A 21st century perspective – how sustainability changes the rules

 

 

Steve Tomlin’s article: due to be published in Demolition & Dismantling Magazine later this year.

Transforming demolition and reclamation

The Demolition and Reclamation industries are inseparably engaged in a debate that will transform our respective sectors beyond all recognition in the next twenty years.

The  irony may be that neither side is overtly aware that both stand on the threshold as the principal protagonists of the most important debate: how we become a sustainable society.

This is no vanity on our part and may sound incredible from the perspective of this moment in time.

Why are the Demolition and Reclamation industries so significant today?

It is highly unlikely that anyone in 1910 would have any truck with a description of how the late twentieth century would conclude. Similarly, it may be difficult to appreciate why the Demolition and Reclamation industries are such significant components of the sustainability debate.

Setting aside as temporary any of the recessionary issues that have affected the scale of the  economy in the last year, the future for the demolition industry from now will be dramatically different from its experience over the last thirty years.

The cost of exhausting our raw materials

The world’s resources of raw materials are being rapidly exhausted and increasingly commanded by market forces in the name of the Chinese and other fast-growing economies.

We simply cannot obtain sufficient virgin material to replace the materials we profligately send to landfill. The cost of replacement is reducing our competitiveness and, as a nation, we cannot fulfill our treaty obligations to reduce our carbon footprint if we continue to concentrate on Recyclates and Energy Recovery from waste.

Not for one minute do I believe that the quantum change required is so imminent that demolition will be transformed overnight, but if we do not redirect our approach to material recovery we will be like the WWI Generals who denied the possibility the horse could ever be replaced by armoured vehicles.

Even if it takes thirty or forty years, these changes will come about or our economy will be completely bankrupted. This does not even consider the environmental disaster and consequences that change could mitigate.

Let me take these thoughts out of the abstract and address, directly, the issues.

The issues of Recycling vs Reuse

When we recycle and make claims of 80% plus achieved targets, allowing politicians to boast ‘green credentials’ and the general public to feel reassured by such utterances, we display a complete failure to understand the truth.

If  you floor a steel frame building and save 99% of the volume of steel by sending the skipped materials to the local metal brokers, you recover only 7% of the embodied carbon. If you dismantle the steel for reuse then you recover 100% of the embodied carbon, less the costs of dismantling.

The politicians like the former process because they can tell the public they have achieved very high recovery levels which sounds good and wins votes from the gullible. In fact, it represents a deception justified by pragmatism and a belief that it is the only way forward. BUT, it doesn’t stop the problem of wasted embodied carbon.

We need to recover higher embodied carbon values

The industry needs a change of attitude and an altered perception and understanding of why we demolish and where we should be heading. Yes, we will continue to need bulk aggregate (recyclates) and inevitably some materials will  be designated  for incineration (energy from waste).  However, we need to segregate more materials and recover higher embodied carbon values from construction materials.

The old chestnut defence of most demolition contractors that many buildings are not recoverable begs the question, and points in the direction, of one vital change that must be given priority: we need to design out waste in our future architectural and planning practice and build for deconstruction and material recovery.

In the meantime, as we plan for change ahead, we need to ensure pre-demolition audits become accurate and sincerely attempt to identify materials available for higher recovery.

Who will pay for this?

Again I hear the cry “who will pay for this?” and ”how can we overcome time constraints defined by clients unsympathetic or ignorant of the need to change traditional practice?”.

The reality is to improve voluntarily or face inevitable financial penalties from the European Waste directives in the form of waste disposal increased charges and the removal of existing recovery note credits.

MASCo’s Sustainability investigations

Before others object that all this is fanciful, MASCo Sustainability has just completed exhaustive two year long trial investigations into major demolition projects. Results show that by planning, pre-demolition auditing, and buy-back supply line strategies, we have saved one of the largest UK retail chains massive savings by ending traditional demolition practice.

The combination of future elimination of waste by end-of-lifecycle designing, and the changes briefly described above, means demolition will become primarily deconstruction and material recovery in the next fifty years.

Coping with commercial volumes, skilling up, going forward

The greatest challenge for the reuse and reclamation side of this equation is the inadequate capacity and capitalisation to be able to cope with the commercial volumes. The National Federation of Demolition Contractors (NFDC) has been exemplorary in its encouragement of the deconstructors to skill up and obtain nationally recognised qualifications.

