The Elim Estate in the London Borough of Southwark recently underwent a window replacement project. Spanning 19 weeks, the project comprised of 760 grey external/white internal PVC-U Tilt and Turn frames. With help from Eurocell, the old frames dismantled and recycled ready to be used in next generation frames and PVC-U products.
The Elim Estate was built in 1935 in the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey, and operates under the management of Leathermarket JMB, a resident-run housing association, within the London Borough of Southwark. In 2018, after a tender process to select a contractor with the necessary contract type experience and competitive bid, Leathermarket JB selected London contractors Standage & Co to undertake the project. Standage & Co then selected Assett Fineline to work on the replacement project, a company that is part of the Eurocell network, enabling the old PVC-U products to be recycled.
Scott Fincham, Managing QS for Standage said: “This project was well managed from the outset by the whole team, the client was very pleased with the level of resident engagement and the quality of workmanship was excellent. Standage & Co are pleased to be associated with such a fine project alongside Asset Fineline.”
After the old PVC-U windows that had been installed in the 1990s were removed, they were stored on site, with regular collections returning them to the Eurocell processing facility in Derbyshire. Here they were dismantled and recycled into pellet material, which can be used in next generation frames and PVC-U products. This process of recycling window profiles allows the entire lifespan of the product to become more sustainable. The process can be repeated up to 10 times using the same material, giving recycled PVC-U windows a lifespan of up to 350 years. This significantly reduces the amount of end-of-life PVC-U going to landfill.
Each time the material is recycled, the scientific behaviour of additives in the mixture changes to make the products stronger. This means that PVC-U can be re-processed and used to manufacture products of equal quality, creating an upstream recycling process.
“It’s working with companies like Assett Fineline that enabled us to recycle in excess of 1.2 million frames in 2018, achieving record levels of recycling. Over the past decade we have invested heavily to improve sustainability and this is now enabling us to continue this work and surpass the recycling objectives that we set,” said Chris Coxon, Head of Marketing at Eurocell.
Chris continued: “With the UK starting to run out of landfill space and 32% of landfill coming from the construction sector, we are proud of the part we are playing in helping to improve the sector’s sustainability record.”
