Recycling is now a part of our daily lives, most would agree that attitudes have changed immeasurably in recent years. Here in the building industry architects, contractors and manufacturers alike are focused on creating buildings which achieve or exceed the statuary requirements for modern sustainable construction.

Rewind eight years to 2001. Stone contractor Putney & Wood was working on the refurbishment at Kinnaird House, No1 Pall Mall for Kier. Their package included dismantling, re-working and re-instating the Portland Stone that was used in the original construction 100 years earlier. Like most buildings from that era, the original construction incorporated load-bearing stone up to 200mm thick. Putney & Wood's stonemasons removed these huge units and cut them down to reduce the thickness to 75mm, making them suitable for modern stone cladding. A few months later, they seamlessly re-installed the stone as cladding panels without any fuss and certainly no knowledge that they were years ahead of the recycling game.

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Bringing us up to date, Putney & Wood recently completed the stonework at King's Arms Yard in the City where they repeated their trick from Kinnaird House, in total 35 tonnes of stone was removed, re-worked and recycled in this way. Currently, they have 33 tonnes of stone from the façade at 29-30 Kings Street, London EC2 in their yard. Having been cleaned and cut down, it will soon be re-instated as cladding.

With reused stone at Skanska's 311-318 High Holborn and the internal restoration of 41 Lothbury for Wates, evidently there is nothing new about recycling for Putney & Wood.

Their association with the demolition contractor John F Hunt has helped to put them at the forefront of this type of work, clearly the two companies have created an effective method to successfully preserve and recycle natural stone. Their unique 'joined-up' approach delivers economic benefits for the client and sustainable benefits for the environment.