Do you ever marvel what occurs to the bottles and jars you place out within the recycling each week?
Perhaps they’re made into new bottles and jars – possibly no longer. Who is aware of? Who even cares?
For most of the people, recycling is one thing we entrust to others after we’ve carried out our bit and passed the fabric over.
However for the demolition business, recycling is hard-wired into the industry fashion.
Demolition contractors have historically earned a share in their source of revenue from scrap steel gross sales – the fluctuating value of scrap metal can imply the variation between benefit and loss for some corporations.
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However different fabrics also are recycled in this day and age, although no longer essentially for benefit, and each demolition web site can have some manner of segregating those fabrics: trees into this skip, plasterboard into that one, masonry into every other and so forth.
Similar to home bottles and jars, development glass from home windows and doorways, may also be recycled. However little or no of it lately is going again into the manufacturing of extra plate glass.
Consistent with Richard Calcutt, technical undertaking supervisor for closed-loop recycling at glass producer Saint-Gobain, not up to 1% of all post-consumer drift glass in Europe is lately recycled as new drift glass.
Calcutt explains that there are 3 sorts of beaten glass waste – referred to as ‘cullet’ – that may be recycled. The primary is ‘inside cullet’, the fabric left over from Saint-Gobain’s personal manufacturing procedure. This can also be fed immediately again into the manufacturing line.
The second one class is pre-consumer cullet, the offcuts and trimmings returned to Saint-Gobain via its production consumers, corresponding to window corporations.
And the 3rd class is post-consumer cullet, the glass from home windows, doorways and panels recovered from the constructed surroundings throughout demolition or dismantling.
It’s this subject material this is maximum tough to procedure for recycling, which is why a lot of it nonetheless handled as waste.
Between 300,000 and 700,000 tonnes of glass a 12 months is shipped to landfill or ‘down-cycled’ – in different phrases used for mixture, fill or every other low-value utility.
Saint-Gobain is operating to switch this with its “Glass Endlessly” initiative, introduced in 2019. This scheme – described via the corporate as its “round financial system option to sustainability” – comes to partnering with consumers to assemble and type post-consumer glass from demolition websites and window-replacement initiatives.
The glass is then returned to Saint-Gobain’s float-glass manufacturing facility in Eggborough, close to Goole, the place it’s beaten to supply cullet, which can also be re-manufactured into new drift glass.
After all, cooperation with consumers within the box is secret to meaking this association paintings, and Saint-Gobain has been busy enlisting companions from the development and waste control sectors with a purpose to create a community for environment friendly and secure glass restoration.
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A kind of companions is Berkshire-based Common Demolition, which since 2021 has been exploring the potential of expanding the volume of arisings that may be reused and recycled.
“Historically, now we have by no means despatched glass to landfill,” says Common Demolition director George Stainton. He says that the corporate has been sending as much as 200 skip-loads of glass an afternoon to its backyard in Walton on Thames from the place it’s then taken to Tilbury to be beaten via a expert recycling company.
This standard manner of recycling – identical to the home kerb-side collections – normally way down-cycling: crushing the glass for low-value use. The association with Saint-Gobain is reasonably other in that Common Demolition is aware of that the glass it recovers from its web site might be remanufactured.
“That is a right away loop – we’re final the circle,” says Stainton. “The glass is going immediately again to Saint-Gobain to be made into new float-glass.
“We do necessarily the similar factor with British Gypsum for our waste plasterboard,” he provides.
Since launching its new sustainability technique in 2021, Common Demolition has established a large number of partnerships with fabrics providers and recycling consultants to recycle and, anywhere conceivable, reuse arisings from its websites.
Architectural {hardware} is now got rid of and processed via ironmongery provider Franchi for reuse. Carpet and carpet tiles are in a similar way despatched for recycling or reuse to specialist corporations Subject matter Index and Envirocycle.
Common Demolition could also be speaking to Kingspan about salvaging raised get entry to ground tiles for reuse, says Stainton.
However moderately deconstructing a development and sorting the more than a few fabrics that pop out of a demolition web site is a painstaking and labour-intensive procedure.
“Historically, a demolition contractor would need to eliminate all arisings as cost effectively as conceivable – and, preferably, receives a commission for it,” says Stainton. Scrap steel is a moderately simple win. However simply as you don’t receives a commission to recycle your bottles, development glass isn’t historically a income for the demolition business.
Now, although, Saint-Gobain can pay its companions to get well glass for recycling – although George Stainton says the operation is largely cost-neutral and Common Demolition isn’t doing it for the cash. His precedence is sustainability.
