Battersea Reach was nominated for best sustainability innovation for waste recycling and tidal planting, at the annual awards organised by LABC - the national organisation for building control services. The Built in Quality awards recognise innovation in construction and successful partnerships with architects and developers.
The development has been strongly influenced by WRAP both in its encouragement of the recycling of gypsum, in this case through British Gypsum, and also through a seminar organised by WRAP on Site Waste Management Plans (SWMP) which the developer, Berkley Group's staff attended.
The seminar coupled with the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) code of practice has enabled Berkley, through its subsidiary St George plc, to draw up a waste management plan giving strict control of wastes arising and encouraging waste minimisation and recycling.
The SWMP identifies who is responsible for managing and monitoring waste, and ensures that opportunities to recycle materials and reduce waste to landfill have been identified, wherever possible.
Battersea Reach
Battersea Reach is part of Wandsworth's new waterfront which stretches from Putney Bridge in the west to Battersea Power station in the east a distance of round 5 miles.This stretch of the river on the south bank of the Thames is undergoing a massive transformation.
Wandsworth's industrial waterfront is being shunted into the past and replaced by walkways, piazzas with cafes, bars and restaurants and given a thoroughly modern architectural look. There are art galleries, river terraces, fountains and tropical planting with thousands of new flats, many available at affordable prices.
The Berkeley Group
Battersea Reach, because of its large size and diversity, was chosen as the ideal development to trial a new Berkeley Group Waste Data Tool. Previously wastes had been measured using both the BRE Smart Waste Tool and the old Berkeley Group waste data tool giving staff a flying start in appraising the effectiveness of the new system.
A degree of staff training was required in the use of the new waste management system whereby site waste removed from site is monitored by material category (e.g. plasterboard, wood, metal) as well as disposal route. Quarterly management reports are produced using the tool thereby allowing site managers to identify opportunities to reduce waste generation and increase recycling.
Early findings at the Battersea Reach development, were that 20% of all site waste were being sent directly for recycling with a further 65% being sent to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), of which 80% of the waste is recycled and 20% is disposed of at landfill. This was due to the tightly controlled waste management monitoring system.
British Gypsum
Resulting from the Landfill Directive, high sulphate bearing waste, including plasterboard, is now classified as non-hazardous non-inert waste and can only be disposed of in separately engineered mono-cells in non-hazardous landfill sites. 300 000 tonnes of plasterboard waste are produced annually in the construction industry, and landfill costs are escallating.
An important influence on the situation was the fact that the nearest landfill site capable of accepting gypsum waste was 100 miles from the water front development.
British Gypsum is the UK's leading supplier of internal wall and ceiling systems. Its headquarters is in Leicestershire and the company has five major manufacturing plants in the UK.
Under a collaborative working arrangement with British Gypsum, St George is segregating plasterboard on site. The board waste is placed into bags which are then collected for recycling. Phase 1 of the development produced 334 tonnes of plasterboard for recycling and it is estimated that a further 205 tonnes will be produced from Phase 2. There was also an agreement that the boards were to be pre-cut to height.
British Gypsum recycles 100% of the standard plasterboard including removal of the paper face which is composted. The recycled plaster content is then used in the production of new boards with approximately 15% of the board being produced from recycled material. This part of the project has been designated as a WRAP case study.
The Process
British Gypsum helps companies monitor their waste by providing a data management system. This system records the total tonnage of waste for a project, average weight per bag or skip and percentage contamination.
The waste plasterboard is segregated on site, ready for collection. Bywaters collect the waste in London and the south and Wastecycle collects in other areas.
The plasterboard is broken into pieces smaller than 75mm at the reception facilities of British Gypsum which are then passed through magnets to remove any further metal before hand picking of contaminants takes place.
Crushing of the decontaminated gypsum waste then takes place and the resulting granular material recycled back into the British Gypsum plasterboard manufacturing plants. new plasterboard can contain up to 15% recycled gypsum.