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The construction supply chain has a long way to to get to grips with the buying and subsequent disposal of materials. Two reports out this week underline the point powerfully. One from the WWF finds that the UK is the third largest importer of illegal timber in the work, around £712m a year. It reckons 65% of this, a cool £462m, is in construction.
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And new figures from website Netregs, which gives advice to firms on waste regulations, claims that two thirds of contractor don't have a site waste management plan and 60% do not realise not having one is illegal.
- The WWF report "wants the government to introduce measures to monitor how much legal and sustainable timber and wood products it sources and set clear targets and deadlines to increase this". Given that central Government is responsible for buying 40% of the total UK timber there's plenty of work to be done in Whitehall the WWF reckons. There's a breakdown of illegal timber entering the UK in the report: softwood sawn wood (1.7 million cubic metres), the paper sector (800,000 cubic metres), plywood (220,000 cubic metres), hardwood sawn wood (170,000 million cubic metres), furniture (100,000 million cubic metres) and particleboards (15,000 million cubic metres).
- Netregs has launched a campaign with the the DTI to raise awareness of proper waste procedures called 'Site Waste - It's Criminal'. Firms will need to use Site Waste Managment Plans ahead of a legal requirement in Spring 2008. And they've chucked out (excuse the pun) a few interesting stats as well: the average eight cubic yard skip costs around £150 to hire and its discarded contents are worth over £1,200. In the UK around 13% of materials delivered to site go straight to skips directly (that stat was thanks to CIRIA).
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