Waste will always be a common occurrence on a construction site. In 2018, the UK generated 62 per cent of its waste from the construction, demolition, and excavation industries.
However, if your business produces waste, you are legally required to properly manage it and
confirm that it’s following the waste hierarchy through the use of an appropriately licensed Skip Hire company. This will help you reduce, reuse, and recycle your waste before disposing of it.
This article provides some insight as to why this process is important, and how you can properly dispose of waste from your site.
The Importance of Construction Waste Management
In-depth government statistics report that in 2018, construction and demolition businesses in the UK generated 67.8 million tonnes of non-hazardous waste. Of this total, 62.6 million tonnes were recovered, equaling a 92.3 per cent recycling rate.
It means that although the UK generates high amounts of non-hazardous construction waste, we can effectively reuse and recycle this waste to a great extent.
Your business must properly manage its construction waste to help maintain this high standard and further reduce our output of non-hazardous waste, and Enviro Skip Hire can assist with this process. This is very important, because resources are limited, so you must take responsibility for restricting how much you send to landfill.
You’ll also benefit from improving your business’s sustainability, productivity, cost-efficiency, and safety. There are also other benefits to using a professional waste management company, such as:
Better Reputation: Practising responsible processes like this can help an organisation develop a positive reputation with customers, clients, and partners. It results in growth opportunities, such as government-funded projects, often requiring certain agencies to abide by strict waste management standards.
Corporate Social Responsibility: Proper construction waste management will limit users’ ability to manage their site and other related processes. It will conserve our planet’s natural resources and minimise the energy consumption required in transporting and reprocessing waste.
Cost-Efficiency: A reduction in spending is an obvious result of proper construction waste management. You can expect to obtain lower prices by reusing materials and eliminating double costs, which means spending your money on materials that end up going to waste and then removing them again.
High Health and Safety Standards: A company should ensure safe waste handling to protect its employees and the public from accidents. For example, waste should be properly segregated so that no materials are left in inappropriate places where they could cause accidents.
Increased Company Awareness: When workers commit to practising safe, sustainable waste management at work, they may carry these practices into aspects of their personal lives.
Required Compliance: The site owner must comply with waste regulations during and after building construction. Waste regulations apply to companies that produce, import, export, carry, keep, transport, treat, or dispose of waste.
The Process of Construction Waste Management
When disposing of construction waste on your site, you should always consider which are reusable or recyclable. The Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011 impose businesses to confirm whether they follow the waste management hierarchy if the waste is transferred off-site.
Always follow the waste management hierarchy: Reduce, reuse, recycle, and dispose. The best way to meet the hierarchy is to be proactive.
A waste audit is a perfect opportunity to let everyone in the chain of command (even the skip hire company) know what kind of waste you will generate, how much of it, and from where it will originate.
A waste audit includes three components:
What materials are most common on your site produced by your project and can become waste?
Describe the project’s stages that will affect the waste generated, such as in the early stages of excavation, when a large amount of concrete is being produced.
How can you prevent these materials from becoming waste? This may involve improving your purchasing process, finding out what recycling schemes are available, and communicating with your waste collectors.
Once you’ve completed your audit, you should determine how your business will minimise its waste while prioritising ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle. In fact, it’s best to form a Site Waste Management Plan (SWMP).
Having an SWMP helps keep track of the results of your audit and planned strategies on waste management. While this method was once required by law, this is no longer the case. However, it’s still considered best practice.
Disposing of Construction Waste Management
You can hire skips from a waste removal company to take the various materials away and ensure that your construction waste disposal is as efficient and effective as possible. Make sure that you have enough skip hires to separate your waste into different types. For example, recycling, hazardous, and non-hazardous.
Aside from employing skips, you need to create a list with the classification for each waste item and write a transfer note before you send waste for recycling or disposal.
Skips for Construction Waste Management
While skips for waste disposal are a fantastic idea, you must always check that your chosen waste collector has the correct licensing as you could be fined for using an unlicensed operator.
Furthermore, you need to determine whether your skips will be sited on private land, as this will confirm whether you will require a skip permit from the local authority or not. If you must use public land, then you will almost certainly require a permit.
When thinking about what type of skips to rent, it will help to know aware the different types:
- A midi skip normally holds about 4 cubic yards of waste, which is the equivalent of about 40 black bin bags of waste.
- A large builder’s skip normally holds 8 cubic yards of waste, and is the most commonly requested size – this skip will hold around 80 black bin bags.
- A large skip normally holds approximately 12 cubic yards of waste, and is usually used for those larger jobs.
The best locations for your hired skips are those in suitable, safe locations so that workers can easily access them. Furthermore, you should have clear signage and instructions so that workers know what can and can’t be disposed of, and also what PPE they are expected to wear.
For example, they cannot wear their standard boots. Instead, they must wear steel toe cap boots to provide protection.
Get in Touch with Enviro for Skip Hire in Knutsford
On construction and demolition sites, the law is very clear about how you should manage and dispose of your waste. You have to follow the processes outlined in this article and train everyone involved in handling waste to comply with Staffordshire policies. With the proper training, your company can easily adhere to the law, maintain safety, and dispose of waste sustainably.
Contact Enviro Skip Hire whenever you need to hire a skip in Knutsford and require help with proper waste management and disposal. We are a family-run aggregate company with many skip sizes and other tools available for use. Call us on 01270 820 426, choose your skip, and get it with our free delivery!