Correct sorting and segregation is very important when recycling glass says Stainton. “It’s the most important problem. The fabric must be blank and freed from contaminants. And it’s no longer only a case of keeping apart the glass from different fabrics but additionally segregating the other glass streams,” he provides.
This is likely one of the the reason why recycling glass from demolition websites has best not too long ago develop into viable, explains Calcutt: “Contaminants are a major factor and it’s completely essential to keep watch over it.”
Saint-Gobain has subsequently invested closely in specialist apparatus to analyse and display screen out any contaminants in cullet arriving again at its Eggborough manufacturing facility. However similarly necessary is that its companions on web site, like Common Demolition, identify rigorous inside procedures and quality control into their deconstruction processes.
Common Demolition’s first collaboration with Saint-Gobain was once at the 2021 refurbishment of the Grade II-listed – and as it should be named – 21 Glasshouse Boulevard in London’s West Finish for the Crown Property.
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Right here, Common Demolition recovered 36 tonnes of toughened, laminated and secondary glass for recycling on the Eggborough plant. To make sure the right kind process, Calcutt attended the web site and performed an intensive inspection, leading to an in depth file figuring out the sorts of glass provide and, crucially, figuring out which may well be recycled and which couldn’t.
Plate, toughened and laminated glass can all be recycled, however fire-rated borosilicate glass has very other houses and isn’t appropriate. “If even a small quantity of the incorrect glass will get combined with the cullet it will possibly charge thousands and thousands in the case of misplaced float-glass,” he says.
A in particular tough contaminant is nickel. Tiny inclusions of nickel sulphide can make bigger, inflicting catastrophic failure of the glass – an issue that plagued a number of constructions within the Town of London throughout the early 2000s development growth.
Therefore, Saint-Gobain is cautious to offer steerage to its companions on web site and lend a hand them identify the right kind procedures, together with the use of nickel-free grinding discs.
“We put the hassle in early to teach our post-consumer companions and it’s been profitable,” says Calcutt. “Little or no has been rejected to this point.”
Calcutt additionally works with contractors like Common Demolition to seek out the best method to acquire and shipping the recovered glass again to the Eggborough manufacturing facility.
Delivery is significant, explains Calcutt. Glass is heavy and transporting it may be dear, so Saint-Gobain has enlisted the assistance of native hauliers who can lift back-loads of glass to Eggborough relatively than run an empty wagon. Calcutt has even used barges to hold the fabric and stay shipping prices low.
Lots of the recovered glass is damaged down on-site and tipped into particular one-tonne luggage equipped via Saint-Gobain, however the place that isn’t appropriate (for instance with large-format cladding panels) the fabric can also be accrued in roll-on, roll-off skips, says Calcutt.
Even if the Glass Endlessly initiative continues to be moderately new, Calcutt says Saint-Gobain has already enlisted greater than 100 companions like Common Demolition.
And whilst not up to 1% of all post-consumer glass in Europe is lately recycled, Saint-Gobain objectives to be recycling 40% via 2030. The Eggborough plant is at the vanguard of glass recycling, says Calcutt.
“Saint-Gobain is international, however the United Kingdom innovation is already being shared throughout Europe and past. The United Kingdom is undoubtedly main from the Saint-Gobain standpoint.”
Council pioneers closed-loop recycling retrofit
Saint-Gobain was once one in every of quite a few fabrics providers that got here in combination closing 12 months to create a closed-loop recycling provide chain for Cambridge Town Council.
Together with window producers Eurocell and Asset Fineline and insulation company Aran Insulation, Saint-Gobain helped retrofit 46 council homes to satisfy ‘near-Enerphit’ requirements.
Enerphit is the Passivhaus usual for retrofits that reach thermal insulation very similar to Passivhaus new-build ranges.
The undertaking concerned becoming Eurocell’s Modus 75mm profile home windows to the homes. Those triple-glazed home windows reach a U-value of 0.8W/m²K and considerably cut back warmth loss, serving to the houses meet strict power potency goals.
The closed-loop recycling procedure supposed the outdated PVC-u home windows, as soon as got rid of, had been accrued, recycled and manufactured into new frames.
This newsletter was once first revealed within the July 2025 factor of The Building Index Mag. Join on-line.
Saint-Gobain supported the undertaking via its Glass Endlessly programme, recycling end-of-life glass and generating high-performance glazing to counterpoint the Modus window machine.
This initiative helps the council’s function of attaining internet 0 operational power, the place power intake equals renewable power produced on-site, as a part of the federal government’s £3.8bn Heat Properties: Social Housing fund.
Aran was once the council’s foremost contractor for the undertaking and appointed Asset Fineline to hide all of the window and door necessities.
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