Reducing waste

The careful management of waste can result in significant benefits to the environment as well as cost savings.

Bellway recognised some time ago the importance of managing waste efficiently and has steadily been making improvements to the way we manage our site waste. This is important from a commercial point of view as the current landfill tax will rise to £73 per tonne by 2013.

All Bellway sites operate Site Waste Management Plans.  These plans help to reduce the amount of waste produced which means less waste is sent to landfill, less energy is used in transporting waste and more materials are recycled. This year we have reused 46,123 tonnes of demolition material on sites to form footpaths and driveways.

We measure our improvement in waste management in terms of skips used per home sold. In 2009/10 we reported that 3.7 skips had been used per home sold. In the year to 31st July 2010 we used 3.4 skips, but will be working hard to improve this performance. The general public are becoming increasingly aware of the need to reduce waste and in some sites we have been able to introduce waste segregation facilities in kitchens or communal recycling facilities in apartment developments.

In addition to managing site waste 1,861of our homes have either incorporated waste segregation facilities in the kitchen or composting bins in the garden. This helps our residents manage their waste as it is created and in-turn assists Local Authorities to meet their waste reduction targets.

With the cost of landfill now standing at £56 per tonne increasingly we are looking at ways whereby we can reduce the relocation of materials from site preferring instead to manage spoil and waste on site as much as practically possible. For example at our Sherwood site in the East Midlands we have adjusted land levels so as to retain some 50,000 cubic metres of spoil that would otherwise have gone to land fill, similarly at our Poppyfields development on the former site of RAF Newton in Nottinghamshire, we have crushed 7,000 cubic metres of demolition has been re-used as hard core for paths and roads saving an estimated £79,000.

In 2004 we introduced our ‘don’t let your home get away with it campaign’ and sent all our customers good practice guidelines detailing simple household management practices they could follow that would benefit the environment. This campaign is still running today and all Bellway hand-over packs contain a list of good practice guidelines which we encourage our buyers to follow.