University of the West of England launches project to slash construction waste destined for landfill

Academics and industry partners hope to revolutionise the construction sector with their idea, which would see building materials earmarked for reuse or recycling at the design stage to prevent them ending up on the scrapheap.

They have secured an £800,000 grant to develop a sophisticated computer program capable of slashing the proportion of landfill in the UK originating from the construction industry - currently between 30 and 40 per cent.

Professor Lukumon Oyedele, director of the Bristol Enterprise Research and Innovation Centre at UWE, believes the new approach could shave 10 per cent off total construction costs in the future as it will allow businesses to make savings on the purchase of new materials.

He said: “Landfill in the UK is getting reduced and reduced, and the government is always keen on exploring ways it can divert waste from landfill. 

“Thirty to forty per cent of waste going to landfill comes from the construction sector through construction waste and demolition waste.

“At the moment, at the end of a building’s life, it is demolished. Some materials will be recycled, some will be remanufactured and some will go to landfill.

"With our tool, from the design stage of the building we want to look at the deconstruction plan. We want to look ahead to 20 or 30 or 50 years’ time at the end of the building’s life. 

“It will change the entire construction industry – it’s as simple as that. There’s no tool at the moment that’s coming up with a deconstruction plan.”

The research project, Deconstruction and Recovery Information Modelling (DRIM) will be worked on for two years from April 2016 in collaboration with academics from

Coventry University and industry partners Waste Plan Solutions Ltd and Sustainable Direction Ltd.

The funding for the project has been received from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Innovate UK.