EcoBuild 2010: MASCo speaks on Sustainability

 

 

Steve Tomlin, MASCo MD, attended EcoBuild at Earl’s Court on 2nd March. Here is a blog version of his speech:

Sustainability, like the use of the word recycling, has come to mean all things to all people.

The danger of buzz words and their proliferation is that everybody comes to believe that prolific use and repetition are the same as meaningful change and real progress.

Sometimes it helps to reduce things to fundamentals. Our planet and its resources are becoming exhausted – and even if not yet imminent – it is useful to understand what our society in my lifetime has, effectively, been responsible for.

Look what we’ve done in 50mm of time

On a time line continuum  of some several hundred metres representing the length of time some form of life has existed on planet Earth:  The Roman Invasion, the Renaissance, Tudors, Stuarts, the Industrial Revolution, the advent of the car and the latest micro computers. We, identified as the  ‘written history of man’; our time line representation, would be  less than 50mm  of the overall length.

During that   ‘tiny’ window of   influence we have contaminated and exhausted our planet disproportionately by any measure. 

Now, driven by the need to address our excessive carbon footprint, we are  championing  sustainability as we did recycling to solve matters

Upcycling, not recycling

Recycling has for twenty years enabled a comfort zone of activity which changes nothing as we continue to crush and incinerate vulnerable materials that could be recovered or upcycled, thus making a significant improvement to our attempts to address embodied carbon values.

Let me just illustrate what I mean. if you crash to the ground a steel frame building and send the metals ‘recovered’ to the metal recyclers you will save 5-7% of the embodied carbon value. However, if you save and reuse the same RSJ’s, the embodied carbon recovered is above 95%.

Olympics 2012: the politics of sustainability

The relevance to my topic is that we should ensure that sustainability is not just more jargon like supplying “goods in green packets” to borrow associated benefit. Many of the problems are political and my work with Hyder Consultancy on the sustainability and pre-demo auditing is a good illustration of the problems.

To get the site developed and the Olympic Games actually built, ‘pragmatic’, you might argue ‘compromised’, decisions were made.

The Games at Stratford are, in the end, justified as designed for sustainability on the basis of Legacy; that afterwards the improved infrastructure and facilities will allow the East End to go forward and prosper. The jury is out and, to the ODA: we are watching and monitoring to ensure promises are fulfilled.

Sustainable design will build value

Again, I use the Olympics as an example – albeit a grand one – of designing with sustainability in mind. When talking to the planning authority and demolition industry, much material cannot be saved for reasons of time/cost and, more rationally, because the materials involved have little intrinsic value.

Confronted by the incredulous demolition contractor who honestly cannot see how you apply the ideas of reuse and reclamation to the average 1960/1970’s building, it is hard to mount a defence.

In this situation we have the very essence of both the problem and solution: we need to build with intrinsically valuable materials and stop creating architecture that is intended only to satisfy the need for a 15 year investment return lifecycle.

We need to forward-build durable architecture that considers end of lifecycle deconstruction and recovery

It is an indictment of our age that we are demolishing buildings constructed in my lifetime whilst we renovate and celebrate buildings constructed by the Georgians & Victorians that are still going strong.

We need to start introducing some caveats & qualify arguments. We need to understand what our political masters cannot grasp and why we have generally such appalling modern housing.

Local authority bureaucracy: no imagination, no creativity

We have charged legislators, who have struggled in the first place to comprehend the issues and delegated responsibility to local authority planning officials, with a challenge that is failing on all fronts. Instead of addressing imaginatively and creatively the problem, we regulate and administer a lowest common denominator approach swathed in bureaucracy and stifling mediocrity.

Local authority personnel recourse to a ‘by the  book approach’ for fear of punitive litigation and will not countenance risk, whilst conforming to long bankrupt ideas that are safe and predictable.

We need to break out of these structures.

