Face to Face with Recycling

The environmental loads from the production and use and disposal of Gypsum plasterboard can be minimised by the recycling of Gypsum. Gypsum is indeed fully and eternally recyclable.

The European Directive on the land filling of Waste

is reducing the Gypsum Industry reliance on landfill and is helping to ensure that wastes destined for landfill are treated to reduce their environmental impact. The introduction of waste acceptance criteria (WAC) for high Sulphate content products in July 2005 has encouraged many in the general construction supply chain to review and debate future solutions.

The Gypsum Industry strives to improve processes to enable increased volumes of recycled products to be used in plasterboard manufacturing. This is not an easy task, even though the willingness to progress is strong within the European Gypsum Industry.

Indeed, no firm market size information is available for new construction waste, nor is collating such information permissible under competition rules, which the European Gypsum Industry strictly observes.

The application of plasterboard splits into the three traditional sectors approximately as follows:

House building: 30%
Commercial Industrial: 30%
Repair, Maintenance, Improvement: 40%

The percentage of site scrap from new construction varies with sector and project.

The demolition Gypsum Waste Market

is even more complex as no reliable statistics exist despite efforts to improve on current data. Furthermore plasterboard usage only gained widespread acceptance in Europe, at least in Continental Europe, in the 1970s-1980s. Even now in Southern Europe the more traditional ways of partitioning and interior finishing still prevail. This means that many buildings over 40 years old contain little or no plasterboard. Gypsum demolition waste is as yet seen as a secondary issue.

The environmental preference goes to reducing waste at source,

i.e. at the design stage. But as some waste will inevitably be generated, construction sites need to establish the discipline of segregation. The waste industry has the expertise, independently and in collaboration with plasterboard manufacturers, to provide an appropriate service to the construction industry for the necessary collection and logistics system. The Gypsum industry is currently providing routes for segregated, clean plasterboard waste to be delivered to reprocessing stations. However, we need to emphasise that, as yet, the Gypsum industry can only offer solutions to medium to large projects in the new build residential and commercial sectors.

The focus is placed on turning Gypsum Waste into a business opportunity, even though much still needs to be done to reach an economic maturity.