RATHER than dump 4,000 unwanted hard hats in a landfill tip, a construction company had them moulded into environmentally-friendly site hoardings.

Morgan Sindall, which has offices at Belmont Business Park, in Durham, decided to reuse the old hats after the business was rebranded earlier this year.

This meant that the old hard hats with the old company logos on needed to be replaced.

Rather than discarding the unwanted hats, the company joined forces with plastic recycler 2K Manufacturing to turn the headgear into EcoSheet boards.

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

“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.”