Planning for waste minimisation and resource efficiency in HS2

High Speed 2 (HS2) will be the new backbone of Britain’s rail network. Phase 1 will be Europe’s biggest construction project, creating 230 km of new railway, and will provide significant challenges in waste management, not least the production of approximately 130 Mt of excavated material. HS2 Ltd has developed an Environmental Policy which includes a commitment to ‘Source and make efficient use of sustainable materials, maximise the proportion of material diverted from landfill and reduce waste’. HS2 Ltd has acted to deliver on these commitments through a number of initiatives which are described, including: exemplary contractual waste-diversion targets; resource efficiency workshops; pre-demolition audits, including salvage audits for affected heritage assets; optimising on-site and off-site reuse of excavated material; development of contractor guidance on maximising the reuse of felled timber and development of a material-efficiency metric. This paper provides a synopsis of the approach taken by HS2 Ltd to date.