London Wider Waste Strategy - London - Greater London Authority

City Limits
5.14. An alternative report on the waste arisings for London was undertaken by Best Foot
Forward Ltd. This was part of a wider study for developing an ‘ecological footprint’ for
London presented in a report entitled ‘City Limits’ in 2002. This study estimated that
waste arisings per annum from construction and demolition were 14.56 million tonnes,
which is considerably greater than the corresponding figure of 3.7 – 8.4 million tonnes
from the Symonds study. However the ecological footprint approach used by Best Foot
Forward is designed to quantify total resource flows for a given location, activity, event
or person using a life-cycle accounting methodology, rather than those which are
directly attributable to that activity. For example, an ecological footprint of a
construction site using this approach would be expected to include the waste generated
in the manufacturing of construction materials as well as that generated from the site
itself. Thus this approach would likely result in a higher estimate of the waste arisings
attributable to any given activity.
5.15. Discussions with the authors of the City Limits report about the basis for the higher
estimate of construction and demolition wastes, indicated some uncertainty about the
source and basis for the figure of 14.56 million tonnes quoted. The data source was
reported as an Enviros RIS Report titled ‘Managing London’s Waste’, commissioned by
London Waste Action and dating from February 2000. This in turn refers to another,
unreferenced source, dating from 1997. Hence the basis for the estimated 14.56 million
tonnes of C&D waste arisings is not clear and the figure is not considered to be reliable.
Literature Review - Waste Composition
5.16. Our literature search and consultations with relevant stakeholders indicated that only a
small number of C&D waste composition studies have been carried out in the UK to
date. The main ones are identified below:
• Hurley et al, 2001; comparison of construction and demolition wastes arisings (by
mass) from a number of individual projects
• APT Environmental, 2001; an assessment of construction waste composition, by
mass, of materials arriving at a waste transfer station in Nottingham.
• BRE have also undertaken compositional analysis of demolition and construction
wastes, this time by volume. This study is based on arisings from nine sites from
1999 to 2001and is based on a visual audit of skip wastes.
5.17. The Hurley and BRE studies report demolition and construction wastes separately,
although Hurley presents data by mass and BRE by volume. The APT study measured
construction and demolition waste combined. The results from the Hurley and APT
surveys are summarised in Table 5.3.
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