Every year in New Zealand we discard over 6.3 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste to landfills, 20.1% of which is rubble and concrete, while 12.6% is timber. Averaged across the population, this represents over one tonne per person. Beyond waste, the negative impacts extend to wasted energy, pollution, and the social impact of living near ever-expanding landfills.

In this episode, we speak with Leo Ingleson and Emelee Mello about where their journeys began to where they are today and the role they play in advancing circular economies at Downer and in their personal lives. 

We also talk about their experience at XLabs, after they brought together a diverse team from across the company to participate in New Zealand’s first circular economy training program, designed to create space for business teams to spark creative collaboration, imaginative innovation, and tangible progress towards creating a circular future, together. 

They came into XLabs to find a circular solution to this complex challenge of construction waste. Downer is an Integrated Services is a provider with 10,500 employees over 300 sites. From originally thinking that they might look at how they could address the 1,200 tonnes of concrete power poles that are decommissioned from New Zealand’s transmission grid each year, the team quickly pivoted and went back to the drawing board to ask how they might design out waste on construction projects, by connecting their people with the tools and data to reduce dependency on virgin materials and reuse existing materials.

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