At BuilderScrap we always looking at the listings for surplus building materials which our members post on the website.

We have been looking at this in more detail lately, and I have written this blog to help our users to get the most out of their listings.

The main feedback we have had is that people are much more willing to respond to a listing with a photograph of the building materials available.

Unsurprisingly free building materials have a higher response than ones being charged for! However, it is so important to put a cost on your item regardless, as many members have commented on this. If you are flexible on price ,O.N.O next to the price will make people more receptive to your listing.

A description should be fairly short and only include relevant information such as; size, age of item and current quality of the item. Include any words which people may search for when looking for this particular item.

An Example of Perfect Listing:

Name: Jacobean Brick

Description: Quantity 113, Colour – Buff, Depth – 65mm, Surplus – Never used

Cost: £30 O.N.O

Photograph:  

Just got back from The BEST Show at the NEC arena in Birmingham, it has already been an exhausting first part of the week, my colleagues Mike and Beckie had the privilege of being down for the full 3 days, where as I was dropped into the mix late Tuesday morning.

The show itself was excellent; we spoke with lots of exciting people who are all eager to help drive BuilderScrap forward which is always great. We met a couple of some what unusual characters which is to be expected at an event where people from all over the world come to see what new technologies are out there to make their construction life easier.

‘Understanding European low carbon product standardisation and how to apply this at design stage’, was a particular favourite, yes it is a mouth full but gave us a very good understanding of the importance of embodied carbon in construction products.

I think we changed a lot of people’s views, well I hope we did, a lot of people where still talking about recycling building materials, recycled building materials do help the environment but the most frustrating problem we at BuilderScrap come in contact with almost on a daily basis is unused building materials being thrown away or being recycled.

We met an awful lot of charity organisations all in desperate need for cheap or free building materials to help all the community projects not being properly funded. The best parts of these types of shows is that we meet our existing users and get a bit of customer feed back, we were very pleased to hear a number of success stories with one man telling us how he saved £4,000 by purchasing windows and doors from our site.

We are always very interested in hearing feed back; we want to continue to improve our services in order to give our users the best possible outcome when using our website.

The Great Pyramid of Giza (also called the Pyramid of Khufu and the Pyramid of Cheops) is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact.

It is believed the pyramid was built as a tomb for fourth dynasty Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops in Greek) and constructed over a 20-year period concluding around 2560 BC sadly back then they didn’t have building supply stores or green materials just solid stone dug from the ground.

The size of the pyramid is astonishing considering when it was built, it’s that big you can even see it from space. It originally stood at 146.478 meters (480.57 ft) tall and each side, 230.37 meters (755.81 ft) long.

Unfortunately over 3,800 years of erosion has shrunk the pyramid by over 8 meters which to this day stands at 138.75 meters (455.22 ft) tall, the mega structure ways in at a whopping 5,9 million tonnes which was transported from 500 miles away. The volume, including an internal hillock, is roughly 2,500,000 cubic meters. Based on these estimates, building this pyramid in 20 years would involve approximately installing 800 tonnes of stone every day. The pyramids choice of buildings materials were a staggering 2.3million stone blocks, again to do this in 20 years they would have had to shift 12 of the massive blocks into place each hour, every day and night which they weren’t

Many alternatie, often contradictory, theories have been suggested regarding the construction techniques most thought the stones were either rolled, dragged or even lifted into place.

Which I personally think there was something else at work, looking at all the information given, everything seems impossible. Even with modern day technology experts predict that building this exact pyramid would be near impossible, some experts theories point at extra terrestrials saying they help build the pyramids passing on there knowledge and techniques to the Egyptians.

The Pyramid of Giza will always be a phenomenon we will never know how they were truly built. Alls we know as a fact is that the Pyramid of Giza Remained the tallest man made structure for 3,800 years unsurpassed until the Lincoln Cathedral was completed in 1300’s but still what an achievement for the Egyptians being able to build such a mega-structure thousands all with free building materials.

Usually at the BuilderScrap.com offices we’re discussing Free Building Materials and how to get rid of Builders Surplus Supply. We’d like our readers to know we’ve a vested interest in Carbon offsetting and various other environmental projects.

