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Many construction businesses underestimate the true cost of packaging waste. The costs on your site can come from:

• Material purchase - the majority of packaging thrown away can usually be reused.
• Labour costs - don't underestimate the costs of handling waste on site. This includes time spent clearing up waste and collecting it into skips, plus the cost of transporting and placing replacement materials around the site.
• Waste disposal costs - the costs of skip hire, transport costs and gate fees at landfill sites are significant. Landfill fees are increasing as site operators recoup the costs incurred by stricter legislation governing what can and cannot be accepted for disposal and significant rises in the landfill tax.
• Loss of revenue - even when it is impossible to reuse a material on site, there is usually an opportunity to benefit from selling the waste.

Other business benefits of reducing packaging waste

Reducing packaging waste has a number of other commercial benefits for your business. These include:

• Complying with legislation - businesses that handle significant quantities of packaging have responsibilities under packaging waste regulations.
• Better procurement - if the main contractor is responsible for all waste, instead of each individual sub-contractor, a single improved level of waste minimisation performance can be applied to the project as a whole.
• Improved material specifications - packaging requirements can be specified in contract documents and material specifications.
• Enhanced management of the supply chain - improvements can be made at all levels of the supply chain through a general focus on behaviour and culture.
• Responding to stakeholder pressure - improving your environmental performance can help improve your business' image and reputation among stakeholders such as customers, the public, regulatory authorities, insurers and investors.

Environmental benefits of reducing packaging waste

Your business must make commercial decisions about how it handles packaging waste, but these decisions should have an environmental aspect as well. Dealing with packaging waste in an environmentally responsible way can bring a number of benefits including:

• reducing energy consumption to handle and process packaging waste
• reducing the risk of pollution incidents from the burning of waste materials
• reducing the amount of greenhouse gases, especially methane produced from landfill sites
• reducing the amount of leachates in landfill sites
• preventing environmental pollution from hazardous wastes
• reducing the need to produce packaging from virgin materials

Many businesses have the perception that reducing packaging waste on construction sites is a time-consuming and costly exercise. In reality, many of the tools and techniques your business could use are actually very easy to implement with little additional cost:

• Waste separation only costs more if the sub-contract agreements with waste contractors are not negotiated properly. Mixed-waste skips are always more expensive than separated waste skips.
• When large amounts of waste are present, using a compact baler can reduce the amount of space waste occupies. If large volumes of similar recyclate are produced using a baler can even eliminate the need for a waste management contractor, for example plastic wrapping can be baled for the reprocessor to collect directly.
• The initial time and effort setting up your supplier agreements to minimise waste will pay for themselves over the life of your project with significant cost savings.

You should consider packaging waste as part of site waste management plans.

Educating workers about packaging on construction sites

One of the most effective ways in which your business can minimise on-site waste is to ensure that people working on site are always aware of how waste impacts on the project and its costs.

Appointing a waste champion can be highly effective. People who instinctively find waste unacceptable are ideal candidates. Or you could get creative - for example, appoint a crane driver as they have a good overview of your site, or a dumper driver as they visit all areas. Ultimately you will need to ensure that your waste champion is committed to waste reduction initiatives, and has the confidence to highlight areas for concern and point out examples of bad practice on-site without creating tension.

You can raise workforce awareness about on-site waste using a number of techniques including:

• talks that emphasise the need to be vigilant about waste at all times
• poster campaigns that can raise awareness and become a constant reminder about managing waste across your entire site
• signs on or near waste skips that clearly identify the types of waste that should go into each skip
• incentives to promote good practice amongst subcontractors

Once these measures are in place, it is important to monitor their effectiveness. Look at how waste is being placed in your site skips and whether site workers are separating it correctly. You can then update your training to further enhance the waste awareness of your workforce.

Packaging can take the form of:

• primary or sales packaging that protects and identifies the product
• secondary packaging that groups or binds more than one item together
• tertiary or transit packaging that protects the product during storage and transportation

You should be able to find opportunities to reduce, reuse and recycle each type of packaging.

The purpose of construction packaging

To be able to minimise the waste packaging on your site, it is important you understand how and why packaging is used. This can help you work with suppliers to reduce packaging on their products and materials.

Packaging is used for:

• containment - plastic bags and cardboard prevent corrosion and condensation and, with primary and secondary cardboard packaging, minimise excess moisture
• identification - to show the product's function and to ensure health and safety issues are communicated to the user
• impact protection and avoiding rubbing and breakage - for example shrink-wrap, cardboard or polystyrene 'slugs' are used to minimise movement during transit
• securing products
• ease of handling

Reusing construction packaging

If packaging is used appropriately, there is no reason why it cannot be reused repeatedly instead of being thrown away. Examples within the construction industry include:

• timber or plasterboard pallets being taken back by suppliers so they can be reused many times
• identifying suppliers that use sustainable forests to produce their timber, cardboard and paper packaging
• compacting and baling paper, plastic and cardboard to allow easier handling on site and make recycling easier

At first glance you may not believe that eliminating packaging on your site is possible. However, once you understand the practical steps your business can take, you should soon be able to start making cost savings.

