Recycling our way to a cleaner future
Magnox is bucking the international trend when it comes to construction and demolition waste – recycling a massive 93 per cent of what it produces.
During 2022-23 we recycled enough demolition waste to fill 542 double decker buses, and enough metal to make 60 million new drinks cans.
Magnox sustainability manager, Kate Baxter commented: The Magnox sustainability policy advocates applying circular economy principles. This means planning projects in a way that minimises wastes, keeps materials in use for as long as possible (by reusing, sharing, refurbishing etc.) and recycles end of use material creating further value. This replaces the linear approach of ‘buy-use-dispose.’ Applying circular economy principles tackles climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution.
Construction and demolition waste accounts for 30 per cent of Europe’s total waste, but as a responsible leader in nuclear decommissioning Magnox is committed to finding more sustainable ways to clean-up it’s 12 sites across the UK – with the ultimate aim of ‘recycling’ the land for another use in the future.
And it’s not just waste that we recycle – we also offer assets we no longer need to other nuclear operators, charities and commercial buyers for re-use, to avoid them becoming waste at all.
Louise Dyche, Magnox Asset Disposal Manager, said: “We’ve succeeded in finding new owners for 2,976 assets this financial year with the support of our supply chain partner Ramco. These include everything from furniture, vehicles, containers, plant machinery, trailers and pallet trucks to laptops, workshop equipment, fire pumps, gates and even vacuum cleaners.
“We are proud to celebrate our achievements in reducing the use of raw materials to create new products – saving both money and natural resources.”
More than 93% of the conventional demolition waste we produced in the last year has been recycled into aggregates or topsoil for use in construction and landscaping projects. That diverted 6,850 tonnes of material from being sent to landfill – the equivalent of 542 double decker buses.
We also sent 842 tonnes of radioactively contaminated metal for treatment and recycling – the equivalent of making more than 60 million new drinks cans!
One example of our sustainable approach includes the removal of a nine-kilometre discharge pipe from Harwell Site. The pipeline was removed and cut into 1,650 sections weighing 1.2 tonnes each. Our contract partner Augean cleans each section, so far recycling 99 per cent of the metal.
And road repairs completed at Hunterston A Site resulted in the sustainable re-use of 77 tonnes of asphalt road planings, following Scottish Environment Protection Agency guidance to confirm the clean planings could be deemed as a product and not waste.