What happens on site matters more than what your sustainability policy says

By Sally O’Kane | GIRAFFE Associates Ltd

For construction and manufacturing businesses working towards BREEAM requirements or an improved EcoVadis score, it can be tempting to focus on the paperwork: policies, procedures, targets and evidence. All of these are important, but they only tell part of the story. The more useful question is: what is actually happening on the ground?

Carrying out on-site waste and resource efficiency audits can be eye-opening and can help to improve performance scores for both BREEAM and EcoVadis in our experience.

Delivering recent Waste & Resource Efficiency Audits for clients Gilbert-Ash, The McAvoy Group and Errigal has demonstrated the clear advantage of this onsite approach. We look beyond the paperwork, at how materials arrive, are stored and used; how waste is segregated; what gets reused or recycled; where materials are being damaged or wasted; and whether site teams have the information and systems they need to manage resources effectively.

This isn’t just about improving recycling rates. Preventing waste in the first place is better – environmentally and financially – than dealing with it once it has been created. Better ordering, storage, packaging management and material reuse can reduce waste costs while improving resource efficiency. It can also strengthen your certification evidence.

How waste-audits support certification

For BREEAM, good site-level waste data and resource management can support requirements under the Waste category, including the management and monitoring of construction waste. The BREEAM New Construction standard provides the detailed requirements and evidence needed.

For EcoVadis, the benefits are wider. It looks at your sustainability management system – policies, actions and results – with waste and resource management forming part of the environmental assessment. The EcoVadis methodology explains how these elements are assessed.

Start at the beginning, not the end

The important point is that you shouldn’t start with the certification checklist and work backwards. Start by understanding what is really happening on your sites, identify where performance could improve, and put practical measures in place. The evidence needed for BREEAM, EcoVadis and your own ESG reporting then becomes much easier to generate. More importantly, you have actually improved performance rather than simply documented it.

For practical guidance on reducing waste, the UK Government’s waste hierarchy guidance is a useful place to start.

Good sustainability management starts on site. Certification should be the evidence of it – not the reason for it.