Reducing Construction Waste Through Circularity

[Shane Clarke] Alright. Kia ora e te iwi. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Shane Clarke. I'm the general manager here at Nuralite. Welcome to webinar number 27. Just for those who are interested, this webinar is worth 5 CPD points from the NZIA. This webinar is a little bit different. It's not a product focus. It's more of along our sustainability journey and things like that. So a little bit different to the previous 20 odd webinars we've done. All the previous webinars we've done are available on our education page. If you're wanting to go back and look at those, still apply for your CPD points on those as well. I understand those are a hot topic at the moment, so. Good to that. Alright, so how we do our webinars is set for about half an hour. We've got two panellists which I'll introduce shortly and towards the end we'll do a Q&A. So if you've got some questions, feel free to put them into the Q&A section at the bottom and then we'll put them to the panellist or myself towards the end there. So like I said, today's webinar is a little bit different. We normally, you know, focus on something technical or a product focus or something like that. This particular webinar is about how we can reduce construction waste through circularity. So luckily for me, luckily for you, I'm not the only one on the panel today. I have Angela Duthie who is our outright insulation technical advisor and also have Paula Wallace, the National Specifications Manager for saveBOARD. So just quickly before we throw to the panel, we're going to run a poll. Gets you all engaged in what we're doing and a little bit of interaction. Just want to know who's in the room. Have you heard of saveBOARD? It sort of helps us pitch what we talk about for the next 30 minutes or so. So leave us up for a couple of seconds. All right. Thanks for that. All right. So without any further ado, I'd like to introduce Paula, who's going to talk to us about saveBOARD. And I guess the first question is, what is saveBOARD? [Paula Wallace] Awesome. Well, I hope that first poll blew the roof and got us off to a good start. So saveBOARD is a business that aims to create a circular economy by turning composite packaging waste into building products. And those building products re-enter the local supply chain, eliminating future waste, which is really important. So we opened the Hamilton plant in 2021. And a few months ago, we opened a second plant in Sydney with two more plants, Melbourne, Brisbane on the cards as well. So up next is what we recycle. So Tetra Pak cartons, which you'll all be familiar with if you're a oat milk flat white kind of person, soft plastics and mixed fibre. So mixed fibre is, again, a composite type cardboard or paper based product with other elements like instant kiwi tickets. We recycle a lot of those. Right. Where do we get it? So the soft plastics recycling programme. So if you're an avid recycler, which I hope you are, and you take your little bread bags and plastic packaging, need to go back, yes, to Countdown, then that makes its way to us. OK, so that's part of the soft plastics recycling programme. Local collection points where the community can drop off their household Tetra Paks. They're all throughout New Zealand and can be found on our website. We work with a lot of construction companies who are purchasing our product and therefore we recycle their construction soft plastic waste and then our producer partners, like an example of that would be Fonterra. So once we get that plastic and all of that waste, what do we make out of it? Which is our next slide. So our products are betterBRACE, the rigid air barrier, which we'll touch on a little bit more today. The roof board roofing substrate, which we have a link there with Nuralite and the potential for roof boards to be used in their warm roof systems as well. And then our internal lining is paper faced and exposed board and also multi-use, which is used for hoardings and in large sort of industrial and warehousing projects. So all of these products have it a clear label and there's no water, glue, resin or additives that are used in the process. So it's simply the soft plastic waste that binds all of the product together. And that of course has a huge impact on our carbon. But before we move on to that, this little example here, that's an installation at Te Papa and at the end of life of that installation, that all came to us and we recycled it and made new boards, which they will use in another installation that's coming up. So that's just a really good example. So our next slide is embodied carbon, my favourite, because it's just, I love it. So our embodied carbon has been calculated on cradle to gate. It is 0.11 kilos of CO2 per kilo of material. So what does that mean when you're looking at it compared to other products, traditional building products in the market? So it's 50%, our carbon footprint is 50% less than ply, 75% less than plaster board and a whopping 90% less than cement board. So if we move on to the next slide, we're going to pick out one product today, betterBRACE, rigid air barrier. And we're highlighting this particular product because of course Angela is going to talk to us about warm walls and betterBRACE can be used as the rigid air barrier component and a warm wall build up with rock wall up to 10 metres. And Jade also is just going to pop a link into the chat box now. So that will take you to the betterBRACE website page for save boards for full information. And also on the outright website, the rock wall technical section has got information about betterBRACE as well. And don't forget to actually push the specify button on master spec. So yeah, so that's our association with betterBRACE and rigid air barrier. And like I mentioned before, we're working really closely with Nuralite at the moment so that we can recycle Rockwool packaging and turn that into either rigid air barrier or roof board, which will be available as a low carbon alternative within those warm roof and wall warm systems. So I'm going to leave you with a fun fact as we move on to Angela. I love my fun facts. Push the little next slide please Jade. So if you were to use betterBRACE instead of a traditional product and just an average house, 104 square metres of betterBRACE, you would be diverting 1350 kilos of waste from landfill. That's local waste, local landfill. So what to think about. