A Circuitous Journey to Circularity
Our old kitchen had to go - but certainly not to a landfill. We have committed to the Living Building Challenge Responsible Materials Imperative which means at least 80% of our construction waste needs to be diverted from landfill. No biggie, I’m thinking, we beat that benchmark all the time in commercial projects. But what to do on a small single family house project? Just like Wallace (of Wallace and Gromit) loved his Bunvac 6000, I’ve developed a similar attachment to my Ohaus Defender 2000, my platform scale - Defending against waste to landfill!
Yes that’s right. Tracking our path to circularity means weighing everything. Kitchen cabinets, gazebos, bricks, dishwashers, gas wall heaters, guttering, carpets and the list goes on. Circularity has to include some means of measuring flows and for our house renovation that means kg.
Circularity has become one of the hottest topics amongst sustainability talking heads in recent times. The charts showing endlessly looping flows of materials look wonderful. That we need circularity in our economy is unarguable, and we need it fast - but the reality is it’s often a bit tedious and time consuming. I’ve been doing minor demolition work on our house for many months now and I’m at around 10 tonnes of waste, around 15% of which has gone to landfill.
Rehoming and reuse has been a surprisingly successful approach. You look at some items and think - who would want this - but the answer often is a lot of people! I’ve found new homes for a gazebo, fireplace mantel, electric fireplace, kitchen cabinets, carpet, guttering and garage door springs. You get to meet wonderful people and they are sometimes so grateful for free things they give you gifts. All these items have found a new life through Facebook Marketplace and I’ve given them all away for free. Yes Marketplace inquiries can get a bit much, but rehoming and reuse is a great outcome. And what is particularly wonderful is that I know the item has been 100% diverted from landfill. With the added bonus that I have the documentation to prove it, downloadable from the Marketplace chat.
Like many people we rely on the local council, in our case the Bayside City Council, to magically whisk away curbside waste to…..well the where to it isn’t very clear. Our Council, like others, has lot of rules and guidance, but essentially no transparency on where waste goes and what is actually recycled. Perhaps that is because too few people ask the question. In our case if we don’t get our questions answered, we don’t get to meet our 80% diversion goal. I emailed and called our Council on the subject of ewaste, which legally can’t go to landfill. They have a subcontractor who collects the ewaste, so if you want to know the recycling rate, you then have to contact the subcontractor, in my case ewastec. So a few more emails later and I get the answer “Dishwashers and stoves are fed through our ferrous metal waste stream. Infrabuild Recycling, who provides this service for us, confirm a 96.22% recycling rate of all material through this waste stream”. As for the other curbside waste streams, I’m faced with more emails and phone calls to get confirm where things end up. I love that Councils are leading much of the shift to circularity in our communities, but could they please be more forthcoming with information on where our waste actually goes and recycling rates. Disclosure = community trust = behaviour change.
About those construction demolition skips. Yes we are using many of those, but it isn’t easy to get transparency on waste flows from those services. Yes they do provide tip dockets with net waste tonnage, but only when you ask for it. I’ve started working with Bingo Waste Services, and let them know in advance, that I need the skip weight and recycling rate, but in every case it required numerous follow up phone calls. Thankfully they have now provided me with a contact who has been trying to help resolve my requests. Unfortunately even though I separate my waste on-site (e.g. 100% wood or 100% concrete and brick), the recycling rate they provided to me was a general rate for the entire recycling facility. My assumption is that the recycling rate for turning wood into wood chips and concrete and brick into road base is actually in the high 90s. Separating the waste on-site is one way to help improve the business case for recycling, so it would be nice to that recognised in the information provided back to the customer in the form of more helpful report waste diversion report.
So when it comes to demolition it’s hard work to get right in practice, this wonderful principle of circularity, but so important if we want a sustainable materials economy.