Sustainable management of surplus soils and aggregates (RP1124)
Brownfield projects and other types of construction projects generate large amounts of waste soil. Managing soil arisings and waste has always been an important and sometimes difficult issue with the complexities of deciding “when is waste not waste” and when it is. How to classify and safely handle, store and dispose of that waste to comply with relevant legal obligations.
The CL:AIRE Definition of Waste: Development Industry Code of Practice (DoW CoP) has provided help in deciding when soil arisings may not be waste in the construction industry. Similarly, the WRAP Quality protocols have aided in determining when recycling soil arisings and demolition material will ceases to be ‘waste’. In practice the application of these End of Waste Protocols are often difficult to apply, the former frequently due to a lack of understanding as to what ‘suitability for use ‘means because it requires a diverse range of skills; and the latter because the industry has been slow to recognise the requirements for crushed concrete to reach its end of waste status.
Many brownfield projects even after the application of the waste hierarchy, are left with surplus soil requiring disposal, and the intricacies of classifying waste, frequently heterogeneous in nature, are often baffling to the non-expert.