Plastic free buildings

UCL is tackling plastic waste in our buildings by looking at single-use plastic use in our construction projects, office, labs and post.

Plastic free construction 

Working closely with our contractors, UCL is helping to tackle the tonnes of single-use plastic waste created by the construction industry. Construction currently accounts for 150 tonnes of single-use plastic waste per year, which is nearly a quarter of UCL’s total plastic footprint.  

Longer-term, we are looking to ‘design out’ single-use plastics from the beginning of the build process. Where single-use plastics are currently unavoidable, we will seek to minimise quantities as far as possible, while encouraging the use of supplier take back schemes wherever possible.  

These are some of the other ways we are tackling plastics in construction:

• Plastic score cards -– At UCL East, our construction partner (Mace) uses a single-use plastics scorecard to help reduce the impact of packaging and other site-related plastic waste. We’re aiming to roll this out on future construction projects and builds.  
• Take-back schemes – We’re working with our supply chain to identify additional opportunities to send back materials for reuse or re-processing.  
• Training - UCL ensures that all relevant staff receive up-to-date training to ensure that they are up to date with opportunities and requirements around plastic waste.  
• Plastic Waste Innovation Hub - Along with the Plastic Waste Innovation Hub, Mace has created a framework for materials lifecycle assessments (LCA) for large construction projects. 

> Visit the Plastic Waste Innovation Hub 

Plastic-free offices 

• UCL has committed to providing a full range of single-use plastic-free stationery items and office supplies by 2024 and use 100% remanufactured print cartridges.
• All orders from Banner, our stationery provider, are now packaged with recycled paper void fill. This saves 316 square meters of plastic void fill per year – that’s enough to cover 1.2 tennis courts.
• We are currently working to remove plastic packaged products form our eMarketplace, replacing these with cardboard packaged alternatives.
• When stationery and print providers contracts renew, we will embed single-use plastic requirements within these contracts. This ensures that suppliers and providers take action, reducing plastic before it even arrives at UCL’s campuses.

> find out more about our offices work through our Green Impact pages

Plastic-free labs

• UCL has committed to eliminating all non-essential lab consumables
• We have reviewed and created a list of recommended consumables based on single-use plastic and sustainability credentials.
• We will assess the scale of plastic use and associated emissions in labs through our single-use plastic baseline. This is a huge step enabling us to focus and drive future action.
• We are working with procurement managers and lab coordinators to reduce the number of suppliers we use, enabling items to be ordered in bulk, saving packaging and ensuring only items with the lowest plastic footprint are consumed.
• We are seeking to expand the chemical inventories we currently have to all labs, so unnecessary products are no longer purchased, reducing packaging wherever possible.

> See more about our work with Labs on our LEAF programme pages

Plastic-free post

• UCL has committed to eliminating all non-essential single-use plastic packaging in deliveries by 2024 and recycle all essential single-use plastic packaging.
• UCl is working to cancel all junk mail deliveries to UCL, and embed plastic packaging metrics in our parcel tracking system.