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, yeah. That's a really good intro. Thanks, Paula. We've got some questions coming in thick and fast, which is great. We'll save those for the end. Thank you. Alright, so I'll try and tie this together now with who we are and what we do by bringing in Angela. So as I said earlier, Ange is the Outright Architectural Technical Advisor and one of the things that she focusses on, sorry just to go back, Outright is a sister brand of Nuralite Waterproofing. So obviously most people are familiar with the name Nuralite. We specialise in waterproofing. Our sister company Outright and they have a particular focus on external insulation and hopefully I've somehow tied that together and I'll introduce Anne, tell us what we're seeing here. [Angela Duthie] You have, thanks Shane. So Rockwool is a well-known international brand that's been in production for over 80 years. The use of Rockwool in this photo here, you can see it as exterior wall insulation. So that ensures fewer thermal bridges and getting the best thermal performance out of the product, which is ideal. So there's a number of iterations using multiple wall claddings, wrap layers, looking at your thermal values, whether you want it to be air or vapour tight and then of course your structural options too. I'd also encourage people to look at their thermal and condensation modelling when they're looking at building up different wall programmes. Next slide. So the benefits of Rockwool, it's actually a multi-faceted product, so it has exceptional fire performance, superior acoustic performance and really good R values. Being hydrophobic, it doesn't absorb water but if it does get wet it will retain its R value. In Europe they looked at a whole lot of projects and removed the wall claddings to look at the performance of the Rockwool that had been in situ some for up to 55 years and they found that the R value of those products was as good as when they were installed. So that's really a good quality with the product and that's where low thermal drift comes in. That means the performance of the product over time maintains really well. Rockwool is ideal in buildings over 10 metres high as well. So from a sustainability perspective, it is manufactured from basalt rock, so using natural and recycled materials. The bales themselves are wrapped quite minimally, so they're open at the ends because it doesn't matter if it gets wet. And with the application of insulation, so in a continuous layer, you've got less cuts, less waste when you're not having to go between framing and all that sort of carry on. So there's less offcuts. With those offcuts, you can use them in hydroponics, putting them in the bottom of pot plants. You can also use them back into your garden too. Rockwool is an international brand. They have a programme called Rockcycle. It's currently available in 17 countries, but they're still aiming for up to 30 countries in 2030. So watch this space. [Shane Clarke] And what do they do with that? Is it how they recall and recycle the Rockwool? [Angela Duthie] Yeah, so that's using all the offcuts and putting them back into the manufacturing process. So that makes up that recycle content in there. [Shane Clarke] Right, nice. So yeah, how do we tie this into our friends at saveBOARD? [Angela Duthie] Yeah, so here's the plastic wrapping that is used on the rockwool. So that's taken off on site and then recycled back through to saveBOARD and input into their product, which is awesome. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, nice. So going forward, it's early days for us at the moment, but going forward we'll be able to specify a saveBOARD RAB board with the use of an outright insulation specification. Is that correct? [Angela Duthie] That's right. So you'll be able to look at different, as I said, those different layers and be able to incorporate saveBOARD into those more buildups, which is awesome, and maybe roof. Nice. And this project is really interesting. This is a Kainga Ora project, Nga Kainga Anamata. Now, it's being each different apartment block is identical, except for the structural components. So there's five different structural elements there, all specified with Rockwool as external insulation. Now from this, these apartments are going to be built to passive house standard with net zero energy outputs, but also they're going to monitor the construction and the cost and low carbon benefits over time as well. So that's going to be reported back to the industry, which will be hopefully some really good learnings. And of course, all of the soft plastic waste from the site, from the rockwool will be recycled back through to saveBOARD products. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, it's nice to be working with a client that seems to be right at the front end of the circularity spear. I know Kainga Ora is still doing a little bit more work towards that with saveBOARD, so we could just see how that pans out at the end there. [Paula Wallace] Yeah, we have been talking with them for a while, so that's imminent, yeah. [Shane Clarke] Nice, nice. Paula, we're just going to throw back to you again and talk about how does saveBOARD promote circularity. And just to give you a heads up, we've had a few questions come in and they're along the theme of recirculating the product again, so we've had a... [Paula Wallace] Oh, great. [Shane Clarke] Might be able to touch on those as we go through this. [Paula Wallace] I have something I prepared a little earlier just on that point. [Shane Clarke] Nice. [Paula Wallace] So clearly we're all about circularity, so we take the customer waste and you'll see that we've also got end of life, but we take the