New Enviro Skip Hire research found that the UK’s construction sector uses just over 400 million tonnes of material each year. This equates to 100 million tonnes of waste being produced every year.
The clear question we need to answer is: Is the construction industry producing too much waste?
Using the latest ‘House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’ data, it found that the waste the construction industry produces, contributes 1/3 of the UK’s total yearly waste amount.
What about similar industries? 2022 data also shows that the Excavation and Demolition industries specifically are responsible for 62% of the UK’s waste.
Enviro Skip Hire Representative, James Rubin says:
“As an industry we need to tackle construction waste better, the point that has the potential to reduce the amount of waste produced is at the beginning of the project, at the planning stage. I know some countries have introduced lean construction methodologies which serve to make the process a lot more sustainable.
This is similar to lean manufacturing, and I believe is the future of construction. In essence it is a way of re-educating the people who are making the decisions to have a better problem-solving capability. If these methodologies are proven to be successful in other countries, then the UK needs to start to adopt these asap to ensure we are doing what we can to reduce the amount of waste we are producing.
Every problem we have that needs improving can be boiled down to one word, education. It is only through education that one can become aware of the full extent of the problem and I find once we have educated a mind, more care for that topic soon follows, in some cases a passion develops.
This is what we need to improve waste management practices, better education around waste and its long-term impacts. I believe we have come along way and people are becoming more aware, however, as a society we still have a long way to go.
Like we have seen every industry around the world transformed by tech, the future of the waste industry, I believe, is routed in technology, mainly robotics. These robots are able to work 24/7 carrying out the most mundane tasks, outperforming their human counterparts.
Before waste can be recycled it must be separated into waste categories and, depending on the waste type cleaned before it is recyclable. Humans are currently put to work to assist the waste sorting machines, however once we have robots to replace the human in assisting these waste sorting machines then the recycling process and inevitably the result will improve too.”
Sources: 2022 House of Commons Environmental Audit
For more information please visit www.enviroskiphire.com
About Enviro Skip Hire
Enviro Skip Hire are a family-run business, with over 10 years of experience in the waste management and skip hire industry specifically for the construction sector. We have decided to build out our service offering in order to add more value to our construction customers.
