The contractor has gone to the head of the recycling class by transforming 4,000 hard hats into plastic sheets for site hoardings.

The hard hats became obsolete when Morgan Sindall rebranded the business with a new logo earlier this year to bring together its building and infrastructure arms.

Rather than disposing of the redundant hats, the company joined forces with plastic recycler 2K Manufacturing to turn the hats into EcoSheet boards.

Morgan Sindall head of sustainability and environment Brian Handcock said: “In the past, it has been standard practice in the construction industry to send hard hats to landfill when they need to be replaced.

“As a company, we make every effort to limit the amount of waste we send to landfill and try to reuse materials and old equipment wherever possible, so when our old branded hard hats had to be removed from service, we wanted to find a way of using them again.”

Morgan Sindall collected up hard hats from offices and construction sites all over the UK and transported them to 2K Manufacturing’s headquarters in Luton where they were moulded into EcoSheet boards.

Handcock said: “EcoSheet is an excellent piece of technology for the construction industry because it removes the need for using plywood boards on site which cannot be recycled.

“We’ve been really impressed with the results and are already using EcoSheet boards on a number of our construction projects.”

Peter Ball, 2K Manufacturing’s head of sales said: “The groundbreaking technology we use to produce our award-winning EcoSheet boards is enabling us to bring a new lease of life to some of the four million hard hats that are produced each year in this country alone.

“We enjoy working closely with construction companies like Morgan Sindall to help reduce the amount of waste they commit to landfill by providing sustainable solutions which benefit them both commercially and environmentally.”