customer waste, we turn it into saveBOARD products, which we've talked about, and then we use them in either customer buildings or customer environments. So it's not necessarily just buildings, we've got those building products, but they can also be used for floor protection cover, sacrificial formwork I've just been speaking to someone about, shelving. So there's lots of opportunities outside of what you would consider to be typical building applications. We run a product stewardship programme, so all the off carts on site can come back to us, and also at end of life, it comes back to us and literally just gets back into the shredder with the soft plastic and mixed fibre, and those products would become hoardings with our multi-use product. So it just keeps going round and round. So yes, end of life does come back to us. [Shane Clarke] Circularity. [Paula Wallace] Circularity. Round and round. Next, please. So these are some examples of what we've done for customers, working through either the customer directly or their architect. So this is Powerco in New Plymouth, and we've taken all their old marketing collateral, and we have used that to make their boards, and that's just a picture of it up in their reception in New Plymouth. And we are hosting, coming up shortly within the next sort of month or so, we're holding, we've got a couple of events, installation events, so that you can come and have a look at the saveBOARD in situ. So if you'd like to be notified of what events we're hosting and where they are, just contact us and we'll pop you on the list so that you get an invite. So the next example is KFC, and that's been a lot in the media right now. So we're delighted to be working with KFC. There's over 700 stores in Australia and 100 plus in New Zealand. The first one started last week. So what we do for KFC is we take all their back of house packaging waste. So our factory doesn't smell like KFC because we're not taking the buckets, we're taking the soft plastic waste from back of house, and that gets recycled into the boards that they're using in their store. They loved the concept of that, which was one of the main decision makers in selecting saveBOARD, but also they saved so much time. This is the exposed board, it's pre-finished, so there's no plastering to be done, there's no painting. As soon as that's up, it's job done, which is really important for a refit. And of course, all of the waste from that can be recycled. So if you've got, as an architect or as a construction company as well, if you've got clients or customers that generate waste that saveBOARD can recycle, then chat to us because then we can work with you to create a circular solution for your customer. So we can help you organise to what waste can be collected from your customer and return to us for the product that you're going to specify in that project. It's also really important to note that we don't just take waste to help people solve their own problems that they've got. We have a problem, we need to sell board. So we all work together in that. So what comes in has to go out the other end as product and that's the only way we can create a circular solution or a circular economy. So like with the construction companies that are taking it, we're taking all their soft plastic waste, they're purchasing mostly hoardings from us because they're not, unless they're a design build, they don't get the opportunity to specify. So what comes in has got to go out. So that was a really brief look at what we're doing today, clearly because of the restraint of time. But if you guys out there do want to hear more about what we do and more about our products, just contact us, we'll pop in for in-practise presentation or an online presentation. And that's really me, but just a big thanks to you guys, Shane and Jade and the team at Nuralite for having us along today and for the support that you guys are all showing for saveBOARD product. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, no worries. Thanks, Paula. It's been great having you here sort of running us through. I guess it's a product that's not ours, so we're not completely experts on it, but it's great that we can all link up and look at this construction waste problem together and sort of work towards solutions. And we all appreciate that it's early days, but going forward, we hope that it'll be our saveBOARD, actually, because we'll have our own soft plastics in it, will be used as a warm roof substrate and also similarly with the Outright external insulation, the brace board. So looking forward to that. Early days, I understand there was a shipment of our stuff going down to you, so any day now, so exciting times. Right, we've got a couple of minutes for some Q&A. We've got a few questions that have come through here. I'll try and pick a theme rather than reading that all individually. Here's a quick one. I think this one will be for you, Paula. Is there an additional binding agent used in making the saveBOARD, or is there any other resins used? [Paula Wallace] No, there's nothing. It's literally just the Tetra Pak and soft plastic. Tetra Pak's multi-layered. It's got plastic and cardboard and aluminium already in it. The percentage of aluminium is so low, it doesn't affect the recipe that we have, but it's the soft plastic that basically melts and holds everything else together. I'm sure you've got a question there as well about whether or not there's any toxins through the process. No, it's a clear label. It's EOC and formaldehyde free. Your oat milk's been sat in that carton for six months, so there's no toxins or poisons in there, otherwise your teeth and your hair would be falling out when you drank your milk. So during the manufacture process or the working with safe board products, there's no harmful substances. