Introduction to the “Waste Hierarchy”

Building more sustainably involves considering more than just the immediate performance of a product, assessing environmental impacts across its entire life cycle. This includes considering what happens to a product at the end of its life. We can think about this using the “waste hierarchy”.

As shown by the triangle, the ideal solution is to avoid producing waste in the first place. You can swap the product for a reusable/more durable alternative, or ask suppliers to deliver the product without packaging.

Next in line is to reuse waste materials where possible. An example at Masons is the reuse of their packaging waste. In the Christchurch branch, almost all waste that comes from incoming shipments (cardboard and soft plastics) is repurposed in outgoing shipments to customers. The public often stop by to take away untreated wooden crates and plywood planks for their DIY projects, which saves Masons from throwing them to landfill. At the Auckland branch, we are working on finding reuse avenues for timber waste through community resource centres and schools.

After reuse, the next preferred option for waste management is recycling. While reuse refers to the use of a material without major changes to its form, recycling requires major physical or chemical breakdown of the original item (e.g. to generate pellets or chips), which can then be used to manufacture a new product. Keep in mind that recycling can be “up-cycling”, where the value/quality of the product is similar or even increased whereas with “down-cycling”, the value/quality of the product is decreased. 

When recycling, it is important that the final recycled product is of high enough quality to justify the energy required to recycle it in the first place. A low-quality product that has limited market uses may offer limited environmental benefits when weighed against processing costs (and energy usage). Recycling high-quality, single-stream materials back into the same product is the most preferred pathway. This increases the chances that it can be recycled repeatedly with minimal new material inputs.  

Masons Auckland branch recycles soft plastic packaging back into their own products. The soft plastic packaging, which comes with incoming shipments, is nice, clean, clear soft plastic. This is collected and sent to a local recycling company, who then turn it into Masons Dry-Fix DPC product. The benefits of this are two-fold – it prevents the soft plastics from going to landfill and taking up limited space, and produces a product made of recycled material, which in turn reduces the need for new plastic products to be made from fossil fuels. This reduces pressure on our planet’s natural resources.

Recovery occurs when some value is extracted from the waste material. For example, using timber waste as firewood/heat recovers energy, but ultimately the resource is lost.

And finally, the last resort is landfill. Sending waste to landfill is least desired, because no value is recovered from the material, it takes up limited landfill space, and because it does not replace another product (through reuse and recycling), it does not reduce pressure on the Earth’s natural resources. Unfortunately, sometimes landfill disposal is the only safe way to dispose of some waste types, but that makes it all the more important to replace problematic materials with safer, recyclable alternatives.

Masons understands the importance of reducing waste to protect our planet, and their partnership with the Environmental Innovation Centre has enabled them to take meaningful steps toward more sustainable building practices.

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PROJECT CREDITS

Writer: Environment Innovation Centre

Photos: Environment Innovation Centre & Masons