Category Archives: sustainability

Geo Solar Homes

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Housing Construction that both heats it self and cools itself. An interesting innovation from the States can be found at Enertia House

Enertia Building System, named as the 2007 Modern Marvel of the Year is described as

innovative new homes of remarkable strength, economy, and beauty, brought to life by an elegant new architecture and the discovery of a new source of pollution-free energy.

with a built-in “biosphere,” in gradual but constant motion, draws energy from the sun, and geothermal stability from the ground, creating a temperate climate that buffers the primary living space.

The site provides plenty of science ‘background’ which is worth checking out.

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Low carbon professionals can earn more

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Noted in the Guardians Society supplement recently – What Else Can I do –

Specialist recruiter Hays Building Services says

that with The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) recently established professional register of low carbon consultants, energy or environmental professionals could expect to earn 10% more than colleagues.

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Chocolate Teapots that might hold Water?

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I have referred to carbon offsetting as chocolate teapots in other posts. It is interesting that the vast majority of spam this blog attracts (and is successfully filtered away by wordpress) are offers to offset my personal and business carbons.

(For just £200 a year you can offset your families carbon footprint, another £30 for the car and £104 for that family holiday flight last year. Hmmmm seems like a bargain !)

But now – we can offset water usage through irrigation offsets. It seems the growing trend in offsetting would allow any business to offset all the water used and wasted by supporting irrigation projects around the world. This is good in that it raises awareness in water usage, but surely better to switch to less water consuming technologies and lifestyles (so called low-flow).

For example, waterless urinals in an office can save up to 17,000 gallons of water a year. Whereas one manufacturer claimed in Grist that a waterless urinal may save up to 40,000 gallons per year in a high use airport building.

The debate on offsetting will continue – as has been commented before by others, carbon offsetting has nothing to do with sustainability – but maybe irrigation offsetting needs closer attention?.

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Little Book of Change and Rising to the Challenge

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Two publications from the NWDA that should get your attention:

A Little Book of Change

A useful guide from the Business Resource Efficiency & Waste Programme (BREW) in the Northwest.

This booklet will give you the contacts and tools to enable you to access the support that you need to rise to the challenge, help the planet and save your organisation money.

and

Rising to the Challenge

The Northwest Climate Change Action Plan sets out a Vision towards 2010 and action plans for our region


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Think 07 – Thinkonceagain

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Just catching up on some of the material from the Think07 event.

Tesco publicity material was contained on a USB stick, which contained an informative video explaining there approach to sustainable stores.  For an understanding of where the retail clients in the industry are heading take a look at their website thinkonceagain.   Their green flagship store is Tesco, Wick, where they claim to have halved the carbon footprint.

Low Emmision Zones – sign of things to come

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To improve air quality in London – which is currently among the worst in Europe – the Mayor has designated Greater London as a Low Emission Zone.    As Zero Champion points out:

Ken Livingstone’s attempt to control polluting vehicles from central London could spell crisis for construction traffic. It’s the first such scheme in the UK and the largest planned in the world. As of February 2008 pollution-spewing lorries will face charges of £200 to travel in the Low Emission Zone.

We are seeing local authorities here in the NW now look at construction transport miles seriously – even as a scored procurement  issue.

Not too bad though when you consider we don’t need one out of every three construction material lorries on the road anyway – as a recent Defra report hinted

Watch this space…..

Fit for Purpose, Planet and People

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A few recent issues have reinforced my view we may be slowly replacing environmental impact with carbon impact.  Whilst carbon management is a good focus on our environmental impact, and a relatively easy one to calculate,  we still need to keep a balance on our environmental impact.

A good balance is in the triptych  from Patrick Geddes – being fit for Planet, for People and Purpose

It is good therefore to see CABE’s report focusing on their ecological footprint as well as their carbon footprint.  .

As we see more and more clients looking for evidence of environmental impact management and evidence in procurement, for example on construction transport miles, this report is well worth reading for its background in calculating footprints, in addition to CABE’s own footprint and action plans.

And on a wider, global scale we see reports in the media of the devastation of forestry and food land around the world in a rush to produce bio-fuels for energy or transport including bio-materials for our industry.

May Day commitment to action

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A number of people have suggested I put the Think top ten actions in here as well as the link to the Think 07. Here they are again – what do we make of them ( more to the point what will John Prescott make of them!) Maybe we use these as the agenda for our question time event in September.

1.To draw up SMART targets for the reduction of carbon emissions, waste & water and to protect biodiversity.

2. To develop industry-wide, consistent carbon modelling and measurement tools for existing and new buildings to achieve these targets.

3. To halve the amount of construction waste taken to landfill every two years.

4. To devise a more effective renewable energy strategy, including district-wide strategies.

5. To encourage landlords and occupiers to share and publish data on buildings’ energy consumption, with the aim of collectively reducing emissions.

6. To adopt operational energy labelling certificates across all buildings.

7. For landlords to adopt a new code on leases which discourages the reinstatement of properties to their original state.

8. To promote the use of life cycle analysis, including embedded and operational carbon emissions.

9. Every building to have a master ‘off’ switch.

10. To encourage the adoption across the construction and property industries of the May Day commitment to action.

Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

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This was the conclusion from last weeks Think 07 conference.

Maybe the the only action plan we need?

Top Ten – American flavor

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To commemorate Earth Day (an American thing! held annually on the 22nd April) and bring awareness to the importance of energy conservation in commercial buildings, BOMA (the USA’s  Building Owners and Managers Association) published their top 10 ways for building owners and managers to reduce energy consumption.  Check them out on the Building Design and Construction site