Recycling article at buildingtalk.com Download / Print Article
Putney and Wood remove, re-work and recycle 35 tonnes of portland stone from King's Arms Yard in the City.
Recycling is now a part of our daily lives.
Whether it's putting old newspapers in the green box at home or reusing paper we used to waste at work, attitudes have certainly changed in recent years.
Here in the building industry architects, contractors and manufacturers alike are focussed on creating buildings which achieve or exceed the statuary requirements for modern sustainable construction.
Rewind eight years to 2001.
In the West End of London, The Crown Estate appointed Kier as main contractor to carry out an extensive refurbishment of Kinnaird House at No1.Pall Mall.
The scheme included restoration of the Portland Stone facade and adding two storeys to the building.
Kinnaird House is typical of thousands of buildings in the West End and City from that era, built with load-bearing natural stone walls up to 200mm thick.
Kier awarded the stonework package, which included dismantling, re-working and re-instating the 100 year old Portland Stone to specialist stone contractor Putney and Wood.
Putney and Wood's stonemasons individually removed these huge units time and transported them to their factory where the thickness was reduced to 75mm thick to make them suitable for modern stone cladding.
A few months later, the stone was seamlessly re-instated as cladding panels without any fuss and certainly no knowledge that recycling would become such an important issue for the industry.
Bringing us up to date, Wates recently completed the refurbishment at King's Arms Yard in the City for Cornerstone City Developments.
Putney and Wood repeated their trick from Kinnaird House, removing, re-working and recycling 35 tonnes of Portland Stone.
Currently, 33 tonnes of stone from the facade at 29-30 Kings Street, London EC2 is in their yard.
Having been cleaned and cut down, the stone will soon be re-instated as cladding.
The same contractor reused natural stone at Skanska's 311-318 High Holborn and the internal restoration of 41 Lothbury opposite the Bank of England.
With dozens of similar examples up and down the country, recycling is clearly nothing new in this sector of the industry.
Putney and Wood's association with the demolition contractor John F Hunt has helped to put them at the forefront of this type of work, the two companies have created an effective method to successfully preserve and recycle natural stone.
This 'joined-up' approach from different sub-contractors delivers economic benefits for the client and ecological benefits for the environment.
It also shows that when it comes to recycling, the construction industry was years ahead of the game.
