Building and demolition waste in the UK

摘要

Construction is by far the largest material-consuming activity in the UK. In 2016, the territory produced more than 800 kg of construction and demolition (C&D) waste per person.1 Most of these building materials are energy intensive to produce and environmentally costly to transport. Their premature replacement therefore contributes significantly to the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Under the influence of European legislation, the main policy focus for dealing with C&D waste has been to increase the rate of 'recovery'. In 2016 almost 90% of the UK's C&D waste in the UK is said to find a useful destination away from landfill.2 This waste recovery consists of three distinct practices: energy recovery, recycling, and reuse. First, energy recovery is the incineration of high caloric materials and subsequent heat recovery in order to produce hot water or electricity. It is only relevant to C&D waste that is suitably combustible, for instance timber and various plastics. Secondly, recycling is the practice of reprocessing waste materials to obtain a raw material that can replace newly extracted resources in a production process. This could be more precisely referred to as down-cycling as it results predominantly in very low quality materials.3 Burning, or chopping down, processed building materials is unsatisfying from a material management point of view, generating very little added value. Its environmental superiority over landfill is also questionable.