Circular economy is the future of the construction industry, and at Linxon one of our primary focus areas involves moving away from the negative practices of the current ‘linear’ economy which involves:

1. Taking energy and raw materials from the earth,
2. Making products with them, and;
3. Throwing them away.

In a circular economy, products and its components are made to be durable and long lasting and can be reused and upgraded in as many cycles as possible. The circular economy also aims to use resources locally to create more reliable supply chains to help the local economy to thrive.

 

At Linxon, we recognise the issues caused by the linear economy and that’s why we are actively building circular economy principles into our business by educating our engineers to design out waste, using local suppliers to lower our emissions and support local economies, and working with our supply chain partners to ensure that more of our products are manufactured in sustainable ways and with low carbon materials which can be reclaimed at the end of their lifecycle.

A few examples of the circular economy principles we have adopted so far include:

Supplier Diversity Action Plan – Linxon recognises the potential social, environmental, and economic benefits of purchasing locally and the positive effect it can have towards creating a circular economy. Our supplier diversity action plans are focused upon increasing engagement and spend with Local and Minority Owned suppliers who align with our commitments as UN Global Compact Signatories and are willing to adopt practices which promote circular economy principles further down the supply chain.

Our approach to supplier diversity includes ensuring that potential suppliers have a fair and equal opportunity to compete for our business and can compete to win appropriate works packages based upon merit, regardless of their size and/or the characteristics of the individuals who own and/or control the organisation. We also engage closely with suppliers who are unsuccessful at winning our work by helping them to understand how they can score higher on our sustainability requirements in the future.

 

Designing Out Waste – At Linxon, we educate our engineers in circular economy principles and designing out waste where possible. Examples of this include using a screw pile solution which completely removes all concrete use and associated aggregates with concrete thus reducing waste and carbon on site as well as the creation of soil bunds. Another benefit of using screw piling is that the steel can be easily dismantled and reused at the end of its lifecycle. On the Rampion offshore wind farm 33/150/400 kV onshore grid connection substation site, we retained approximately 15,000 m3 of spoil on site from using this solution.

Linxon can also offer whole life-cycle carbon assessments and our engineers are trained to use Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology to design sustainable buildings which are built to last, easier to deconstruct, prevent waste, lower the embodied carbon, and considers the operational performance and lifecycle of the project.

Linxon are also exploring more sustainable engineering solutions for haul roads and laydown areas by using alternative aggregates. For example, on the Hinkley Point C project in the UK, we have recently deployed the SUREGROUND™ Soil Science solution for our construction compound, which is an in-situ soil stabilisation and decommissioning system that mixes site-won soils with cementitious binders. This solution not only removes aggregate imports and exports to landfill, but also provides savings in carbon emissions, cost, time, manpower, maintenance, vehicle movements, fuel and plastic usage. Using this solution also provides health and safety benefits as the product eliminates the use of Quicklime and is extremely low risk to work with.

 

Resource Efficiency – Linxon’s focus is to use the materials during the manufacturing process that incorporate circular economy principles ensuring, they are reclaimable at the end of the product’s life, and we ‘design to recycle’, meaning that most of our products can be dismantled easily and come with recycling instructions. Moreover, packaging materials used for the delivery of equipment are always requested as recyclable.

Once the packaging has served its purpose, this allows Linxon to easily recycle any packaging, with minimal waste. Linxon continuously look to optimise the procurement of recyclable materials, as well as reduce the amount of waste sent for final disposal.

Linxon also intend to use timber from sustainable managed sources with recognised timber labelling i.e. Forest Stewardship Council or equivalent for both permanent and temporary timber structures.

Packaging materials used for delivery of equipment and suppliers are also requested as recyclable. Once the packaging has served its purpose, this allows Linxon to easily recycle any packaging, with minimal waste. We also train key members of the site team to be waste champions to maintain the focus on site to reduce waste where possible and to ensure that everything is segregated correctly.

Community Recycling Schemes – Due to the nature of our work, Linxon receive a significant amount of wood waste from our packaging. Although we are working with our supply chain partners to reduce packaging materials and to take back and reuse it, where this has not been possible, we are currently working with local community recycling schemes to reuse this timber.

This has created a good balance between social, environmental, and economic issues as

1. It helps the local economy by enabling these centres to create jobs and training opportunities for disadvantaged groups in the local community, which also helps with our corporate social responsibility objectives.
2. These recycling schemes also typically consume less fuel than skip lorries per tonne of wood collected, nothing goes to landfill, and everything is diverted from general waste streams. These community recycling schemes sort through our wood and reuse, upcycle and salvage everything that can be reused, and even use the wood to make birdhouses, bat boxes and bug hotels which are donated to local parks and public spaces to help with biodiversity.
3. Using these local community schemes, means collection is much more efficient and more cost effective than the wood being sent across the country to the limited amount of wood recycling centres used by general haulers.

Community Wellbeing Garden – In order to promote biodiversity, wellbeing and reuse of materials, we have created and maintained our community wellbeing garden at our Shurton UK substation for over 4 years. This wellbeing area enables staff to have a break from the pressures on a construction site and the garden, includes insect hotels to help insects survive the winter weather and has a variety of pollen rich plants to encourage insects to come and feed.

Everything in our well-being garden has been reused or donated including old filing cabinets and drawers which have been turned into planters, a pond created from reused wooden packaging crates with solar powered lighting and sprinklers to attract wildlife, and large rocks used for seating, which have been recovered during excavation works.

We have also encouraged more healthy eating habits by growing fruit and vegetables within the garden for the staff to enjoy. The success of this initiative is assessed over the life of the project by undertaking yearly bee counts on site. Our operational delivery teams have also contributed plants, compost, and ornaments and spend some of their break times tending the garden thus supporting our aim to enhance peoples’ place of work.