Chemistry lesson It’s not quite so simple as smashing all the glass in a project and putting it into a bag for Saint-Gobain to collect. Glass is very sensitive to contamination, with things like nickel being especially troublesome. Because of this Richard Calcutt, Saint-Gobain’s technical project manager, did a full inspection of 21 Glasshouse Street, and produced a report to say what glass could be recycled (e.g. plate, toughened, laminate), and what couldn’t. (e.g. fire rated glass, or anything with borosilicate in.) He also advised on safe ways of breaking up the glass, and the importance of using nickel-free cutting blades – and the vital importance of segregating each type of glass into its own custom one-tonne cullet collection bag. If Saint-Gobain detects even a small number of contaminants in a one tonne bag – the whole lot is rejected.
A cracking performance
General Demolition’s smashing idea at 21 Glasshouse Street
But Richard needn’t have worried, as the GD demolition team warmly embraced the concept and carefully reduced the glass sheets of the project’s balustrading and office partitioning to manageable sizes, segregated it all into appropriate bags – and then Saint-Gobain Glass’ specialist transport team collected it and took it to the company’s multi-million pound purpose- built cullet processing plant in Eggborough in Yorkshire. There’s a proactive energy within the General Demolition team,” said Richard. “Its collaborative spirit shone throughout the process, as the team
Worth the pane? What are the economics you ask? Does recycling glass pay? Well, yes – and no. While the money that Saint-Gobain paid to General Demolition didn’t offset the additional time taken to break and sort the glass, the real financial benefit is the avoidance of having to pay for the waste glass to go into landfill. And that constitutes a real saving. Of course, like all new ventures, both General Demolition and Saint-Gobain are starting small and learning as we go along. But this first project at 21 Glasshouse Street has been a solid success, and will be followed by others. In fact, it’s not hard to imagine that carefully recycling glass will become standard practice on all sites in the not-too- distant future.
Most of the glass coming out of demolition projects could be recycled into new glass – so why don’t we? Well General Demolition now does, thanks to its cooperation with glass giant Saint-Gobain.
eagerly learned and adapted to carefully
Did you know that almost a quarter of a million tonnes of glass goes into landfill every year? Or that nearly all of it could be reused in the manufacture of new glass?
segregating and bagging the various types of glass.”
While society gets more focused on improving our carbon footprint, not recycling end-of-life glass from demolition sites seems like a glass- half-empty type of story. Especially when you think that for every one tonne of cullet (smashed up glass) used, 1.2 tonnes of raw materials are saved, 30% less energy used, and 700 kg of CO 2 saved. Glass forever Luckily, there might be a less shattering ending to this story, in that General Demolition, in cooperation with international glass giant Saint- Gobain, recently completed its first glass recycling project – at the appropriately named 21 Glasshouse Street project in Soho.
And in the process managed to send an incredible 36 tonnes of toughened, laminated and secondary glass for recycling.
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We place sustainable practices at the core of our activities,” said George Stainton, managing director at General Demolition. “We view the materials on our sites not as waste products, but as opportunities to contribute to the circular economy.
Saint-Gobain is actively looking to boost the proportion of cullet it blends into the manufacture of its new glass – and has set itself the ambitious target of using 50% cullet by 2030. In theory it could use 100% cullet – but getting its hands on cullet is the problem – and where General Demolition comes in. The demolition industry is used to recycling the raw materials of buildings, such as steel, wood and concrete – so why not glass?
Partnering with Saint-Gobain Glass and the Glass Forever Programme was a natural extension of our work.”
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