Since the 1980s, WRG has been committed to providing our customers with quality products and solutions for their projects with our extensive knowledge of steel manufacturing and design.

As a business, we care about our environment and the impact that we have on it. The construction industry is currently under the spotlight, and rightly so, when assessing its impact on the environment and contribution to reaching government targets. In order to meet these ambitious targets, we need to embrace the old and new; proven materials such as steel which are sustainable in their properties, with new modern methods of construction and technologies which allow us to reduce emissions and build more responsibly.

“The construction industry accounts for an outstanding 36% of energy used worldwide, as well as creating 40% of CO2 emissions.”

Setting the scene

As sourced by Steel Construction, the UK construction industry consumes an estimated 400 million tonnes (Mt) of materials each year, with 120Mt of its waste produced from construction, demolition, and excavation, of which 5Mt is disposed of in landfills. As a result, there is much room for improvement in the industry’s resource efficiency, particularly when structures are nearing the end of their lifespans.

In this article, we have looked into some of the features of steel vs traditional materials to delve into the overall sustainability.

The role of steel partitioning in sustainable construction

In the last 40 years, there have been many trends, changes and developments in the industry, but one thing that has remained consistent is the use of steel.

Steel has been used in construction for over 130 years. In fact, it has been found that the first steel-framed building was built back in 1890 in Chicago, The United States.

So why does steel partitioning continue to be such a popular building material and how does it compare to traditional methods such as plasterboard?

​​End-of-Life Scenarios

Arguably, one of the most important factors worth discussing is the recyclability of steel vs traditional materials.
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When researching the end-of-life scenarios for the most commonly used building materials other than steel, such as gypsum plasterboard, it is clear that these materials fall short in terms of their recyclability.

For example, let’s focus on gypsum plasterboard. Whilst this material can be recycled, it cannot be recycled with other products. This means that a large proportion of the waste is left to landfills.

Cartwrights Waste Disposal have estimated that the construction industry uses 60% of the plasterboard produced and up to 1.3Mt of plasterboard waste is generated within the new-build construction and refurbishment sectors each year – now that is a lot!

But what happens with this waste? According to the Construction Index, the amount of gypsum construction waste recycled is estimated at only around 7%.