Last week we had the pleasure of visiting the Canning Town site of European Metal Recycling or EMR and met site manager Tom Fenton to discuss how EMR separates, treats and transports different metal recycling streams.
“A great experience to get a true insight into the sheer scale and complexity of metal recycling in the UK” – Rafael El Baz
Over the last few months we have been researching different material waste streams and REAPs (Resource Efficiency Action Plan)’s to start to identify areas within the demolition waste process where we can better utilise materials working towards a circular economy of materials in demolition.
One of the things we found whilst reading through pre-demolition audits and undertaking digital site walkthroughs with our partners is that many of the materials already had an identified route for reuse or recycling, quite literally leaving nothing but the nuts, bolts and banana skins! As designers we knew that this wasn’t the end to the story and whilst there are already these established waste routes and systems, what we can do is investigate these secondary recycling and reuse systems themselves to find the waste material emerging from this. Our trip around the metal recycling centre with Tom’s expert guidance showed us just that and more.
By gaining a more thorough understanding of how the metal is separated and the subsequent streams of the various types of metal it helps us as designers understand which post demolition waste is of high value and a clear market and what doesn’t.
Let me explain an example of these streams from a post demolition context. In the building you have many types of metals that are removed at different points and treated in different ways.
Cabling, and plumbing pipes – these are predominantly copper and have a high value, often as a result these are stripped and sold quite quickly, the cables however have their plastic coatings removed at EMR leaving the pure copper wiring.
Structural Steel Girders – One of the most valuable materials to come from demolition. After being brought to site, EMR cuts them into 5ft lengths to be able to transport them more easily – this is a grade known as OA.
Fixtures – including; lighting units, office chairs, whiteboard stands and radiators, these are processed at the site to remove specific metal types such as the brass knuckle from the radiator units. When this comes to EMR the ‘Light Iron’ is separated from other materials as this makes up much of the lowest grade metal which is sold for frag. This light iron gets shredded at EMR other sites where magnets and vibration is used to separate the materials further and extract any valuable metal types.
For example there was a material that Tom pointed out had been extracted from air conditioning units pulled from buildings. This is a perfect example of the demolition waste that EMR often will take from strip outs of property pre demolition, amongst this they can identify where they can pull out the pure metal of value which can then be sold for recycling.
Most of our research up to this point is being able to identify particular waste streams that can be redirected and remade into a material to encourage a circular approach to construction. Identifying these particular streams has been the challenge, there is little point creating a material with something that already has an established stream for re-use and recycling.
As the recycling industry grows, Tom discussed the importance of ‘purity’ in metal recycling grades as it gets sold around the world to be recycled. Whilst this is great to hear as designers, it does beg the question of what is removed to achieve that purity and where that goes. This is a stream that EMR does not make money from, a stream that falls outside all existing metal grades, and one that has no market. As a result it either ends up in landfill or energy recovery.
Take the air conditioning unit for example – whilst the metal inside is of value the extra materials that need to be removed are not- and this is where the next step in our material investigations lead us…