6 Steps to Tackle Carbon Emissions

Climate change affects both our planet’s health and our ecosystems, so it’s important that we play our part in reducing carbon emissions not only personally but also as a company.

According to a report published by the National Engineering Policy Centre, the UK construction sector needs to decarbonise more urgently in line with the national emission reduction targets of 68% by 2030 and 78% by 2035.

At Hughes & Salvidge we are committed to significantly reducing our carbon footprint across all of our sites. We not only use low-emission and HVO fuel, we always reuse building materials where possible, manage our traffic to and from sites, and consistently monitor all data to improve and reduce our carbon emissions year-on-year.

6 Ways Hughes and Salvidge Reduce Carbon Emissions

1. Monitoring   

At Hughes & Salvidge, we believe it is essential to monitor emissions, create a baseline dataset and internally and externally audit throughout the year. This allows us to highlight what areas we are performing well in and areas that require improvement. Over the past year, we have collated baseline data for carbon emissions and with this information, we have created a carbon reduction plan to use throughout the business. 

In addition to our Hughes & Salvidge carbon emission reporting, we have created three emission scopes which have been explicitly produced from projects via internal records and an external emissions management system called Achilles Carbon Management E-Manage Portal to ensure our emissions are captured accurately. Achilles Carbon Management E-Manage Portal produces our certified figures from the carbon emissions generated on-site and breaks down the carbon production into transportation (to and from the site), plant machinery and waste recycling under ISO14064-1 regulations. 

At Hughes & Salvidge we also consider our environmental impact with on-site monitoring of Particulate Matter (PM10) to determine air quality.

2. Control of Plant and Machinery Emissions

At Hughes & Salvidge we always use low-emission fuel, and all vehicles on site are limited to 10mph which encourages a reduction in carbon emissions on site. We have also started trialling the use of HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil), known to reduce carbon emissions by up to 90%, with a better fuel usage efficiency. 

We have trialled the HVO fuel across various sites and are already seeing excellent performances and results. We monitored a project between April-June 2022 and it used 22,390L of HVO fuel creating 0.8tCO₂e; however, if we used white diesel, it would have been 60.6tCO₂e generated – saving 59.8 tonnes of CO₂.

3. Implementing Waste Management

Implementing waste management is an essential role, it allows us to separate and segregate waste at the demolition source. Determining whether materials can be reused, recycled or recovered is a key focus at Hughes & Salvidge.

Materials such as clean concrete and masonry arisings are often crushed to create a recycled aggregate, which can be reused on-site for backfilling purposes or for future construction use. All non-contaminated metals are salvaged and 100% recycled at metal recycling facilities off-site. Mixed construction waste will be transported to local recycling sorting facilities with high recycling rates (90-95%).

At Hughes & Salvidge, all of our waste management and recycling is currently being recorded and monitored and will be released in our 2023 CO2 performance report.

4. Sourcing Materials

As a critical element to our waste control and hierarchy, we aim to only source materials that are essential and required; preventing future waste materials. All of the materials procured are from organisations that have sustainability standards and carbon reduction plans that align with our companies’ policies and values.  Reusing materials also allows us to reduce carbon emissions of lorries and loading equipment that will be required for new deliveries to our sites.

5. Eco-conscious Site Offices

Across all Hughes & Salvidge sites, we try to use solar-powered energy wherever possible and connect our equipment to mains instead of using diesel generators. We use motion-powered lights in site cabins to turn off when rooms when are not in use. 

All of our on-site machine operatives receive up-to-date machine training and toolbox talks on carbon reduction in machine efficiency. We have also implemented a single plastics reduction policy as an entire company and aim to reduce our single-use plastic across all of our sites. 

6. Traffic Management

At Hughes & Salvidge we predominantly use local suppliers in order to reduce travel requirements and Co2 emissions. We promote car-pooling across the business, in line with COVID-19 measures, in order to reduce travel movements around our sites. All of our senior management team drive either Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV), Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) or Electric Vehicles (EV) cars. Finally, all of our fuel consumption as a company is closely monitored and audited with the aim to continue to reduce our fuel usage year-on-year.

At Hughes & Salvidge, every project we work on is planned with meticulous attention to detail, ensuring we always keep carbon emissions to a minimum. To find out more about our carbon emission footprint or any of our other services, please get in touch.