How the Pandemic has driven progress in Building Material waste management

The pandemic has had a major impact across every facet of our lives, buildings included. The supply constraints created by the pandemic have led to souring prices for materials as well as lack of materials in some cases. This affects all projects across the construction sector from multi-million pound developments to my mums bungalow renovations.

One major positive however from the impact of tighter and more costly supply's is that it has driven the sector to evaluate how they use and manage their materials especially the reduction of waste materials.

The construction industry produces a huge amount of waste, according to Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, construction, demolition and excavation accounted for an astonishing 62% of the UK's total waste in 2018 and a large proportion of this waste is not recyclable.

This waste problem and the impact of the pressure of the pandemic on resources has accelerated the innovation around resource and waste management. Companies such as Qualis Flow help companies manage the materials they have on site by tackling the issue of actually knowing what materials are on site and where. Many companies struggle with this due to using a paper based system and manually checking against this. Other Companies, such as Enviromate, are tackling the waste issue through providing a market place where companies can buy and sell spare materials.

These innovations and developments are helping to drive reductions in material waste and tackling the materials shortage issue. At Pick Everard we understand these issues and the impact across the sector. Our sustainability teams use continuous improvement and learning to embed sustainable practices and share our expertise with all those we work and collaborate with. By doing this we can continue to innovate like the examples given to create greater impact on our projects and help support a greener way of working.