As sustainability has risen up the political agenda it naturally has had an impact on construction. From the energy performance of buildings to on-site generation, both government targets and market demands now mean sustainability is a factor in construction from the drawing board to the final occupancy and beyond.
There is a lot more to sustainability than insulation and heat-recovery ventilation, though. Embodied energy is increasingly important, whether that is in terms of the energy used to produce construction material or even simply the fuel used to deliver it.
In fact, the pressure is on to consider sustainability before building even beings. At Tyrone International, we recognised this early and responded by designing and engineering more efficient plant equipment that can be powered by a variety of energy sources – something that is especially important now that VAT relief on red diesel has been withdrawn.
Aggregates themselves have an enormous role to play in sustainability, and Tyrone International turns waste material into useful aggregates for the industry, obviating the need for the use of virgin materials. It also means you can avoid using expensive and increasingly difficult to find landfill.
The biggest difference between virgin and recycled aggregate is the impact on the environment. Whereas virgin material needs to be quarried or mined, requiring digging up land and then processing the material for use, recycling produces aggregates that can be used for a variety of purposes including backfill and pipe bedding, and recycled material is just as durable.
Decontamination
Recycling rates for hard demolition waste are high in the UK, but they could be higher. Using recycled materials brings unique challenges, however. Contamination, for instance, is a significant problem, but it is one our plant is designed to deal with.
For example, the Tyrone International T-Scrub range is a modular plant designed to scrub products from sticky clay bound material, construction and demolition (C&D) waste recycling, and sand and aggregate applications. It is ideal for difficult to scrub materials such as C&D waste with light contaminants such as wood, plastics and organics. In short, the T-Scrub provides high speed scrubbing of heavily contaminated material to produce high spec material to suit all requirements.