This post from the current defra survey looks at respondents’ attitudes towards carbon offsetting and the types of offsetting schemes that are available. As part of the omnibus survey, the respondents who said they knew a lot or a fair amount about carbon offsetting were presented with three statements about offsetting and asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with each (on a scale ranging between strongly agree and strongly disagree). Figure 1 summarises responses to these statements and compares these with the findings from the 2007 Defra survey.

Respondents who reported having already used offsetting and who knew a fair amount or a lot about carbon offsetting were presented with one additional statement (‘by making people more aware of how their behaviour affects the environment, carbon offsetting encourages more environmentally-friendly behaviour in other areas of their life’). As so few respondents answered this question, the results for this statement are provided for indicative purposes only – the base size is too low to support meaningful interpretation.

Due to the relatively small base sizes for each of the statements, most of the apparent differences shown in Figure 14 are not statistically significant. However, people‟s attitudes towards carbon offsetting do seem to have become slightly more positive since the 2007 Defra survey. The main significant changes since 2007 are highlighted below.

Compared with 2007, respondents who knew a lot or a fair amount about carbon offsetting, were more likely to agree that ‘I would trust companies offering carbon offsetting to use the money I paid in the right way’ (35% agreed compared with 24% in 2007) and more likely to disagree that ‘carbon offsetting will make no difference to the fight against climate change’ (50% compared with 42% in 2007). Respondents were less likely to agree that ‘carbon offsetting encourages people to carry on doing things that harm the environment’ (44% agreed compared with 57% in 2007). All of these changes indicate that respondents were more positive towards carbon offsetting compared with 2007.

BuilderScrap.com wants to give an honourable mention to the Welsh Assembly. This post is from the good guys at lets recycle.com… keep up the great work!

All the team want to show our appreciation to Merthyr Tydfil county borough council for their continuing efforts.  They clearly are aligned with our own goals in trying to reduce waste sent to landfill.

The Welsh Assembly Government has on (March 13 2009) announced an £800,000 package to help reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill across Wales- including £100,000 to help Merthyr Tydfil county borough council increase recycling.

It is important that residual waste is managed in the most sustainable way and that the waste we produce is progressively reduced over time

Jane Davidson, Welsh minister for environment

In Merthyr Tydfil, the funding will be used for a door-knocking campaign to encourage more households to recycle their waste and help Wales become a greener, more sustainable country. The council reported a 26.2% municipal waste recycling and composting rate in 2006/07.

The remainder of the £800,000 is expected to be used to support plastics recycling in Wales and develop “Zero waste places” – although full details have yet to emerge.

The move comes ahead of the launch of the revised Welsh Waste Strategy for consultation next month, which will set out a new framework for governing waste across the principality.

Jane Davidson, minister for the environment, sustainability and housing, said: “We all have a responsibility for our environment and to reduce Wales’ ecological footprint. A huge part of this is reducing the amount of rubbish we send to landfill. This is no longer sustainable environmentally or financially. I am delighted to be supporting this new scheme to help Merthyr households with their recycling.

“The more we recycle and the less we throw away into landfill the greater our impact will be as individuals in guarding our environment.

“It is important that residual waste is managed in the most sustainable way and that the waste we produce is progressively reduced over time. Then, perhaps, in the more distant future we can contemplate true ‘zero waste – or not producing any waste at all,” she added.

Mike Thomas, head of environmental services for Merthyr Tydfil county borough council, welcomed the funding, which he said would help to boost participation in recycling.
Related links

Welsh Assembly Government

He said: “Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council has already rolled out several initiatives this year, including weekly collection of food waste to 80% of our households. It’s now down to increasing participation rates and a door knocking campaign is viewed as the best method of making meaningful contact with “reluctant” householders.

The recycling campaign will support Wise About Waste, Wales’ strategy which set recycling targets for local authorities. The strategy is under review and will be re-launched for consultation with ambitious new targets to 2050 in April 2009.

source: http://www.letsrecycle.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=37&listcatid=217&listitemid=31233

Let us know if your local authority has similar goals or has invested some money or time in initiatives to reduce waste. Provide free building materials from surplus building supplies or how they recycling existing materials.