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Guest blogger, Julian Sutherland, Design Director of Sustainable Development at Atkins discusses WRAP’s resources for designing out waste

The devil is in the detail. Often detail refers to colour, materials, shapes – all of which can have a considerable impact on the design of a new building. But considering the details can also lead to significant cost and environmental savings when applied to designing out waste.

At Atkins, we are committed to reducing, reusing and recycling our waste wherever possible, and so were happy to sign up to WRAP’s (Waste & Resources Action Programme) Construction Commitments: Halving Waste to Landfill. We believe that all supply chain partners have a role to play in minimising construction waste and we have been working with WRAP with the development of targeted tools to support the design profession reap the benefits of designing out waste.

One of these resources is a series of ten design detailing sheets, developed to support the principles set out in WRAP’s Designing out Waste: a design team guide for buildings guide, launched earlier this year. These sheets showcase alternative construction details that can be applied in order to secure cost, carbon and environmental savings.

Design detail sheets are available on:

• Voided biaxial slabs;
• Tile detailing;
• Exposed concrete ceilings;
• Castellated and cellular beams;
• Aerated concrete blocks with thin joint mortar;
• Flexible plumbing systems;
• Low waste door jamb;
• Polished concrete floors;
• Post-tensioned floor slabs; and
• Rotary displacement piles.

Each of these detailing sheets are available to download on the WRAP website here.

With floors, for example, one of WRAP’s data sheets reveals that specifying an exposed, polished concrete floor instead of additional layers to form the floor surface, such as tiles, can realise up to 100% materials saving in floor coverings, result in virtually zero waste to landfill and save up to 17kgCO₂e/m².

This kind of product substitution may not be revolutionary thinking – indeed, the use of alternatives such as flexible plumbing systems may be standard practice already. However, these sheets play an important role in encouraging more designers to focus on the detail by clearly identifying the savings that can be made. As a result, more and more design teams can begin reaping the benefits for their clients and their business bottom line. What better case for change can there be than that?

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