Where have all the reclaimers gone?

 

 

A sustainable skill base

If sustainablity is to be achieved we need a massive injection of funding to promote the materials recovery skill base in Britain. Politicians’ fine words will not obscure the fact that we need a workforce capable of fulfilling this agenda.

No amount of bureaucracy or rhetoric will compensate for the desperate need to skill up to enable material recovery  and deconstruction to be an effective means of saving the embodied carbon in construction materials due for demolition.

Who will deconstruct this problem?

Increasingly, the case is made for careful recovery and segregation of material on demolition sites or renovation projects generating surplus materials. Who is going to deconstruct this material?  Who will stockhold it?  Where are the brokers and traders to merchandise and reinstall.

The sad reality is that the established Reclamation merchants are too few and far between and, dare I suggest, in the main too long in the teeth to accept the scale of the challenge that confronts us. 

Updating the tools of the trade

Technology and mechanical skills for deconstruction are minimal in the UK whilst in the USA, serious consideration is increasingly given to technical equipment to make tasks more efficient. Too often the UK deconstructor is found with handtools that have not changed since our grandfathers’ days.

Setting aside the low tech available procedures for deconstruction and handling secondhand materials we have another more fundamental problem.

Will mechanical demolition take over? It’s very likely…

Where will the skilled labour come from to move forward in the next twenty years if techniques and procedures are to change, as they ideally should?

If government does not see the need to address these problems then remote mechanical demolition is the only outcome. Fact.

…unless we train a huge workforce

The objective of increasing recovery rates by seeking solutions further up the waste hierarchy, to ensure improved embodied carbon recovery, will fail unless we educate and train a huge workforce. This process needs to start immediately and by the time the imminent European legislation demanding pre-demolition planning audits arrives in full force, we may be ready to cope modestly with the expectations of our European partners.

How to achieve embodied carbon recovery (the answer’s not recycling)

Nothing will achieve construction waste embodied carbon recovery unless we deconstruct and maximise reuse. Failure to resolve these problems of skill and personnel will render recycling and energy from waste the only options available. By default we will see more material crushed and incinerated without serious alternative choices.

Recycling is increasingly efficient, safe and cost effective but it does not recover the carbon content of materials or reduce the need for importing virgin materials that are rapidly becoming scarce and are required by nations like China with more financial ability to control supply.

If we don’t invest now, we will pay the price in 20 years

Government needs to understand and address these problems. If we are proactive and imaginative we can lead the world in material recovery skills and technology development. This would enable the creation of new technologies and large scale employment opportunities.

If we ignore these issues we will discover the scale of our short sightedness twenty years from now. History says we will not adapt despite the fact that we have been warned in good time.

More from the MASCo Sustainability Blog

The state of the industry: the irony of self deception

The case for reclamation of architectural antiques and building materials has never been stronger

The ironic truth is that from a ‘golden age’ in the late twentieth century, the architectural salvage industry is failing appallingly. The easiest excuse is to blame the state of the economy and recession. Unquestionably, recession has a bearing on the falling volumes, but it is an excuse which if perpetuated long enough may become the received wisdom. But it is self-delusion and it obscures the failures of the industry to keep up or understand what is happening in the wider world. Uncomfortable but true.

As an industry we  can blame and deflect the truth further by protesting that we have not enjoyed the same incentives as the recycling industry. True, but not the reason for our plight.

Similarly, we can bluster that Government and Planning Authorities have failed to understand the real opportunities the industry could offer to solve the problems of landfill and material recovery, but we would still be deluding ourselves.

Reality Check: the reclamation trade has failed to seize opportunities

Without making this an apology that further obscures the truth and, cutting to the chase, the trade has failed on a much wider front and should confront that reality. As an industry we have, until very late in the day, failed to organise and take advantage of the opportunities.

The arrival of the recently formed Reclamation Industry Trade Association (RITA) signals a massive opportunity to turn matters around, but only if the trade addresses the failures of the past.

The industry has moved away from its principal purpose to salvage and reclaim traditional materials. We have witnessed the hard-earned creation of a market place for reclaimed materials corrupted by the merchandising of repro/replica goods that have swamped and spoiled the authentic goods the industry was intended to purvey.

Generally we have failed to skill up and invest in our businesses. Avoiding addressing the issues of governance and legitimacy, the realities of our short sightedness have caught up with us.

The successful transformation of the demolition industry

The core demolition industry from which many of us emerged has far and away outstripped all other elements of the trade in its conversion to the twenty-first century. The old demolition industry that believed it had no need to regard the working conditions of its staff and public safety has been swept away in a decade of transformation. The modern demolition trade is highly skilled, safety aware and mechanised beyond recognition. The demands of method statements, risk analyses and CDM regulations are the everyday grist and staple of demolition.

The salvage trade has preferred the shadows and, bemoaning the pressures that addressed, would have marked us out as a modern industry.

The architectural salvage industry’s ’mavericks’ have important obligations

Lord David Putnam said that paying tax was a privilege of a civilised democratic state. Similarly, the salvage industry should recognise its  ‘obligations’  as a reasonable challenge to its participation and membership of a wider community.

Whilst we all hate taxation and regulation, it is exactly those dual hated elements that differentiate our society from the arbitrary and brutal regimes that we witness on the international news daily.

We are in a modern and complex democracy: skill up and address the demands it requires. Sulk and evade and you risk total demise.

Four years ago, on BBC2′s The Reclaimers series, I affectionately described the dedicated and fascinating characters of the reclamation trade as ‘mavericks’. With hindsight, I begin to believe it sentimentalized a group of characters who struggle with orthodoxy. Not that being unconventional or different is wrong, but rather it requires a mature attitude to be part of the wider society and not to operate as an element requiring special consideration or dissociation amounting to preferential treatment.

We have to face the truth, even if it is uncomfortable

Nurses and the emergency services have to be involved with the wider demands of legislation; there can be no special case for antique and salvage dealers in a logical appraisal. The only solution to a sustainable future for our industry is to adopt business skills, capitalise to cope with the volume of opportunity that exists, and organise to be active in new legislation and policy making.

Some of the above will upset colleagues but, with many reclamation yards failing and huge quantities of imported goods swamping the market, somebody has to speak uncomfortable truths.

These are the views of MASCo Architectural Salvage, not the trade association.

Weekend Salvage Trade Meeting in Cumbria

 

 

 

Material recovery for flooded Lake District

With all the usual suspects, the evening dinner hosted by Clive and Pamela Wilson (WRS) at the Cavendish Hotel Cartmel for Salvo, was elevated by the attendance of Dan Hill from Tiger Enterprises who had travelled to the flooded areas of the Lake District to advise on material recovery. Specifically, Dan was helping local people to set up Reuse Centres for salvageable recovered goods, damaged by the flooding of the previous week.

Insurers could benefit from our industry’s expertise

It was great to witness the enthusiasm of Dan and his brother Ryan in their determination to be positive in the face of desperate and, what for many, would be overwhelming odds.

They were busy persuading others that, in a week or two, the salvaged building materials set aside could be a valuable resource in the recovery process. Perhaps insurance companies would benefit from expert technical advisors from within the reclamation industry acting to demonstrate best practice for higher recovery levels of materials.

Dan (pictured) said it was very sad to see so much material just being skipped for speed, rather than a little forethought to encourage recovery.

Dan Hill in front of the bridge that collapsed near Whitehaven