Construction waste
The introduction of Site Waste Management Plans (SWMP) for large construction projects has been at the forefront of improving performance of waste management for our capital projects. During 2008/09 we have measured projects against the Constructing Excellence waste performance measure of m3 of waste per £100,000 spend. The target was the national average of <40m3. We’ve had an excellent result, with our projects out performing this target significantly with end of year results of 22m3 per £100,000 spend. This may be due to the high value of the projects we undertake compared to others in the construction industry. However, this performance has encouraged us to set the target for 2009/10 at <15m3 per £100,000 spend. In addition to this volume target we have also set the target to direct more than 60% of general construction (skip) waste to recycling.
In November we held a Waste and Resource Use EXPO in order to promote better waste management and the use of recycled material on our capital projects.
While making improvements to Ashton wastewater treatment works our Integrated Alliance partners made commitments to manage waste issues with the support of the local council. The project team managed to retain over 40,000m3 of excavated material on site, reducing over 5700 off-site wagon movements. This not only diverted waste from landfill but also reduced community disturbance from the reduced traffic.
Excavated material
Working on utility networks often involves digging holes in the road and pavements to maintain and improve the networks underneath. In 2008/09 we excavated 475,699 tonnes of material during our network operations across our regulated business and our, gas and electricity operations. On our regulated business and electricity business this is waste managed by our partners on our behalf, in our gas business this is waste we manage on behalf of our client.
89% of this material was taken to recycling centres or was reused. This is slightly less than in previous years although the total amount of excavated material has increased (see graph).
During the reinstatement of these excavations we continue to promote the use of recycled aggregates resulting in over 54% of the 334,564 tonnes of aggregate used in our regulated, electricity and gas businesses coming from a recycled source in 2008/09.
Performance in this area has previously varied across our different operations with our gas operations managing to use over 80% for the past two years, while our electricity operations managed to use just 6%. Focusing on improving our use of recycled aggregate in the past year has meant a dramatic improvement in the amount of recycled aggregate used across the business and our electricity operations have achieved 43% use in 2008/09 (see graph).
As part of our work to promote the use of recycled aggregate we held a workshop for councils in north west England using our experience from our gas operations in the north east. You can read more about this workshop in the case studies below.