Managing waste on-site
Site waste management plans (SWMPs) are to become a statutory requirement for construction companies carrying out a project worth £300,000 or more. agendaNi considers the proposal.
SWMPs are currently voluntary, with an estimated 42 per cent of Northern Ireland’s largest construction companies using them.
The amount and type of waste that will be produced on a construction site and how it will be reused, recycled or disposed of must be included in the plan. It must also be updated during the construction process to record how the waste is managed. If there are materials that cannot be reused or recycled, these must also be accounted for. In addition, those responsible for implementing the plans will need to make sure they know the intended destination of waste removed from the site and that their waste is being managed by legitimate registered waste carriers.
Failure to keep a SWMP would be an offence with a fine of up to £50,000 and failure to produce it if requested by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency or a local council would result in a fixed penalty notice of £500. The SWMPs would be reviewed by the Department of the Environment two years after implementation.
A consultation on whether SWMPs should be a statutory requirement is being carried out by the department until 11 March 2011. The DOE says that the plans would tackle illegal dumping of waste and resource inefficiency while allowing construction projects to review their performance against targets set out in the Programme for Government, the Sustainable Development Strategy, the Waste Management Strategy and the Waste Framework Directive. These include:
• reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2025;
• reusing and recycling 75 per cent of construction waste by 2020; and
• increasing the amount of materials prepared for reuse, recycling and recovery by 70 per cent by 2020.
The consultation document, launched by Edwin Poots on 3 December, states: “This single plan will hold all the documentary evidence needed to comply with the duty of care, hazardous waste and waste carrier controls.”
He expects that writing and implementing a SWMP will formalise project management tasks that should already be carried out, and will shift the focus of this work towards achieving resource efficiency.
“The construction companies that are most likely to notice an additional administrative burden are those whose paper trail for waste transactions is less well managed,” Poots said.
At design and planning stage, the person responsible for the SWMP will have to adapt specifications to address the waste that is expected to be created. As work progresses, the SWMP must be updated with the actual quantities of waste arising. As the department may inspect the plans, they must reflect the true picture.
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has estimated that the amount of construction, demolition and excavation waste produced in Northern Ireland is around 4 million tonnes per annum, of which around 1.3 million tonnes (33 per cent) is currently reused or recycled. In addition, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency estimates that up to 1.7 million tonnes (42.5 per cent) of construction and demolition waste per year is illegally dumped. The department concludes that approximately 1 million tonnes (25 per cent) of construction and demolition waste is landfilled every year.
Research by the Building Research Establishment suggests that the cost of implementing SWMPs is approximately 1 per cent of the total project cost. It identified a cost-benefit break-even point for projects valued at £250,000. A minimum value of £300,000 has therefore been suggested, with more detailed reporting required for projects costing more than £500,000.
Smaller builders responsible for projects under £300,000 will not be subject to SWMP regulations, but following the two- year review, new proposals would be put forward to minimise any illegal activity from that group.
