The Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) have recently launched a new Publicly Available Specification (PAS) meaning that there is now a published standard for the recycling of plasterboard into quality assured gypsum. Developed by WRAP in collaboration with industry and the British Standards Institution (BSI), PAS109:2008:

Specification for the production of recycled gypsum from waste plasterboard provides a specification for producing recycled gypsum of consistent and verifiable quality from waste plasterboard.  It is the first standard to offer guidance on processing waste plasterboard.

PAS109 sets a number of minimum requirements for the production of recycled gypsum from waste plasterboard, setting out how source materials should be selected, received and handled, the specification of product grades, how the final product is to be stored, labelled, dispatched and traced, and requirements regarding quality control of the final product.

Compliance with the specification should not only enable plasterboard recyclers to produce a quality assured recycled gypsum product, but, will also inspire confidence in purchasers of PAS109 recycled gypsum that the material they are buying is a quality material with consistent specification.

Gypsum recycled from waste plasterboard is already used in a range of applications including the manufacture of new plasterboard, the manufacture of cement and in the agricultural sector as a soil treatment.  As markets increase for recycled gypsum product, significant progress should be made in reducing the amounts of waste plasterboard sent to landfill.

The Publicly Available Specification together with further information on this development, is available from WRAP via the links below:-

http://www.wrap.org.uk/wrap_corporate/news/first_waste.html
http://www.wrap.org.uk/construction/plasterboard/pas109.html
http://www.wrap.org.uk/wrap_corporate/news/plasterboard.html

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