Civil engineering firm, Minster Surfacing has secured a prestigious award for its work to reduce waste and commitment to recycling.

The Lincolnshire company won Circular Economy Project of the Year at the BusinessGreen Leaders Awards 2019.

The BusinessGreen Leaders Awards are one of the most prestigious green awards in the country and are organised by the UK's leading website for green business news and analysis, BusinessGreen.

The Circular Economy Project of the Year category at the BusinessGreen Leaders Awards recognises innovative work that eliminates waste and uses recycling to deliver financial and competitive benefits to an organisation or community.

Minster's internal project, named 'smarter, cleaner, greener road surfacing', saw the firm combining a wide range of technologies, tools and techniques to reduce waste, improve safety, minimise disruption and improve quality at all stages of the construction process.


This includes the use of vehicle-mounted 3D laser scanning technology to measure roads with pinpoint accuracy. This is used to create computer aided designs and measurements, providing detailed instructions for construction teams and automated machinery, enabling material to be used more efficiently and to high level quality.

In addition to this, temperature monitoring systems and GPS tracking is fitted to machinery so that the quality of the material is recorded and measured as it gets used for quality assurance and quality control which also reduces waste.

Also, around 50% of the material used on roads was recycled either on-site or using material removed from other old roads, with the majority of 'new' material being produced using secondary aggregates. The company also used removed road material to create 100% recycled farm tracks and industrial yards.

Overall, Minster's use of technology to improve the way it works helped it to dramatically cut the carbon footprint of its work and it has prevented tens of thousands of tonnes of material from going to waste. It has also reduced the need for mineral aggregate and oil (the main ingredients of asphalt) from needing to be extracted, refined, processed and transported.

This award follows the company's recent success at the Institute of Directors East Midlands awards, where managing director Bruce Spencer-Knott was named Director of the Year for Innovation.