As part of the Sydney Industrial Ecology Network (SIEN) program, Edge Environment have been working with the Better Buildings Partnership to reduce waste from building fit-out churn. We know that for every 1000 square metres of net lettable area churned that 63 tonnes of waste is generated (ISF, 2014). We also know that there are 6 key waste streams that account for the vast majority of de-fit waste: furniture, carpet, ceiling tiles, plasterboard, timber and glass. From the two SIEN workshops that we have run we have developed networks of donors and receivers of these materials and have now started a live defit project on the Governor Macquarie Tower. Our objective is to turn these wastes into resource inputs into other industrial processes by facilitating by-product exchanges.
The NSW Government Department of Premiere and Cabinet is moving out from 8 floors (10,000 metres square NLA) of the Dexus owned Governor Macquarie Tower. Dexus, through the Group Sustainability and Operations Manager, Paul Wall, intend to drive up the diversion of waste from defit from an industry average of 20% to at least the NSW commercial and industrial average reclamation rate of 65%.
The initial challenge has been to divert the furniture from landfill. Typically furniture and loose fittings are the first items to be landfilled as they need to be cleared quickly prior to any demolition work starting. By cooperating with the Governments property management group we have been able to facilitate access to the fit out for Good 360, a charity that will ordinate the distribution of furniture to several charities for their own office use.
Work has now started on finding alternate solutions to landfill for the other streams. We have a potential solution for the glass; CSR insulation have agreed to trial the glass in the manufacture of glass wool insulation. There is approximately two tonnes of glass and this is about two days supply for CSR’s manufacturing process.
We will continue to work with the De-fit team, including Buildcorp, Demolition Plus and Dexus to optimise resource recovery on the de-fit. We will catalogue the exercise and hope to produce materials that will help industry increase recovery rates of valuable materials from building de-fit.
The defit will run from 3rd November to 18th December.