What’s happening to the materials from the demolished hall, that is the question that some people have been asking.
Wildgoose the building contractors have a strong policy on sustainability and responsible building practices, with the recycling of building materials being a cornerstone (excuse the pun) of their business. If anyone saw the demolition or watched Martin’s great video on the Blog they will have seen the care taken over the demolition, separation and removal of all the old materials off the site. The recycling is then carried out by Transcycle who are specialists in this field.
Wildgoose aims for a high percentage of recycling on all their projects, with a target of around 83% of materials being reused. On this project the roof and woodwork were the first materials to to be removed and taken away for pulping. The hardwood floor is enjoying a new lease of life as a recycled floor, here, in our parish. Next the stonework was removed, this will be crushed and will be reused in another project. The wiring will be melted down.
This week the footprint of the new build is being dug out to lower the roof line. Large amounts of soil and rubble will have to be removed, before being screened and crushed and screened for future use.
It looks like 80% to 85% of the old hall will be recycled and reused to benefit other projects. Thank you to Wildgoose, Rob the site manager (photographed on the left) and his team for minimising disruption during this phase and running a spotless building site.
Ben Bennett
PARWICH.ORG 
thanks for the interesting post Ben- its good to know that the hall will be used in future projects, and won’t just end up in some landfill site.
Excellent news, so nice to hear that it is not all wasted. Its really uplifting to see some progress after all the time planning and raising money. Looking forward to the new hall.
I raised the question of recycling when Wildgoose held their meeting to introduce themselves to the village before the rebuilding began. Incidentally, apart from the village hall committee and myself, precious few people turned up. I specifically mentioned the hardwood floor, since a thousand square feet of quality hard wood two inches thick would be worth a great deal – hundreds if not thousands of pounds in architectural salvage. It would have been a shame if the building had been torn down on top of it. When I mentioned the floor, nobody stated that it was accounted for. Yet the following evening a small group of people stripped it out and it went up the lane in a horse box behind a Range Rover. So how much did it raise? You surely didn´t just give it away, so it could have a happy new home in the parish?
I operated the machine on the job and we had wondered where the floor had gone cause when we started it had already gone.