Environment and Sustainability for Level 1 Plumbers: Energy, Water and Waste

Unit 103 looks like the soft one and is full of things that are simply facts you either know or do not: which band a fuel sits in, and which skip a material goes in. Both are quick to learn and both come up.

Three bands of energy

Energy used in homes is grouped by how much carbon dioxide it releases. Four examples in each band is what gets asked.

• High carbon — natural gas and LPG, fuel oils, solid fuels (coal and peat), and electricity from non-renewable sources.
• Low carbon — solar thermal, biomass (wood pellets and logs), heat pumps, and combined heat and power (CHP).
• Zero carbon — electricity from wind, from the tide, hydroelectricity, and solar photovoltaic.

The middle band is where people go wrong, and there is a reason for it in each case. Biomass does release carbon when it burns — but only the carbon the tree took in while it was growing, so it counts as low rather than high. A heat pump runs on electricity, so how clean it is depends on where that electricity came from. That is why neither is zero.

Note the same logic on electricity itself: it is only as clean as whatever made it. From a wind turbine it is zero carbon. From a gas station it is high.

Saving water and electricity in a home

Small things, and they add up across a country.

On water: fix dripping taps and running overflows (a drip runs day and night), fit a dual flush or a cistern displacement device, showers rather than baths, spray taps, and water butts for the garden. On electricity: efficient appliances, good controls so heating runs when it is needed and not when it is not, insulation, and LED lighting.

The plumbing angle is worth stating: a leak is not just a repair job, it is water wasted continuously until somebody fixes it. That is one of the arguments for planned maintenance rather than waiting for a breakdown.

Three classes of waste

Waste goes into three classes, and they go to different places. Putting hazardous waste into a general skip is an offence.

• Hazardous — harmful to people or the environment. Needs special handling, separate containers and its own paperwork (a consignment note). Asbestos, waste electrical equipment, solvents.
• Non-hazardous — ordinary waste that will break down or can be recycled. Timber, paper and cardboard, water based glues and paints, scrap metal.
• Inert — will not rot, burn or react. Chemically inactive, so it can often be used as fill. Bricks, glass, ceramics and tiles, sand and gravel.

Two catch people out every time. Clean scrap lead is not hazardous waste (List of Wastes code 17 04 03): it goes to a metal recycler on a normal transfer note, though lead is hazardous to work with. Lead paint debris, lead-contaminated waste and lead-acid batteries are hazardous waste. In an exam, note that the qualification’s list puts lead under hazardous waste, so an assessment question may expect that answer. Working with lead is covered separately, by the Control of Lead at Work Regulations. And water based glues and paints are non-hazardous — solvent based ones are hazardous. The base is what decides, not the fact that it is paint.

WEEE

The WEEE regulations — waste electrical and electronic equipment — keep electrical goods out of landfill, because they contain both valuable materials and harmful ones.

Things you will actually be carrying out of a house under WEEE: motors (pumps and fans), control equipment (programmers, thermostats, control boxes), lamps, printed circuit boards from boilers and controls, and power tools.

Which leads to the point worth taking away from this whole unit: an old boiler is not one kind of waste. The casing is scrap metal. The pump and the circuit board are WEEE. And if it is old enough, the gaskets and rope seals may contain asbestos.