Waste initiative

It may sound arduous but every single person coming to work on site at the Unilever House project in central London received training in Bovis Lend Lease’s NoWaste project. It worked however, with the scheme gaining an average recycling rate of 86%, including 17,621 cubic metres of concrete and 6452 tonnes of steel. This achievement becomes all the more impressive when you realise that Bovis only started trialling it in 2004 at Project W8 in Regent Street and at Chelsea Bridge Wharf in London. Even then, NoWaste’s training procedures cut waste by 2.5 cubic metres for every £100,000 spent. As a result, the Construction Industry Training Board has asked Bovis to help it establish a National Skills Academy for Construction. No point in wasting time …

Runners up

Barratt Developments

In just six months Barratt has collected 11,521 bags of excess plasterboard from across its 450 UK sites and recycled them into enough new sheets to cover 300 homes.

Base Structures

Base Structures has used a PVC recycling service launched by Ferrari to turn the PVC roof of the Mound Stand at Lord’s Cricket Ground into plastic pellets.

Skanska Integrated Projects

On its project at Coventry Walsgrave Hospital, Skanska assigned each of its contractors a recycling bin tagged with bar codes so its performance could be monitored. This helped the firm increase the amount of waste it recycles each year from 40% in 2003 to 83% last year.

St George

St George has continued its partnership with plasterboard manufacturer British Gypsum at its Battersea Reach scheme. This has led to 334 tonnes of plasterboard being recycled. The company is also using Battersea Reach to trial its Waste Data Tool that allows more accurate data collection.