It's time to take control of construction waste

We have the technology to radically redesign our approach to waste. The government should act to make sure that we use these digital tools.

Every single day, the UK construction industry produces enough waste to fill the Tottenham Hotspur football stadium. This equates to a staggering 165,000 tonnes.

That is an incredible statistic, but even more incredible is how little it has changed over the past 15 years. Our design, planning, cost estimation and construction methods continue to treat waste as an inevitable consequence of our work. Even our success criteria focus on mitigating the impact of waste rather than avoiding waste production

Diversion from landfill - our main metric for construction waste - tracks the proportion of waste we prevent from being buried. Clearly, this metric alone is no longer fit for purpose. There is real value for all stakeholders to be had in doing things better, but we need to stop celebrating a lack of progress and take control of waste at source.

Moving away from a waste-intensive model requires a whole system change. It demands collaboration at every stage of the development lifecycle - designing out waste from the start, rather than leaving the waste management sector to address the consequences of a resource-hungry process.

 "What if we could predict the waste we expect to generate and understand what waste management should cost?"

A clear first step is to make what is at stake in waste management more visible from the outset. There is a huge opportunity to be had in data-led decision making.

Just 18% of our industry uses digital platforms to manage waste. What if we could predict the waste we expect to generate and understand what waste management should cost? This could unlock a different collaborative culture, resulting in different outcomes.

At SCAPE, the procurement approach focuses on unlocking the benefit of early collaboration on every project. This is precisely what we are seeking to do through the construction waste portal, an online tool designed to support project teams in taking on the construction waste challenge.

By crowdsourcing and analysing data from over 1,500 completed construction projects, the portal offers precise forecasts for waste generation and embodied carbon, from the outset. Working with live market rates, we offer a "should-cost" approach to waste management planning.

Our predictions allow project stakeholders to plan for effective waste management and most importantly to prevent waste-intensive activity through early intervention. What is more, comparing actual results to typical outcomes allows project teams to demonstrate the benefits to clients and project stakeholders.

SCAPE, have used the construction waste portal to measure and evaluate an ambitious waste-reduction target across our £750m regional construction framework. Using the portal, we are targeting a 500-0 reduction in construction waste at source by 2025.

 "If the rest of the industry were to follow suit, adopting similar digital solutions could have a seismic impact"

If successful, this could equate to as much as 8,000 tonnes of waste saved, at an overall cost of more than £1m. If the rest of the industry were to follow suit, adopting similar digital solutions could have a seismic impact.

While data analysis is key to driving more efficient waste management, it is just one aspect of the wholesale systematic change needed. Direction from the top, in the form of policies, regulation and government incentivisation, is fundamental to bringing about a shift in approach and impact on a wider scale.

With the construction sector accounting for over 600-0 of the UK's waste in total, we need specific regulatory action. Recent industry frameworks from the RICS and the UK Net Zero Building Standard taskforce provide targets for embodied carbon in projects to help build more sustainably but do not give sufficient specific guidance on waste reduction.

Similarly, last year's Procurement Act missed the opportunity to regulate a number of areas of construction sustainability, the least of which could have been to mandate sustainability guidance alongside the Construction Playbook. As a result, companies need to go the extra mile by setting standards that should already be business as usual.

 Our recently launched Charter for Change, which has input from the construction waste portal, identifies the role that policy and legislation can play in shaping decisions. For example, the British Standards Institution's specification for waste management reporting, PAS402, demonstrates the merit of industry standards for waste management.

Embedding PAS 402 in government policy would guarantee that companies make environmentally responsible decisions regarding performance reporting, landfill reduction and material recovery, providing downstream transparency and demonstrating the waste duty of care beyond simply collecting transfer notes on site.

In fact, we would go even further and ask that the government mandate that companies limit their construction waste by introducing specific targets for construction within the parameters provided in the UK Environment Act 2022.

Regulation needs to go hand-in-hand with incentivisation. Penalties for those who do not meet the Environment Act's targets for reducing construction waste could, for example, finance circular economy start-ups and drive digital innovations like the construction waste portal. Similarly, the Scottish government's introduction of direct grants for decarbonising public sector assets should be seen as a blueprint for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

We have the technology to radically redesign our approach to waste. It is time for government action to ensure that these digital tools are put to use.

A blog by Chris Clarke, Director of performance and improvement at SCAPE and Director of the Construction Waste Portal