Every year, circa 5.2 million light fittings and thousands of tonnes of fit-out materials are stripped out of buildings and sent to landfill. Not because they're broken. Not because they're outdated. But because of a system that prioritises risk, speed and short-term financial returns over treating existing components as assets with future value.

Last week, we hosted the second Cat-A Waste event at our London studio on behalf of Recolight and the End Cat-A Lighting Waste campaign. Four speakers, a packed room, and one central question: can we actually fix this?

The problem runs deeper than waste

Cat-A fit-out – that speculative, pre-tenant phase where landlords install lighting, ceilings, and services to attract occupiers – has become a design and systems problem. More accurately, it's a decision-making culture problem.

Tina Paillet from Circatrade put it bluntly: circular initiatives don't just dramatically reduce carbon, they're often cheaper too. The issue is that circularity needs to be presented as a business case, not a sustainability add-on, before developers will take it seriously.

Charlie Green, co-founder of the Office Group, made the case from the developer's perspective. There's commercial benefit in doing more – designing better, believing in your product, and genuinely understanding your customers rather than hedging bets with generic Cat-A installations.

Paul Beale from 18 Circular brought something tangible to the table: a live demonstration of "Lighting as a Service" developed with Whitecroft. The model is designed specifically for speculative Landlord Cat-A office space. Lights can be leased during pre-tenancy and returned when a tenant comes on board with their own requirements. Simple. Practical. Circular.

We also shared what we learned from designing our own office fit-out in 2024, where we pushed to maximise reuse and designed out waste from the start. It's one thing to advise clients on circularity; it's another to live it yourself.

The frustration is real – and shared

What became clear during the discussion that followed is that everyone in the room – investors, developers, landlords, designers – is frustrated by the current system. Cat-A exists because of risk, timing, and the fear of rental voids. We get it.

But here's the disconnect: leasing agents understand occupier requirements better than anyone else in the development process, yet they're rarely involved once the lease is signed. That's exactly when we need their insight most – earlier in the design process, not after the Cat-A is already installed.

The conversation kept circling back to two opposing solutions. Either we do less – shell and core only, letting tenants fit out to their actual needs. Or we do more – creating full fit-outs for specific, identified occupiers. The middle ground of speculative Cat-A is where the waste happens.

Someone raised the point that a shift in taxation – relief for circularity and reuse – would help, but we're still working within a system fixated on risk, speed, and short-term thinking. Cultural norms and financial incentives keep producing the same wasteful outcomes.

Everyone has a part to play

The desire to change this system is clear. The frustration proves that. But fixing Cat-A waste means joining the dots across the entire process – from investors to clients to designers to manufacturers to leasing agents.

We can't fix it alone. But together? Yes, we can.

Find out more about the End Cat-A campaign: https://www.endcata.co.uk/