Central government will need to address these problems of capacity and skill or all ambition will fall at the first hurdle.

This should be a huge opportunity for the big demolition players to establish deconstruction teams, provide skills training, and direct capital to the creation of material stockholding centres.

The demolition industry more than any comparable trade has transformed itself faster and more comprehensively in the last thirty years; the challenge now is to go further and advance again.

Steve Tomlin is the owner and Managing Director of MASCo Architectural Salvage and Walcot Reclamation. National Chairman of the Reclamation Industry Trade Association (RITA UK); Stakeholder in material recovery projects with BRE and Bio Regional; Contributor to the Sustainability Agenda for the 2012 Olympics; Public speaker on all matters of Environmental Sustainability; Principal advisor on matters of future commercial sustainability to one of the UK’s largest retailers; Advocate of Demolition by deconstruction.

DEFRA Waste Consultation

So it was that Jonathan Essex of Bioregional and I arrived in Whitehall at the offices of DEFRA to take part in the latest consultation to discuss the EU Waste Framework Directive and the Waste Hierarchy.

Sadly, carefully worded thoughts are too dull to catch the popular imagination. Conversely, sensationalist headlines alienate the scientific community and responsible policy makers. So, taking the plunge and steering between the two extremes, someone had to call for commitment to environmental challenges and demand things change before it is too late. Let me restate that same point. Commitment has to mean confronting awkward and inconvenient truths that may involve disruption to comfortable lives and require significant altered behaviour. Al Gore may have his detractors but the title of his themed environmental crusade addresses the real issue. Will we accept the inconvenience?

Behind the scenes, in the corridors of power in dry committee rooms, argument hardly rages but quietly progresses, dealing with the great environmental issues of the day.

Before you lose the will to live I should explain.

The prevailing policy affecting waste and the construction industry is wedded to the obsession of recycling in the name of diversion from landfill. Successive government agencies have each rowed in behind the recycling posture, with Treasury subsidy following and providing reinforcement. Conveniently, this approach is easily monitored and measureable by targets, which gives Ministers the opportunity to claim tangible achievements, whilst actually failing to address the fundamental problem.

Waste is defined and modelled as a pyramid with Reuse (and the unspeakable reclamation) at the top of the narrow pinnacle presiding over the broad base of recyclates and incineration (crushing and burning demolition materials). The reality once more is that we pursue target driven objectives relentlessly endorsed by tax incentive, and gloss over the implicit deception because it is reassuring to believe we are successful as recyclers.

The deception continues in the very language we use and the way we discuss the issues. The Germans call the process of material recovery either up cycling or down cycling to expose the truth of the situation. We settle for pretending that recycling is good, whilst actually applying the lowest common denominator approach, and never truly addressing the problem that recycling destroys reusable building materials. Whilst we continue to recycle (crush and burn), we will never achieve the higher recovery of embodied carbon values which would be obtained by driving the emphasis of activity higher up the waste hierarchy.

Demolition on Olympic scale

If all this seems arcane, let me demonstrate the experience of the Olympic Park. The sustainability studies boast 90 percent recovery levels of recycled materials and go immediately into boasting the sustainability credentials of the project. Politicians and the Olympic Delivery Authority instantly congratulated themselves as successful in achieving two core buzz targets – sustainability and recycling. The reality is that traditional demolition teams have mechanically crashed (sorry, reduced) buildings to the ground, sent the concrete and bricks to an onsite crushing facility and segregated the timber and burnable elements for energy generation via incineration. The embodied carbon saving is minimal but the Government loves the headlines saying they are successful recyclers. Hardly anything is reclaimed and reused and so the self-deception goes on!

Jonathan Essex and I both made these points at last week’s consultation exercise held by DEFRA in Whitehall. The exercise could potentially redefine the waste hierarchy in favour of reclamation over recycling but DEFRA needs much more representation from the salvage industry to confirm that this is what we want, and to balance the almost 100 percent of construction stakeholders who are pushing for recycling over reuse.

Get your views off quickly to DEFRA whilst the door is open and before it can be diluted by vested interests that pursue profit before social and environmental considerations.

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