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Recycled polystyrene underpins new housing

Wellington City Council’s new housing development 'Regent Park' in Owen Street Newtown, mirrors WCC's 2040 future vision in providing a safe, green environment for the council tenants and their families. Right from the start of the project an innovative foundation choice that uses polystyrene waste to achieve a superior foundation design, ensures that these homes will cope with seismic events such as those that that have left some Christchurch homes built on traditional concrete slab foundations, red stickered and uninhabitable.

Poly Palace, the polystyrene recycler based at Porirua’s Spicer Landfill, has completed a contract that sees a large volume of the Wellington region’s polystyrene waste compressed and used to provide a better foundation for new council homes.

Wellington, New Zealand – 14 July 2011 The Regent Park development in Owen Street Newtown is the only ‘new build’ project in the WCC Housing Upgrade Project. It is a mix of 3 and 4 bedroom townhouses and 1 and 2 bedroom apartments that will accommodate families, couples and singles in an exemplar of current social housing.

Before the concrete is poured for the foundation of these homes, Poly Palace’s 100% recycled polystyrene ‘pods’ are laid in a grid. The concrete pour to form the floor then moulds around the polystyrene and reinforcing steel to form a ribbed raft waffle slab that is significantly stronger, and provides better insulation, than a traditional concrete floor slab.

Following Christchurch’s first earthquake in September 2010, the Department of Building and Housing has indicated a preference for improved concrete slab systems, as damage to traditionally constructed slabs had left homes uninhabitable. The department’s design guide following the first earthquake states: “…encouraging wide, stiff foundation systems such as stiff rafts (eg waffle slab), or stiff inter-connected footings, is considered to be the best way of improving performance”.

The use of Poly Palace’s unique 100% recycled solid pod system in the Regent Park development (designed by Designgroup Stapleton Elliott, project-managed by Spencer Homes, and constructed by Hawkins Construction), was investigated and compared to other ribbed raft systems, before being recommended to Wellington City Council.

Poly Palace’s owner and manager, Richard Moore, says the pod ribbed raft is unique because the solid polystyrene pods are 100% recycled from polystyrene waste, including such problematic wastes as consumer packaging and super market trays.

“We’re providing a stronger, safer and insulated foundation for a significant council housing project,” says Mr Moore. “But we’re also removing a large volume of polystyrene waste from landfills.

“If we took each house and filled its ground floor with polystyrene waste 1.2m deep, this is an indication of the volume of post consumer waste that is required to form the solid polystyrene ‘pods’.”

Poly Palace recycles waste polystyrene at it’s recycling plant at Spicer Landfill into two separate product lines:

• Clean building grade, flame retardant polystyrene is recycled into 50% recycled sheets and profiles, including the underfloor ‘Palace Plank’ for new or retrofit wooden floors. At R2.15 Poly Palaces ‘Palace Plank’ is the only commercially available, underfloor polystyrene insulation that exceeds the Building Code’s ‘Better Practice” insulation standard of R1.9.
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• All other polystyrene wastes are processed separately into 100% recycled products such as ‘Palace Pods’ for void forming in concrete floors, and Palace Porous for drainage applications.
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The foundation ‘pods’ are produced in a moulding process in a factory on the Spicer Landfill site – which is jointly managed by the Porirua and Wellington city councils.

Tushara Kodikara, Porirua City Council’s Zero Waste Co-ordinator and responsible for managing the council relationship with Poly Palace says “'this is a great initiative, where polystyrene waste is up-cycled into products that provide real gains in terms of the long term sustainability of council housing stock. In a guaranteed long life out of landfill these recycled pods achieve real gains in durability, insulation performance and CO2 mitigation. Poly Palace is an excellent example of Porirua City Council working with other councils in the region to lengthen the life of Spicer Landfill and assist businesses and the community to find alternatives to waste."

Poly Palace was a finalist in the Wellington Regional Gold Awards Inaugural Green Category in 2007, and won the Porirua Business’s Environmental Award that year for recycling waste polystyrene into home insulation.

“The polystyrene we take is typically short life, and destined for landfill, either from construction off cuts or packaging from consumer appliances.” says Mr Moore “and we use it to make products that under the New Zealand Building code we guarantee as having a useful life of at least 50 years minimum.”

When significant earthquakes strike Wellington, such as those that have plagued Christchurch since September, increased use of the pods system will assist houses such as those in this Council development get a green sticker and remain habitable.

For generations to come the polystyrene packaging waste from the consumer appliances of today will still be protecting the homes of Regent Park, a future that extends generations beyond the life of the appliances that the polystyrene was originally created to protect.

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