SUSTAINABILITY


by doing that they also generate money into the branch P&L. We have been very deliberate about this at STARK, making branches aware that they will get the money back, that it won’t be swallowed up by central costs or held in a special holding account. “So that means that the branches have skin in the game as far as the segregation and returning of the pallets goes. We will be able to show the branches that audit trail of ‘you return 50 pallets to the Pallett LOOP, they pay STARK and we put that money into your branch bank account’. It gives people encouragement to get on board with the programme. This has to be a hearts and minds thing. We need our branch managers to be buying into the concept wholeheartedly.” At C&S Builders Merchants in East London, operations director Rav Sumal says that while the company does well with recycling whatever it can, the added incentive of the LOOP payback system means the business is getting money back for doing something it tries to do anyway.


Business cost


and that the key to bringing employees on board across the group was the ease of understanding the concept. “You can talk about the circular economy – people have been doing it for years – but it’s much easier to explain it in terms of timber pallets, and how they are dealt with.” He continues: “It’s nice to have something to talk to our branches about in the sustainability arena that they can understand quite quickly, rather than getting into the complexities of Scope 1, 2 or 3, or embodied carbon. The key to the success of the LOOP scheme will be getting to critical mass with pallets. As we start to see more heavy building material producers start to adopt them, and we see more and more green pallets turning up on sites and in yards, it will get easier to feed that LOOP. The key to this is to how quickly the manufacturers get on board and adopt it, then it becomes easier


“Pallets are one of those things that as a business you just have to deal with, and they come with a cost, whether you are disposing of them or recycling them,” he says, adding that more manufacturers coming into the LOOP system would be a good thing. “We get charged for pallets from certain manufacturers, and it can be hard to add that cost onto the price of the materials, so you end up losing out as a merchant.” He continues: “The guys in the yard have to get their heads around keeping the green pallets aside and storing them; that takes a bit of time. But once they understand what the process is, and they know not to send the green pallets out to building sites, it works. The fact that we get money back on them, is an incentive.”


As of the end of January, around £250,000 had been paid back to the construction sector via the LOOP Payback, and there are now over 7000 collection points.


for the merchants, the intermediaries, and volume housebuilders to get to the quantities to realise the commercial benefit.” That there is a solid financial benefit to the branches is a real help when getting branches fully onboard with the concept, Sykes says. ““Everyone wants to do the right thing by the planet until it hits them in the pocket. So being able to explain to branches that they can do the right thing environmentally here, and


March 2025 www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net


Steve Ottaway, head of operations at The Pallet LOOP, says: “From a standing start, we are delighted with what we have achieved with our pallet collection rates. As well as demonstrating the effectiveness of a closed LOOP pallet collection system, our return rates underscore the willingness of all parts of the construction industry to embrace a different way of working. We are grateful to those companies already using the service and look forward to growing our collections figures this year as more building material manufacturers choose to adopt The Pallet LOOP.” BMJ


39


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