When people consider using aggregates for a driveway or patio sub-base; most of them assume that there’s only one option: freshly extracted stone, brought in from the nearest quarry. Only a small number of customers that we speak to realise that a recycled version even exists, let alone that it can be used in the same way as traditional virgin stone and can often work out cheaper.
For a lot of builders across Essex and Suffolk, using recycled crushed hardcore is becoming the new norm; thanks predominantly to the cost advantages, but also because of the green credentials that come along with using recycled aggregates and the resulting reduction in waste materials going to landfill.
For homeowners, there are also a range of benefits. Below, we’ve combined some of the ones that we’ve noticed, as well as a little bit of background into why recycled hardcore and aggregates became so popular that they captured 31% of the total market share in 2025.
At Morley Skips we’ve noticed that there’s an assumption that ‘recycled’ means lower quality; which just isn’t true. Our crushed hardcore is produced in-house at our own waste transfer station and meets WRAP protocols and full British Standards, similar benchmarks that virgin aggregates have to meet. Our 6F5 is strong enough to be used in highway construction, which tells you most of what you need to know about whether it can handle a driveway or a sub-base! Essentially, the only difference is that these materials have had a previous life before this one, rather than being extracted from the local quarry. If anything, the sorting and crushing process that the materials go through, means that every load has already been checked and graded before it leaves our site, which isn’t something that anyone can confidently say for every bag of stone that comes straight out of the ground.
The process starts with hardcore that we’ve collected through our skip bag, skip, grab and RORO container hire. When it arrives at our site, our highly-trained team begin by checking for any unsuitable material. The remaining materials are then passed through a trommel that sifts out finer particles. Only once that’s done does the material go through the crusher, coming out the other end as aggregates which are ready to go back out to another site.
Material that leaves a job as waste can, quite literally, return to a different job as a recycled aggregate. For customers who use us for both waste removal and aggregates supply, that’s a genuinely sustainable solution, not just a marketing line.
Recycled hardcore is generally cheaper than virgin quarried stone for a fairly straightforward reason. Firstly, it doesn’t need to be extracted from a quarry or transported the same distances, and because we’re producing it ourselves from material that’s already in our possession, there isn’t the same supply chain sitting behind the price. For example, a large driveway or hardstanding area might need several tonnes of hardcore and that cost difference between virgin and recycled aggregates can add up quickly; especially when you take the aggregates levy into consideration.
The saving isn’t just financial either; it also means that fewer new materials need to be quarried in the first place and therefore less usable material ends up in landfill. For contractors working to a budget, it’s often one of the easiest line items to bring down without touching the design or the timescale of the job.
Recycled crushed hardcore turns up in more places than people expect and typical uses include: bulk filling to bring an area up to build level, creating temporary hardstanding, firming up wet or soft ground and layering beneath type 1 or primary aggregates. Because our 6F5 meets the standard required for highway work, it’s also suitable for larger construction and groundworks projects that need a genuinely load-bearing base. If you’re not sure which grade suits your project, it’s worth asking when you call, since the right solution will depend on what’s going on top of it and how much weight it’ll need to carry.
We supply recycled hardcore in quantities from 1 tonne up to a full 15 tonne load, including part-loads, so it works for a small garden job just as well as a larger commercial delivery. It can go out on our grab lorries, in a skip or via RORO depending on the scale of the project and how the site’s set up. We usually have materials ready within a day or so, sometimes the next working day. Delivery slots do get booked up quickly though, particularly through the busier months, so it’s worth calling ahead rather than leaving it until the last minute.
You don’t need to overhaul how a project is planned to make use of recycled hardcore, it simply replaces the virgin material that you’d have ordered anyway, just at a lower cost and with a smaller environmental footprint. For anyone already using us for waste removal, it also means that the material leaving your site doesn’t just disappear, it gets a second life.
If you’re planning a driveway, patio, sub-base or larger groundworks project and want to know whether recycled crushed hardcore is right for it, give the Morley Skips team a call on 01621 815 287. We’ve been supplying aggregates and managing waste across Essex and Suffolk for over 25 years and we’re always happy to talk through what grade and quantity will suit your job.
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