It’s weird how inspiration strikes. There I was, minding my own business, music playing in the background, when a song came on that instantly transported me back to the mid-1980s while simultaneously providing me with a useful and timely metaphor.

That song, “If I was” by former Ultravox frontman Midge Ure, was released almost 40 years ago. I hadn’t heard it in decades. Those that are old enough might recall the premise of the song in which Ure imagines himself in various roles – sailor, painter, poet – and how each might declare and demonstrate their undying love for an unnamed woman. “If I was a soldier, captive arms I’d lay before her”.

I was 21 when that came out, so when I heard it again my initial response was one of nostalgia tinged with sadness at my lost youth.

But then I was struck that the song would be a perfect backdrop for a look at the demolition and construction industry of today.

So stick with me while me (and Midge Ure) imagine the demolition and construction industry as other things and in different scenarios. I will start with the issue of recruitment. And to highlight the problem that demolition and construction faces, let’s imagine the industry as an actor at a Hollywood casting call.

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The night before last, I was sent a link to a newspaper article about a demolition gone awry. The headline read: “Norton demolition temporarily halted after digger toppled onto side among rubble”. As if that headline was not self-explanatory enough, they showed several photos of a New Holland excavator lying on its side.

For all I know, that machine might still be there, lying among the demolition debris like a wounded animal. Quite how it came to be in this predicament is hard to say. Perhaps the operator tracked the machine over an unseen void and it partially collapsed into a basement. Maybe the operator had built himself a platform from which to operate, and then toppled off it. Maybe it was something else.

But there is a clue. A clue into how this unfortunate turn of events came into being. And that clue is in the name on the hoarding around the site, which apparently reads: “Budget Property Maintenance and Rubbish Removal”. That name might also go some way to explain why the fallen machine appeared to have no demolition guarding on it.

It would be easy, at this juncture, to point to the rubbish removal company and say they had over-reached themselves; that they had portrayed themselves as a demolition contractor which – according to their name at least – they are not; that their confidence was writing cheques that their experience was incapable of cashing.

But Budget Property Maintenance and Rubbish Removal didn’t just pitch up and start demolishing. Demolition contractors – like vampires – must be invited in.

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In 1947, a group of scientists – including Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer and others who had worked on the Manhattan Project – founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Haunted by the destructive force they had unleashed on the world, they sought a way to warn humanity. They needed a symbol that could communicate urgency, fragility, and danger without a single word.

They created the Doomsday Clock.

The hands on this symbolic clock could be shifted back or forward depending on how close humanity stood to catastrophe; whether from nuclear weapons, climate change, or, more recently, artificial intelligence. Midnight meant destruction. Midnight meant the end.

Over the years, the hands have moved back and forth, but never by much. Humanity, it seems, is always flirting with disaster.

Today, that clock stands at just 89 seconds to midnight – the closest it has ever been. Nuclear threats sharpened by the war in Ukraine, rising global instability, conflict in Gaza, a worsening climate crisis, a US president that treats allies as enemies and enemies as allies, and the unstoppable march of technology have all conspired to keep us teetering on the edge.

The UK demolition and construction industry does not have a Doomsday Clock. But perhaps it should. For if such a clock existed, its hands would not rest calmly at twenty or thirty minutes from midnight. No. This industry – long plagued by crises both slow and sudden; longstanding and relatively recent – would find its own symbolic clock drawing ever closer to catastrophe. Each unresolved problem, each mounting challenge, each missed opportunity for change ticks the hands forward.

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I’ve got to tell you something that seems to be landing with very little fanfare, but that could quietly blow a hole in budgets up and down the demolition and construction supply chain.

It currently costs £4.05 per tonne to dump inert waste – rock and concrete – at a UK landfill. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a small tariff compared to the £126 charged for the disposal of general waste. And besides, those in the field of demolition send materials to landfill only as a last resort. They would much prefer to recycle, reuse or – better still – resell those materials at a profit rather than shipping them out as a cost.

Now, though, there’s a very real possibility that the government could wipe away that lower rate entirely. The government is currently analysing the feedback from a formal consultation that proposes a tax escalator so that by 2030, that £4 goes the same route as standard waste: a full £126 per tonne.

I’ll save you doing the maths. That’s a 3,000 percent tax hike in effect.

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It is Zero Waste Week. It’s OK if you didn’t know that. I didn’t either, until someone told me. Perhaps those behind the campaign decided not to waste their money promoting it.

When demolition and construction people hear the words “Zero Waste Week”, I am sure most of them will picture overflowing skips, mountains of rubble, and diesel-belching machines chewing through concrete. They’ll imagine campaigns to recycle aggregates, to reuse timber, to cut down on single-use plastics in site canteens. And that’s all fine. Noble, even.

But let’s be honest. The demolition industry is already a world leader in recycling. And besides, the biggest waste in demolition and construction isn’t something you can sort into a recycling bin. It isn’t measured in tonnes or litres. It’s invisible, corrosive, and it multiplies faster than paperwork in a health and safety audit.

Because while we wring our hands about the waste of bricks, steel, and fuel, we quietly ignore the daily avalanche of wasted time, wasted money, wasted people, wasted energy, and wasted goodwill. The kind of waste no one photographs for sustainability reports, but everyone on site knows all too well.

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