Creating a fully sustainable supermarket across the UK

I know that some of you may be sceptical or feel a lack of realism. Let me address this possible criticism by saying that, for and on behalf of Britain’s leading retailer, I carry out sustainability policy development. The Chief Executive of that major chain has charged his colleagues with the creation of a fully sustainable supermarket within 20 years – across the board.

I say across the board for SUSTAINABILITY needs to address not just material recovery and architecture but an integrated system that applies to human resources and buildings alike, from procurement to deconstruction and reuse.

Commercial success through sustainability

That process is begun and is driven by, arguably, the most enlightened management team in the UK who have identified commercial success as interdependent with sustainability. Some of you may be familiar with Cheetham Manchester or more recently the new supermarket in Cambridgeshire; both represent first steps in a direction that is cutting edge design.

Every steel and timber element in these buildings is being bar coded with specification details, structural values and information that will allow end of life cycle recovery.

Local authorities: watch and learn…then act!

Of course, aesthetics and design can always be improved and it would be folly to boast the end result is a total and resolved solution, BUT it is happening and domestic housing and town planning need to catch up.

We need to insist that paramount consideration is given to how materials are deployed and how they can be modified in the lifecycle, as well as deconstructed at any end point. The more durable the buildings are, in terms of quality, the longer the lifecycle.

Construct, plan, develop sustainably

The salient and most important themes remain that we cannot continue to disregard the wanton waste of materials and we need to design sustainability into all elements of the construction, planning and development process.

There is no time for despondency; we must address these matters with both urgency and creativity.

Follow Steve Tomlin’s Sustainability Blog

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

New Year greater resolution…..an end to recycling

 

TWENTY TWENTY VISION

With the new decade and the seasonal urge to contemplate new ideas, it has never been more necessary to abandon old thinking and adopt new approaches, particularly in the wake of Copenhagen.

If our politicians need any reminding, then let’s begin by persuading them of the case for abandoning recycling and ending their subsidy of crushing (recyclates) and their plans to extend investment in incineration (energy from waste recovery).

Inevitably, we will continue crushing and incinerating waste in the absence of adequate landfill capacity.

A CHANGE OF DIRECTION

Down Cycling

What needs to be understood is that these two policy options must cease to be our principal approaches to sustainability. We need to understand the political function of the concept of ‘recycling‘. The word recycling in the popular vocabulary of politicians is used to persuade the electorate that progress in matters of sustainability is being achieved, without ever understanding that they are supporting a lowest common denominator approach that changes very little (down cycling).

The public are encouraged by politicians to believe that recycling targets represent progress, never understanding or only obliquely explaining that we need to reduce our consumption, reuse existing materials, and reclaim wherever practicable.

What isn’t explained is that recycling (down cycling) almost invariably means crushing or burning materials to attain high return recycling rates  but recovering very little of the embedded carbon.

If our problems of sustainable development are to be resolved then we must recover more embedded carbon than recyclate /incineration processes enable. Consideration of other approaches will need to be adopted or we will fail miserably to make any progress beyond providing reassurances to ignorant politicians who crave only to be told everything is alright.

THE NEW RESOLUTION

The new year resolution must be to challenge the powerful lobbyists who perpetuate the myths of recycling.

Government needs to understand that it subsidises ‘recycling’ and ignores important alternatives. 

The tax incentivized crushing operations invest huge amounts of capital in advanced plant and machinery to accelerate the effectiveness of their ability to rapidly reduce buildings to rubble for processing through the crusher.

Driven by the need to justify their investments and using issues of Health and Safety to make their actions plausible, the vested interests promote their position by controlling the lobbying positions that influence Parliament.

In due course, politicians receive reports that high recycling rates are being achieved and they boast of their success to a public that is barely aware of the truth.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Our political masters would be better addressing the problem of wasted new materials, than investing more heavily in the failed down cycling policies of the last decade. 15% of all new building materials are reportedly wasted by poor site storage and over ordering.

The resolution must be to encourage up cycling and responsible purchasing whilst directing more energy to designing for end of life cycle deconstruction using recoverable high quality materials in the new build process.

Read more posts from the MASCo Sustainability blog

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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