New survey reveals 90% of construction and demolition waste in Wales is recycled
A new survey conducted by Natural Resources Wales (NRW), has reported that 90% of construction and demolition waste in Wales was sent for reuse, recycling or recovery.
The survey, produced for the Welsh Government, estimated that 3.4 million tonnes of construction waste were produced in Wales in 2019.
According to NRW, “most construction waste was produced by civil engineering constructions (36%), with the general and domestic building sectors in joint second place (16% each)”.
The remaining six construction sectors, including highway construction and commercial buildings, accounted for less than 10%.
The NRW’s Construction and Demolition (C&D) Waste Survey received responses from 508 businesses of varying sizes and from a range of construction sectors throughout Wales between April 2021 and September 2021.
John Fry, lead specialist advisor waste policy for NRW, said: “Using Wales’ resources sustainably is at the heart of everything we do and we’re incredibly proud of the fact that Wales is such a high recycling nation.
“Surveys like this one are an important measuring tool and it’s encouraging to see the construction and demolition industry treating waste as a resource and sending less to landfill.”
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Excellent… Now let us see Cymru become a world leader in sustainable construction practices and a developer of new more environmentally useful construction materials. Those who came before us on this beautiful land toiled underground and brought out the coal that made the wealthy to become rich enough to be our overlords and helped make our world sick. In a Free Cymru, we can become people free of overlords and work to help solve the problems that the industrialists, capitalists*, fascists, neo-capitalists, libertarians (the enablers of wicked practices) and oligarchs have created. *remember capitalism was and is just a theory… Read more »
Calm down, calm down. Wales leads the way in sustainable building17 June 2011 Local authorities in Wales that do not have an up-to-date local development plan will have to assess schemes against a presumption in favour of sustainable development Note the date. Powys is now building council housing to Passivhaus standards with solar power and air source heat pumps as well as co-operating with Seven Oaks Modular Meanwhile in Swansea the University and TATA are working together to enhance sustainable building. We do just about OK, could do better, leave England swallowing our dust. They still have right to buy… Read more »
90% is an excellent figure for Reuse and Recycling. RECOVERING however can include incineration to generate power. This can be good in that it replaces the excavation and incineration of virgin materials, but it can be bad if the incineration plant does not have atmospheric scrubbers included in its “exhaust” system. All the big construction companies and the vast majority of SMEs are working their behinds off to reduce consumption of virgin materials and reduce pollution from carbon released to the air. As regards the Paris climate agreement, 90% is a great figure (caveat on “Recover” notwithstanding) when you consider… Read more »