We’d like to commend BICSI South Pacific member, Leonard Ash RCDD, Manager Technical Design and Estimating at EDF Systems in Sydney, who recently posted the following thought-provoking comments on LinkedIn. With his permission, we have repeated his words in this BICSI Bytes article. We want all BICSI members to give serious thought to what Len is saying about our industry trying to be ‘green’ in a practical way.
“I was moved to ask this question after the completion of a few large projects. On one of these projects, the cable came in cardboard boxes with just a small plastic tube at the cable pulling point.
Disposal of these boxes was a simple affair; the plastic tubes easily slide together to form a small package which I was able to deposit at the LGA [Local Government Area] free-of-charge, no fuss, no bother. The cardboard boxes crush flat in a matter of moments and the cardboard was placed in the free cardboard recycling bins at the client site.
So, 400-or-so cable boxes disposed of with minimal fuss and really no additional labour costs.
Contrast this with a second site, this time the cable came on in cardboard boxes with an internal reel. The carboard boxes were able to be flattened and disposed of free-of-charge at the customer site. The reels however, while they are a plastic and the LGA says they could be recycled, are moulded as a single piece and take up an enormous amount of space. The only way to recycle these was to load up the truck and take them to a recycle centre.
So, these reel-in-a-box actually cost more when you take into account the time to remove, load, transport and then unload the reels.
Recyclable Yes, sustainable? I am not so sure.
Then comes the next project – the cable comes on reels consisting of two plywood circles, three steel rods and a cardboard tube. At the end of the project, we are faced with a 100 or so of these reels, and herein lies the problem.
First, you have to dismantle then because the cable manufacturer won’t take them back (in Australia at least), so you cut or un-bolt the steel rods and put the rods to one side for the metal recycler. Then you crush the carboard tube to go to the cardboard recycler. Then you stack the 200 or so plywood circles that are not easily recyclable (if at all) and are destained for land fill. Our LGA has no capacity to recycle plywood and, to-date, no one I have contacted will recycle these plywood circles.
Breaking up these reels is a real process and takes time – 100 reals take the best part of seven hours, which is about $150 minimum direct cost, plus the loss of productivity while the staff member is not on site and then transport to the LGA waste centre.
Recyclable? Only in part. Sustainable? No, as the plywood at land fill breaks down, the glues can be toxic when broken down.
So next time you are selecting a product, remember the more cost-effective products may have hidden costs over the whole of the product life.
Also consider if your project contract has a waste minimisation clause, as those plywood reels may be a cause for concern, and you are held to account.”
Many thanks to Len for relating your real-world experiences of handling waste from your projects and how the seemingly simple selections we make in cabling packaging can have a significant economic and environmental impact.
So the message for the ICT infrastructure industry is that we can all contribute to reaching the aspirations of our ‘Pursuing Net-Zero’ conference in being more sustainable – even if it’s just selecting packaging that is easily recyclable. Those ‘one-percenters’ all add up to make a big difference to our environment. It’s not just what “others should do”, but something we can all contribute to.