The UN’s World Environment Day takes place annually, bringing attention to different issues and encouraging people to come together to create sustainable change. This year, World Environment Day is putting a spotlight on plastic pollution and calling for collective action to tackle the problem.

Plastic waste remains a challenge in the construction industry, with packaging and building materials contributing to the sector consuming 23% of all the plastic produced in the UK. It’s estimated that the construction industry generates 50,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste every year – a figure that needs to change.

At McLaughlin & Harvey, we’re taking steps to tackle plastic waste and play our part in reducing plastic pollution in construction. We have phased out single-use plastics in our offices and all of our employees will be required to complete mandatory plastic literacy training.

Last year, we held a Plastic Awareness Week to highlight the impact that plastic pollution can have on both the environment and human health and the importance of reducing plastic waste.

We are also working on the development of a plastic management plan, ensuring we have clear goals and routes to achieving them, striving to identify and implement ways to reduce our plastic use and resulting waste across both the business and our sites.

At one of our sites, we are planning to run a pilot project to see where we can minimise plastic use and waste. If successful, we will roll out our learnings from this across other projects and share best practice with others in the industry.

We are also mindful of avoiding plastic pollution on our sites, making sure to protect ecological habitats and leave no trace of our work once complete.

Reducing plastic waste will take a collective approach, which is why we engage with our supply chain to ensure that any partners we work with are also striving to beat plastic pollution. It’s important that this begins from the very earliest stages, through design, construction and operation, to minimise the impact of a project through its full lifecycle.

Tackling plastic waste in our industry will be a challenge, and contractors will need to come together to share innovative ways to reuse, recycle and avoid it if we are to create tangible change.

Reusing and recycling redundant PPE

One example of how we’ve addressed plastic waste at McLaughlin & Harvey is the recycling of our old PPE. When the business underwent a rebrand, we had old, excess PPE that could no longer be used.

As such, we recycled 34 bags of PPE across 4 different sites, which resulted in 192kg of waste being recycled or reused and the remaining 80kg used for green energy.

This meant an estimated 952kg of CO2 was saved, along with 272 litres of water and none of the PPE ended up in landfill.

Celebrating World Environment Day

To mark World Environment Day 2025, we will be hosting activities across our offices and sites. We have created a virtual, interactive plastic pledge wall encouraging our teams to share one thing that they pledge to do to reduce their plastic waste, whether that’s taking a reusable cup to the coffee shop, bringing a water bottle to work, remembering to take shopping bags to the supermarket, or reducing consumption of packaged food.

Additionally, we are taking part in a beach clean at our R&A project in St Andrews. In collaboration with Transition University of St Andrews and the Scottish Oceans Institute, we will be clearing rubbish from East Sands Beach to reduce plastic pollution.

Our dedicated environmental team are always looking for ways to improve our plastic management processes, not just on World Environment Day, but every day of the year. At McLaughlin & Harvey, we recognise the impact our industry can have on the planet and will continue to strive to reduce it.