste,” he says. Adding that, of course, the drainage sector is not immune to such challenges. With SUDS to become mandatory for all new housing developments in England, there have been concerns due to potential increased costs of the building work – one of the long-term problems facing merchants up and down the country.
“The use of sustainable materials for drainage systems could unlock the key for merchants when looking to reduce the quantity of embodied carbon for clients, and future-proof projects to ensure they comply with the increasing number of environmental requisites. At Dura Products, we’ve been making lightweight, recycled products and systems since 2003, enabling merchants to provide environmentally-friendly drainage solutions for surface water for clients’ projects. The products – in addition to being created out of high recycled plastic content – have low carbon outputs, and require little energy use during transportation and installation, thanks to their lightweight composition. They also have unlimited end-of-life potential; as each unit can be reused, recycled or remade,” Bennett says.
Durakerb, for example, is a recycled and recyclable lightweight kerb solution and
surface boundary that collects and channels run-off at the surface/kerb-line to standard road gullies. “It’s been installed at a wide variety of construction projects, including at the UK’s first net-zero restaurant, a McDonald’s in Market Drayton, Shropshire, at which 500 metres was supplied around the drive through and customer parking areas.” The sister product, Duradrain, is a combined kerb and drainage system, that provides an efficient and safe method of draining highways, car parks and potentially any surface or structure with a kerb edge. Bennet explains that, unlike the traditional kerb and gully method where flows compound on the surface, the collected run-off is contained and driven to outlets hidden within the channel body. “The solution is defined by its innovation and sustainability credentials, and has been installed at the UK’s largest drive- thru of Canadian donut chain Tim Hortons, in Trafford Park, Greater Manchester this year, as well as by Colas, for its latest highways project on the A46 at Stoneleigh, helping the UK contractor to reduce scope 3 Co2e emissions by over 82,000kg.”
The company’s expansion across Europe is a result of its strategic investment in overseas facilities and partnerships to meet demand. Alongside a production site in Romania, it is working with stockists in six European countries – the UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Hungary and Romania – enabling them to expand to previously inaccessible territories. What’s more, by investing in these facilities, it is honouring its long-term goal of holding more stock locally to reduce the emissions generated during transportation. “To ensure that there is a sustainable future
for the built environment, it is essential that we remain eco-conscious at every stage, particularly when it comes to the products chosen, influenced and supplied by a merchant that will form the foundations for a project,” he says.
The threat of flooding due to climate change means there are changes to be made, says Mike Ward, Wavin’s territory director UK & Ireland.
“The droughts witnessed across the UK and Europe last summer were a stark reminder of the growing challenges we continue to face due to climate change. After sustained dry weather severely limited the availability of water across the continent, huge areas of land remained parched due to a lack of rainfall across the summer, which made flash flooding a real threat,” he says.
“As we move through the winter months, the threat of flood comes from longer bouts of rain that will saturate the ground along with river levels rising. This places our infrastructure under growing pressure. Many of our water management systems date back to the extensive urbanisation undertaken during the Victorian period, when the challenges faced were drastically different. Updating our systems to be fit for modern-day purpose has to be a priority.”
Ward says that central to this is moving from a linier mindset to water (source, to use, to disposal), towards a circular system that future-proofs cities and improves water resilience. “We should treat water as a precious asset rather than a disposable commodity, by reusing it where there is too little, filtering where it is too polluted, and returning it to the ground when groundwater supplies are depleted. Instead of seeing each system involved in the urban water cycle as separate and independent, we can connect those systems and manage them locally. “By doing this, we can help to close the water loop and mitigate the impact of moving from one extreme to the other. Stored water can be reused to water local vegetation – which cools and cleans the air among other notable benefits – or cool cities during hot and dry periods. Heavy rainfall can be slowly infiltrated back into the ground to replenish groundwater, rather than cause flooding on concrete and asphalt surfaces. “ It is vital that the built environment, from designers, water management companies, utility providers, and public bodies work together with builders, developers and merchants to change the approach to water management, update infrastructure, and create towns and cities that are more resilient to increasingly extreme weather patterns. BMJ
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www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net February 2023
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