Dunton – Helping You Achieve Zero Waste

The construction and demolition industry creates more than 110 million tonnes of waste each year, with 25 million tonnes sent to landfill. In order to meet the Zero Waste targets, a different approach to managing waste is required.

What’s the problem with waste?
The first problem with waste is that we are running out of places to put it. In the UK the amount of waste generated is increasing and much of it ends up in landfill sites which are rapidly filling up. The other problem with waste is that it represents a misuse of valuable resources. UK landfill sites are due to reach capacity and the ‘landfill tax’ escalator is a further incentive to find better alternatives.

What does it mean to you?
Put simply, waste costs money. The Halving Waste to Landfill Commitment was designed by WRAP to provide a supportive framework to encourage the construction industry to work together to reduce waste. By supporting the commitment your business can cut its cost and reduce its carbon footprint.

How can we Help?
At Dunton Environmental we specialise in developing and implementing ground remediation and waste minimisation solutions for land restoration. By developing advanced technologies in these fields over the past 10 years we are able to provide faster, professional and low cost solutions for remediating contaminated land and soils.

Consider these examples: 

Example 1:

Site has 1000 m³ surplus contaminated made ground

• Site requires 500 m³ subsoil
• Site requires 300 m³ topsoil
• Site requires 200 m³ crushed stone

 Conventional Method-Cart Away and Import

Description	Quantity m³	Price £/m³	Value
Cart Away	1000	35.00	£  35,000.00
Landfill Tax	1000	64.00	£  64,000.00
Import subsoil	500	25.00	£  12,500.00
Import topsoil	300	25.00	£    7,500.00
Import crushed stone	200	25.00	£    5,000.00
		Total Cost	£124,000.00

Benefits using Regener8 recycling Technology

Description	Quantity m³	Price £/m³	Value
Screen soil stockpile to recover hardcore	1000	3.00	£  3,000.00
Apply Regener8 to convert contaminated made ground to subsoil grade material	1000	25.00	£25,000.00
Apply Regener8 to convert subsoil to topsoil grade material	300	10.00	£  3,000.00
Crush recovered hardcore to 6f2 grade	200	4.00	£     800.00
		Total Cost	£31,800.00

Cost Saving using Regener8 £92,200.00 (74.35% saving)

• All soils retained on-site
• No import required
• All requirements met

Note: The above is an example only. Actual costs are site specific and dependent on volumes.

Example 2:

Site has 1000 m³ surplus uncontaminated made ground

• Site requires 500 m³ subsoil
• Site requires 300 m³ topsoil
• Site requires 200 m³ crushed stone

 Conventional Method-Cart Away and Import

Description	Quantity m³	Price £/m³	Value
Cart Away	1000	30.00	£30,000.00
Import subsoil	500	20.00	£10,000.00
Import topsoil	300	25.00	£  7,500.00
Import crushed stone	200	25.00	£  5,000.00
		Total Cost	£52,500.00

  
Benefits using Regener8 recycling Technology

Description	Quantity m³	Price £/m³	Value
Screen soil stockpile to recover hardcore	1000	3.00	£  3,000.00
Apply Regener8 to convert made ground  to subsoil grade material	500	15.00	£  7,500.00
Apply Regener8 to convert subsoil to topsoil grade material	300	10.00	£  3,000.00
Crush recovered hardcore to 6f2 grade	200	4.00	£     800.00
		Total Cost	£14,300.00

Cost Saving using Regener8 £38,200.00 (72.8% saving)

• All soils retained on-site
• No import required
• All requirements met

Note: The above is an example only. Actual costs are site specific and dependent on volumes.

Top Safety Accreditation for Dunton Environmental!

Dunton Environmental has been awarded accreditation from safecontractor for its commitment to achieving excellence in health and safety.

Safecontractor is a leading third party accreditation scheme which recognises very high standards in health and safety management amongst UK contractors.

The company’s application for safecontractor accreditation was driven by the need for a uniform standard across the business.

Lara Roe, the Health & Safety Director at Dunton remarked that 'Our award of the safecontractor accreditation emphasizes our commitment to supporting our clients with high standards in health and safety compliance'.

Safecontractor accreditation will enhance Dunton’s ability to attract new contracts and its commitment to safety will be viewed positively by its insurers when the company liability policy is up for renewal.

Safecontractor plays a vital role in supporting our clients in meeting their compliance needs, whilst working with their contractors as they progress through the accreditation process.

Under the safecontractor scheme, businesses undergo a vetting process which examines health and safety procedures and their track record for safe practice. Those companies meeting the high standard are included on a database, which is accessible to registered users only via a website.

Over one hundred and seventy major nation-wide businesses, from several key sectors, have signed up to use the scheme.

Dunton’s Technologies a Success in Plymouth!

Dunton Environmental Ltd has successfully decontaminated a site earmarked for residential development in the south-west. Through a combination of our unique land and water technologies the site was able to re-use contaminated materials on-site at levels that were acceptable to all stakeholders.
The works primarily comprised the use of our rapid Bio-Accelerator to enhance the bioremediation of organic pollutants and our Bio-H-Filter media to remove free phase and dissolved phase organic pollutants within the perched groundwater. The whole process was completed on time and within budget prompting a ‘great result’ from the Client.

As the sun begins to set on the era of dig and dump we are increasingly responding to requests to help our customers avoid the higher costs associated with landfill disposal costs. To find out how Dunton can save you money on projects please contact James Hill at our Head Office today on 0121 356 4360.

