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From Marginal Fills to Circular Raw Materials

In a traditional linear mindset, silty or clay-heavy soils are liabilities—expensive to excavate and even more expensive to dump. But to an engineer, "unsuitable" is simply a material that hasn't been properly designed for. My sustainability journey didn't start with a moral epiphany; it started with a technical challenge to eliminate waste from the project balance sheet.The "aha" moment came with the 2017 ICE Brassey Award. We successfully used draining geogrids to stabilise 17-metre slopes u...

The 5-second Rule of our Waste Problem

Of that, approximately 70–75% ends up in landfill. While kerbside recycling and food scrap collections are helping, they haven’t yet achieved the full reduction we need. Recent government policies aligned with the Zero Carbon Act have seen success in recycling plastics, glass, metals, and paper—the "obvious" materials that dominate our daily lives. However, another material is largely missing from the conversation.The Missing Link: Textile WasteTextile waste sent to landfill...

Second-hand Clothing and their Circular Value

Late one afternoon, after work in the CBD, I took a familiar detour through the little town centre I once called home. The streets were alive - crowded alleyways, food stalls sizzling, people brushing past each other with that end-of-day fatigue we all know. Then I noticed it. A shabby shop that looked more like a dusty warehouse than a clothing store. Curious, I peeked inside. Rows and rows of clothes - no single brand, no clear order. Cotton beside linen, jeans next to skirts, tees m...