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Julie and Andrew Boyd.
Andrew and Julie Boyd of Coresteel Buildings Rodney say that industrial development can be positive for the environment, but it’s going to take some change of habits.
Instead of skip bins, Coresteel Rodney has wool fadge bags on its sites for separating streams of recycling, including steel, plastic, wood and glass. “When it comes to steel, we wouldn’t even have a wheelie bin of waste from the warehouse,” Andrew says.
The wood waste generated on a building site is taken home by staff to be used as firewood or sent to be turned into woodchips.
Coresteel Rodney recycles its plastic wrap via Plasback. Julie is an advocate of Plasback and has tried to encourage other Warkworth businesses to give it a try by gifting them a collection bag.
However, she has found that while business owners are often willing, they have difficulty encouraging staff to take the extra step to sort waste.
Andrew’s solution is simply not to have a skip bin. His observation is that having a skip bin enables people to be lazy about throwing things away, even when they could be recycled.
Currently, around half of waste going into New Zealand landfills is construction waste.
Andrew acknowledges that separating waste streams is a cost, but he believes it saves on the cost of sending waste to landfill via a skip by up to two thirds.
“Yes, it’s a cost to us to sort and transport that waste to be recycled, but it would be ridiculous to complain about landfills like in the Dome Valley and then not do something about it.”
The couple believe the industry needs to stop using polystyrene altogether, because it is bulky and costly to transport and sort, and instead use cardboard for packaging.
Andrew and Julie also believe that industrial developments could be a solution to the district’s worsening drought problem. The roofs of large warehouses collect so much rain that systems are built to slow the flow of water into the wastewater system using detention tanks.
Andrew says that water ought to be collected, and with a bit of imaginative thinking could be stored in a reservoir administered by Watercare.
Meanwhile, Coresteel’s patented “tapered box beam” also reduces the amount of steel needed, while being strong enough for buildings up to 65 metres wide. Wide edges of the bean are used for parts of the structure where there is the most stress, while the beams taper in the middle where the load is lighter.
The system has proved popular for industrial businesses because it doesn’t require columns in the middle of the structure, freeing up space and making it more versatile.
Recent projects include the Warkworth PlaceMakers, the new Northland Waste transfer station in Sandspit Road and a cool store for kumara in Dargaville, as well as several sheds on lifestyle blocks.