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, nice. That covered up a couple of themes that are coming through. There's another theme coming through, and if we want to dive into this one, it's about the vapour permeability or the breathability of it. So we want to touch on that. [Paula Wallace] Yeah, so we've got data available to share a Wufi analysis on generic build-ups. Clearly, they're all design-specific and according to the zone, but zone one to three go confidently without mechanical ventilation on a standard traditional build-up. And then as you get further down south, especially if you're using like the wraps, like a more of a passive home build as you get further south, then you would just run a Wufi analysis to see if you would need mechanical ventilation. And yeah, you probably would, but you'd probably do anyway right down south. So it's all design-specific. Just come to us and we can share the information that we've got. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, we've seen it with our modelling too, haven't we, and using external insulation. If we're keeping that RAB board warm by putting insulation on the outside of the structure, we solve all those potential issues. Lots of questions around the technical attributes of the product. So what Jin's done is she's just chucked a link to the TDS on the saveBOARD which will answer most of those questions. If we don't get through all these questions, we'll actually send out these all written to every attendee today as well, along with the recording. [Paula Wallace] And I can answer directly any questions. I'll give you a quick call. I will just say too that with Codemark, because that might answer a lot of questions as well. So Codemark is pending. We're really close now. We're about to have just our factory audits in both Australia and here in Hamilton. So that is also just around the corner to be issued. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, you'll find that very helpful. The next question is, did it have a brands appraisal or a Codemark? It's going to have a Codemark. Just a quick question here, maybe for you Ange. What does a typical insulation wall build up look like using save board as a RAB board? In layers, what would that look like? [Angela Duthie] So generally, you'd be looking at your wall lining, then your internal wall lining, I'm just getting my head around this, then your framing, then your rigid air barrier, so your saveBOARD there, then your continuous layer of insulation. Now, there are lots of different ways to pin that to the framing or put your thermally broken clips or what have you on there. And then of course, whether you have battens or what have you, and your wall cladding. So you'd be looking at your wrap layer as well with your save board. So you may be looking at a non-breathable or a vapour permeable layer there as well. So that's totally up to your design on your wrap layer as well. [Shane Clarke] OK, nice. More technical questions about the product, which is probably all in the TDS. It's all good. Product availability. There's obviously quite a demand for it. There's a lot of questions here around how do I get it? Where do I get it from? [Paula Wallace] When can I get it? Yeah, it's my favourite because we've got it and we can send it out to you. [Shane Clarke] Nice. [Paula Wallace] Depending on what it is, and if you're going to send me 20,000 squares, I'll have to maybe get back to you on that. Please feel free to do that. [Shane Clarke] Sure. [Paula Wallace] It's made in Hamilton. Depending on what you're after, we've got supply, we've got stock, and we're agile enough as a small business to be able to jump in when we need to and manipulate our production. We're not hardset and fast. So supply, we have an endless source of raw materials. Plenty of coffee cups, plenty of soft plastic. We're never going to run out. We don't have a problem with our raw material. [Shane Clarke] Supply is great. Right, OK, now that's good. And this is, I guess, probably the common question we get at the end of every webinar. Cost compared to what we used to do. [Paula Wallace] Yes, so it's pretty cost neutral and I won't share actual pricing. So it actually prices up really well. We just did an option as an acoustic layer and a warm roof. And the pricing for that particular project, I think we were probably quite a bit less. So the rigid air barrier is basically you're looking about the same as what you would for a traditional product. The plasterboard or the exposed, the board itself costs more, but like I mentioned before, you've got so many savings on time and additional trades by using a pre-finished product like the one on the screen now that's in a garage lining. And it's also a very, very good alternative for like high impact situations. So the pricing is definitely on a par with something like Toughline or Braceline rather than just regular gib, because it's much more high performing than those products for both bracing and impact. So big cost savings and say mental health facilities where you might have needed two layers before and now you can just use the one paper faced layer because it's high impact and that can be plastered and painted. KFC use it on the ceilings and they don't plaster, they just paint it as it is without and leave the joins exposed. So it's not more expensive once you start doing your numbers on a like-for-like basis. [Shane Clarke] On a holistic approach, you know that makes sense. [Paula Wallace] Yeah, it's just a bit more complex. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, excellent, excellent. All right, well look we're almost done for time and just to recap, this presentation is worth five CPD points. There will be a survey that pops up at the end there. So hopefully today we've sort of covered sort of showing you our commitment to reducing construction waste through circularity. Big thanks to Angela and Paula for being on the panel today. I think we're finishing up with a poll. Basically there were lots of questions that came in that we couldn't answer, but like I said we'll get these out from the recording and there's an opportunity here for you to put your details down if you would like a follow-up from either one of us or none of us. Totally up to you. All right, that's us. Thanks again folks. We'll see you on the next webinar. Ka kite anō.