Plasterboard Recycling Making Progress in the U.K.

Strong progress has been made by the U.K. plasterboard manufacturers in recycling scrap plasterboard and reducing the amount of material sent to landfills in the first year of the industry’s Ashdown Agreement, according to a report released by the U.K.’s Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP).

Between April 2007 and March 2008 nearly 54,000 metric tons of scrap plasterboard was recycled back into new plasterboard. Manufacturers have also reduced the material sent to landfill from their production operations to 6,000 metric tons.

The Ashdown Agreement was signed in March 2007 between the Gypsum Products Development Association (GDPA) representing the U.K. plasterboard manufacturers and WRAP. The agreement set two targets:

• Reduce the amount of scrap material sent to landfills from manufacturing operations to 10,000 metric tons per year by 2010, and
• Increase the take-back and recycling of plasterboard for use in plasterboard manufacture to 50 percent of new construction scrap arisings (currently estimated at 300,000 metric tons) by 2010.

In addition, the agreement called for the plasterboard manufacturers to work together with the construction sector toward reducing the amount of new plasterboard going to landfill.

As a result of the disposal target for 2010 being met in the first year, the target to reduce the amount of manufacturing scrap sent to landfill has been tightened from 10,000 to 7,500 metric tons by 2010.

The annual report of the Ashdown Agreement is available on WRAP’s Web site.