A North West property developer is on a mission to use technology to make the construction industry more sustainable.
Entrepreneur Nigel Eastham has launched Sustainability Yard to reduce the amount of building materials going to landfill. The free app allows users to buy, sell or give away spare building materials and is already attracting significant interest from across the industry.
Eastham initially began his work on the app in 2019, and following a laborious process of tweaking, and a “significant sum” spent making the app as user-friendly as possible, he finally declared his platform fully operational a month ago. It has since added 5,000 new users and is on track to hit 10,000 by the end of the year.
The 33-year-old from Chorley says he came up with the idea after realising how many tonnes of building materials from his own property developments were being sent to landfill.
He said: “I have two young children and it just didn’t sit right with me. The more I thought about it the more I started to think that the big boys in the industry must be throwing away a lot more than I was. That’s when I came up with the idea for Sustainability Yard. I’m trying to create a national platform that promotes sustainability and the circular economy of building materials through our marketplace app.”
Users who download the app can now list spare materials for sale or to give away on the app in less than a minute, as well as open up private chats to discuss the finer details of the materials or collection/delivery. Eastham says his app is already being used by everyone from national house builders and housing associations to local tradesmen and DIY enthusiasts, and he hopes that it will help users of all shapes and sizes to help the environment and achieve the government’s net-zero ambitions. Forthcoming updates include a feature that will give users exact figures on their ESG contribution using Sustainability Yard.
Eastham added that the app services all spectra of the market differently – the larger commercial end gets an easy way to dispose of unwanted materials ethically and cheaply, while the casual DIYer or small tradesman can get their hands on good-value, or even free, smaller quantities of materials easily.
He added: “We are effectively producing a secondary materials market with a view to cutting down waste, mitigating landfill and helping the government meet its target of being carbon neutral. Users of the app can buy, sell or give away their building materials rather than paying for a skip and sending it to landfill unnecessarily.”
