Cat A waste – ‘can we fix it, yes we can’

I recently chaired a panel presentation and discussion (on behalf of Recolight and the End Cat A Lighting Waste campaign) about the construction industry’s dirty secret: Cat A office waste. It was an event attended by a passionate gathering of developers, clients, designers, project managers and product reuse manufacturers at Hoare Lea’s offices in Kings Cross.

Category A (Cat A) is a term used in the commercial office sector to describe the level of specification delivered by developers and landlords in order to attract occupiers. Typically, the interior of an entire office building (whether it is 2,000 or 200,000+ sq ft) is fitted out with mechanical and electrical services, a raised floor and some form of metal suspended ceiling with integral light fittings to a generic open-plan layout.

It is claimed that the need to do this was established by leasing agents so that they can show the space to potential occupiers and secure a long-term lease.

Over the past 10 years, and with the rise of flex office space operators, a number of developers have challenged this convention and offered a range of waste and cost-reducing solutions such as shell and floor (i.e. limited M&E and lighting), Cat A+ where the fit-out is enhanced to enable occupiers to move in more quickly, and shell only where the fit-out works are undertaken by the occupier. But why is this an issue the industry is still grappling with, and why is it important?

Occupiers are likely to move every 5, 10 or 15 years depending on the length of their current lease; typically, the larger the space taken, the longer the lease. Each move is an opportunity to refresh or transform the working environment and create a space that will attract talent and, post-pandemic, encourage people to return to the office.

What transpires is a need to design and deliver new and more bespoke solutions that often have no inbuilt flexibility or adaptability across the length of the lease and beyond, thus becoming waste at the end of the lease. Some of the facts regarding lighting alone are staggering:

• 100,000 light fittings a week taken out of commercial office buildings
• Most of these fittings are new or nearly new and may have never been used by an occupier
• 93% of the fittings currently end up in a skip and landfill
• The ground area of landfill sites across the UK would fill the entirety of Greater London

With the rise in awareness around sustainability and embodied carbon, there has been an increased use of reused raised floor tiles (but not the pedestals that support them), so much so there’s a shortage of them. This is seen as an easy carbon win and a small step forward from the days of scratch-free shiny galvanised steel raised floors. The claim being that without it, office space would not let. The event challenged this and encouraged us to go deeper and faster.

Renew Hub

In the run-up to the event, I visited the Renew Hub in Manchester, including a tour around their incredible facility. It is an ambitious and unique project which aims to create value from the near 1 million tonnes of domestic waste per year to benefit Greater Manchester.

It’s a joint initiative between R4GM and SUEZ UK. They take items donated at recycling centres across Greater Manchester, then repair and renew them at their Renew Hub, ready to be resold to a new home.

Money raised by their shops goes to support local communities through two Greater Manchester initiatives. Each year, money raised through sales made in the Renew shops is donated to Greater Manchester Mayor’s Charity and Recycle for Greater Manchester Community Fund.

In this way, hundreds of tonnes of pre-loved items which would have otherwise gone to waste are made available to Greater Manchester residents at affordable prices. The social value goes deeper, as they provide apprenticeships to young people and prisoners nearing the end of their term. This added purpose reduces the chances of reoffending within 18 months from 80% to 10%.

This led me to question why the construction industry is not doing more about its own waste and embracing reuse and remanufacture across all aspects of Cat A.

Who said what?

The audience heard from four great, knowledgeable speakers. First up, Leanne Tritton, co-founder of Don’t Waste Buildings, outlined how the campaign is growing from strength to strength and encouraged us to speak in simple terms and bring everyone on the journey.

She asked if this was an opportunity for architects to be the custodian, advisor and gatekeeper of circular or more sustainable practices, and wondered if we could use our influence to help those less established clients or occupiers.

Dr Greg Lavery provided an update on the government’s emerging Circular Economy Taskforce, on which he sits. The paper will set out the business and economic benefits of the circular economy and encourage us to upscale it. He also demonstrated Rype Office’s innovative data capture approach for office fixtures and fittings that creates a passport encouraging reuse and remanufacture of items.

Tim Phillpot of SAS International explained their ceiling tile take-back scheme, which is a fraction of the carbon of new, and the potential scalability of this to a far more circular model. They are encouraged by the number of donors but now want to hear from specifiers for the 25,500 sqm of reworked tiles they have completed.

Kael Gillam of Hoare Lea encouraged architects and lighting designers to design in flexibility and adaptability, and avoid unnecessary waste as far as possible. Kael encouraged the use of VR, AR and AI in communicating office space to occupiers and highlighted that there are already 12 lighting remanufacturers implementing change.

Key takeaways from the event

The engaged and experienced audience asked searching questions and provided insightful comments. It felt like a rallying cry to the industry to push harder and with more conviction when it comes to:

• Use and specification of circular materials and products
• Eliminating unnecessary complexity in design
• Education throughout the industry and amongst occupiers on the impacts that decisions have on waste
• Tackling our addiction to new and bespoke
• Changing our culture and not just focusing on carbon

The event encouraged the audience to raise awareness within the industry, sign the End Cat A Waste pledge and get involved with the working group. The discussion concluded with a series of next steps and critical points:

• Whilst we are reducing waste by doing fewer works, are we just moving the problem to occupiers?
• How do we educate occupiers given they only move every 5, 10 or 15 years? Or do landlords and developers need to do more?
• How do we communicate that remanufacture is not necessarily cheaper?
• Are leasing agents complicit in the issue?
• Should we have a shame list of projects?

It is evident there is a groundswell of people acting on their own that need to link up, and with government policy on its way, this topic is moving up the agenda rapidly. As the children’s TV character Bob the Builder says, ‘can we fix it, yes we can!’