Steps to eliminate construction packaging

You can eliminate packaging in a number of ways. One of the most effective is to reduce unnecessary layers. These include:

• collation trays plus their shrink-wrap
• inner bags for carton board boxes with laminates
• packaging layers designed to protect the product from moisture or dust, where this is not an issue for the particular product
• layers within the packaging of standard electrical accessories

Other techniques you can use to eliminate packaging waste include:

• reducing the use of tapes and other adhesives in favour of interlocking tabs
• using in-mould embossing on products to remove the need for labels
• printing any instructions about the product on the box to avoid the need for a separate leaflet
• using plastic reusable boxes that you can return to the supplier when empty
• ensuring items such as sand and aggregate are delivered in bulk and not in multiple polypropylene bags
• investigating the use of silos on site to store products such as cement
• having any furniture delivered to site with only corner protection

Generally, you will need to work in partnership with your suppliers to eliminate packaging waste. However, each party should be able to benefit from cost savings and using resources more efficiently - see supply chain efficiency and environmental impact.

Communicating with your suppliers is key to reducing packaging on your construction site. If you can get suppliers to remove as much packaging material as possible from the products you buy before they reach your site, each party should be able to make significant cost savings.

Engaging with suppliers on construction packaging

Suppliers may be able to improve packaging by:

• reducing losses during packaging production - eg using larger pack sizes to reduce the amount of packaging per unit
• reducing void space and fillers - for example designing products so that they don't require fillers, using air as a filler to protect fragile products such as fasteners or electrical components, removing the air from packaging to increase its overall rigidity and using cardboard wrapping for complex-shaped items instead of bubble-wrap
• lightweighting and downsizing - for example eliminating one or more layers, replacing large blister packs with smaller cardboard packs, eliminating any plastic film windows in packaging, not using hollow or double-walled containers such as plastic tubes unless absolutely necessary and strengthening materials overall to enable a reduction on the materials consumed
• reducing environmental impact - for example using reusable packaging, recycled materials, non-synthetic adhesives, timber, paper and cardboard materials that are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and considering the use of waterborne pressure-sensitive adhesives as they are easier to recycle
• improving transport efficiency - for example choosing packaging shapes and sizes that can maximise the use of pallets, supplying products that are available in concentrated forms to reduce weight and providing products that can be delivered in returnable boxes or pallets

For more information on working with your suppliers, see supply chain efficiency and environmental impact.

For packaging waste that you cannot eliminate or reduce, the most cost-effective option - and the best for the environment - is usually to reuse packaging as many times as possible.

Structural packaging such as certain types of pallets, crates and sturdy plastic or cardboard boxes can be reused time and again. However, suppliers often feel it is not economical to collect them for reuse. If materials are being delivered in sufficient quantities to a site, vehicles making the final deliveries can collect packaging materials from previously delivered loads and return them to the factory or manufacturing plant for reuse.

Ways to reuse construction packaging

There are a number of other ways your site can reuse packaging including:

• repairing any damaged pallets on site for reuse if they're rated for multi-use - you must not reuse pallets rated for single
• using pallets that can't be returned to stack other materials or as curing tables for masonry
• selling pallets that can't be reused to pallet suppliers
• selling pallets to other businesses that could use them as raw materials in their products
• considering the use of old polypropylene bags for storing demolition waste
• using large sheets of plastic sheeting that arrived as wrapping for use on site as weather protection
• placing cut-offs of a product in its original packaging for easy identification and separation ready for recycling
• forming relationships with suppliers, contractors and waste-management businesses to improve overall packaging reuse

Most of the packaging that construction work generates can be recycled and not sent to landfill. Some packaging for hazardous materials may need special handling, but even this packaging can be successfully recycled. Some of the main materials on your site that are ideal for recycling include:

• metals, such as aluminium and steel
• untreated and uncontaminated timber
• paper and cardboard
• plastics

One of the main barriers to effective recycling is that often only low levels of materials are produced. You may be able to remedy this issue by collecting waste products over time in clearly identified bins. Training and education about waste and recycling is vital to ensure you recycle the maximum amount of materials.

How to recycle construction packaging materials

There are a number of measures you can put in place that will maximise the levels of waste that you can recycle. These measures include:

• using the national colour-coding scheme for waste containers to ensure waste is separated efficiently
• contacting local recycling services for collection thresholds and prices
• arranging for pallets to be returned to the supplier
• using an on-site baler to compact paper, card and plastic so they take up less space and are easier to store, ready for recycling
• investigating the potential of a shared collection scheme to reduce costs and maximise recycling levels
• clearly striking through hazard symbols to show that containers no longer contain hazardous materials and can be safely recycled - however, you must ensure that the container is clean and any hazardous liquids or substances are properly disposed of
• using off-site manufacture and assembly of products - for example bathrooms - that will help to reduce on-site packaging waste
• sending any packaging that can't be recycled to a licensed Waste Management Contractor, who will be best placed to decide its destination
• considering composting paper or cardboard that does not contain any tape or adhesives

One of the most important components of a successful packaging reuse and recycling system is actively and accurately segregating the waste your site produces. Educating workers is an important element of your waste segregation process.

National colour-coding scheme for packaging waste

To ensure that the maximum levels of packaging waste are segregated on construction sites, use the national waste colour-coding scheme. This segregates waste into a number of categories:

• asbestos - red
• gypsum - white
• hazardous - orange
• inert - grey
• metal - blue
• mixed - black
• packaging - brown
• wood - green