Landfill Tax – recent changes spark protests

On the 24th May 2012 traffic around Parliament Square in London was brought to a standstill by skip wagons protesting against changes to landfill tax charges. The cause of the protests were the innocuous sounding ‘clarification’ of LFT rules by HMRC resulting in certain soils now attracting the full £64/tonne standard rate of tax instead of the previous low rate (£2.50/tonne). The consequence of an immediate hike in landfill charges meant that waste hauliers were seriously out of pocket.

The real root cause dates back to 2008 when the Court of Appeal ruled against HMRC in relation to landfill tax paid for materials used for daily cover and site engineering purposes. The court agreed that the material had not been disposed of as waste and was therefore non taxable. Following this landmark case, the Treasury set aside around £300 million for claims made by waste management companies. Since then the Government has attempted to close this loophole by introducing two rates of landfill tax and the landfill tax (Qualifying Material) Order, which defines material that qualify for the lower LFT rate.

HMRC ‘Clarifications’ and impacts on Contaminated Land

The original clarification (Brief 15/12, May 2012) that caused so much outrage amongst waste hauliers and waste management companies made it more difficult for operators to pay the lower rate of LFT for contaminated soils. In response, the HMRC issued two further clarification documents (Brief 18/12, June 2012) and a document entitled Interim advice on lower rating. These attempted to specifically exclude contaminated soils from qualifying by stating “in respect of rocks and soils, where such materials are contaminated with materials such as asbestos, metal, wood, or contain elevated levels of chemical contaminants (heavy metals, hydrocarbons), they would fall outside the conditions required in the 2011 Order and therefore be liable to the standard rate.”

So how will these changes affect you? The likelihood is that your muck-a-way costs will continue to rise significantly. Furthermore, the standard rate charge increases to £72/tonne from April 2013. However, alternative options do exist and we can help you find a solution!

Regener8 Soil Conversion

Dunton Environmental Ltd can help you avoid the higher costs associated with landfill tax and you may even be able to re-use your soils on site, removing the costs of importing materials. By developing advanced technologies in the field of soils treatment and waste management we are able to provide faster, professional and low cost solutions for remediating contaminated land.

With over 8 years of on-site experience, Dunton Environmental has developed a formula which converts high liability contaminated soil wastes into reusable products. The soil is initially screened then treated according to the chemical nature of the soils (either by accelerated bioremediation or by the addition of Regener8 which utilizes chemical oxidation, chemical reduction and metathesis reactions) into non harmful products. The treated soils are then composted to increase its suitability as a plant growing medium.

This technology and process is compliant with Environmental legislation and meets the requirement of a ‘Best Practice’ site waste management plan. It can also be used to pre-treat contaminated soils prior to landfill to reduce the overall cost of cart way or used to treat heavily contaminated soils to render it suitable for use on site below a capping layer.

Why not book a free EnviroSMART Seminar?

Dunton’s EnviroSMART system will help you remove the waste out of waste management. It is faster, cheaper and simpler. It has been successfully used to assist major house builders and retailers in saving hundreds of thousands of pounds by diverting contaminated soils from landfill, in timescales that worked.

Training seminars are available on request. Our EnviroSMART seminars help educate Clients on remediation and waste management strategies and solutions for soil and waste recycling to reduce their waste disposal costs, saving time and money.

EradZion8 leading the Way in Rapid Knotweed Treatment

As you can all imagine, Dunton, being experts in the field, receive hundreds and hundreds of knotweed inquiries every year. Calls from a whole range of concerned clients come in from all over the country seeking solutions to their knotweed problems. What we find most interesting about all these calls is that there always seems to be one question that gets asked, and that is, "Why does Dunton not offer a Rhizome Picking method of treatment? Everyone else seems to do it".
It’s for this reason we thought we would write this article and share some knotweed truths with you.
Firstly, to understand why we don’t offer this method to you, our valued clients, it’s important to understand how knotweed grows. The challenge when dealing with knotweed is not the above ground vegetation but actually the roots. Knotweed is renowned for its complex root systems which can grow up to 7m in radius from each stem and can go down to a depth of 3m. As well as this, a piece of the root only a few centimetres in length can contain enough energy to grow and mature into a full size plant and this is where the real problem with knotweed is.

What Are The Risks When Using the Rhizome Picking Method?
The rhizome picking method was developed some years ago to deal with knotweed problems and comprises 3 main steps:

1. Excavation of knotweed contaminated soils
2. Picking out of knotweed roots (rhizomes)
3. Backfilling of soils (with the hope that they are now knotweed free)

Points 2 and 3 are the ones to really focus on as this is where the flaw in this process lies. These 2 points rely heavily on humans, and of course with that comes human error. The process requires humans to hand pick out all the roots from the soils, one by one. Not only can this be a long and laborious task, but the risks associated with this are huge! If just one single root is left in that soil, that could end up costing the client many thousands when it grows back. Simply put, using this process, it is almost impossible to guarantee that the knotweed will not grow back. There is no way one can be certain that they have removed every single root from that soil. It is for this reason why Dunton does not offer this treatment method to our clients.

EradZion8, formulated just for you!
It’s not all bad news though! Having realised the failures with the Rhizome picking method, the team here at Dunton invested a lot of research time, approximately 8 years, developing a suitable and very competitive alternative for you.
The EradZion8 solution removes as many of the knotweed roots as possible but to guarantee performance, we apply a purpose designed formula to the soil which removes all the risk of there being any residual knotweed left in the soil.  Dunton’s EradZion8 solution is a direct alternative to both digging and dumping at a landfill as well as to the rhizome picking method. The system has been used on a lot of sites up and down the country, even in Scotland and Ireland, and it still maintains a 100% no regrowth success rate.
If you would like more information on the EradZion8 Rapid Treatment Solution.