Tag Archives: living product challenge

What’s Your Regen Conversation

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The latest Regen/ Notes newsletter “What’s Your Regen Conversation” explores Potentialism, Eco Reads, Bread, Ride with Nature, Place, Home Health, Living Product Challenge, Digital Design, Warming Stripes + Zoom Regenerative

Read, Like and Subscribe to Regen/ Notes here

Regen/ Notes also features upcoming on line and in person regenerative events:

9th June: Is your home trying to kill you?

Ann Vanner, Regenerative Practitioner, Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Architectural Technology, will talk about how profoundly our lives are shaped and impacted by the places we call home at an event in Preston on the 9th of June at 18:00 Registration and details here 

10th June: Introduction Regenerative Social Housing 

We all have a role to play and as a housing sector we need to start changing the way that we think about sustainability. 

Echelon has teamed up with regenerative sustainability provocateurs and consultants Martin Brown and Anna Williamson to deliver a programme exploring regenerative principles within the social housing sector. The regenerative sustainability subgroup, delivered through our best practice club AMIP, will bring together organisations to move their environmental, social and sustainability approaches beyond business as usual to a regenerative approach that delivers real value and benefit. 

Echelon

Email regenerativesustainability@echelonconsultancy.co.uk for more information. 

14th June: A Journey in Regenerative Materials 

Zoom Regenerative continues its journey of raising awareness, joining the dots and celebrating regenerative journeys on 14th June. Walter Lourie and Georg Klampfer at MAFI-Walk On Art share a made for zR factory video premier, featuring Living Product Challenge, Declare and regenerative forestry insights. 

Join our community of regenerative future seekers on the 17th, hear the MAFI story, along with our gathering space, one-to-one chats and inspiring Regen/ conversations.

Registration and details here 

16th June: Regenerative Design in Digital Practice

Living Future Europe’s show case of digital tools for a regenerative design. Registration and details here 

21 June: Climate Conversations 

June 21st is #ShowYourStripes day. How will you use and display the warming Stripes to start conversations on climate change? 

The Small Book with the Big Conversation Potential

Our Regenerative Playbook is available to read online at https://bit.ly/regenplaybook. But do leave a comment if you would like to purchase a hard copy to kick start regenerative conversations in your organisation.

Investors call on construction material companies to commit to net zero emissions by 2050

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Brick, Stone, Blocks, Building Material, Construction

With the construction materials sector exposed to significant transition and physical risk resulting from climate change, the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) recent paper, Investor Expectations of Companies in the Construction Materials Sector, outlines the steps that investors expect companies to take to manage climate risks and accelerate action to decarbonise in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The guide is endorsed by other investor networks that make up the Global Investor Coalition of Climate Change, and was developed in line with the goals of Climate Action 100+ in order to inform investor engagement with construction material firms on the initiative’s global list of 161 focus companies.

Investors supporting the Climate Action 100+ initiative expect construction material companies to make commitments in respect of

  • Implement a strong governance framework which clearly articulates the board’s accountability and oversight of climate change risk and opportunities.
  • Take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across their value chain, consistent with the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the increase in global average temperatures to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
  • Provide enhanced corporate disclosure in line with the final recommendations of the TCFD5 and, when applicable, sector-specific Global Investor Coalition on Climate Change Investor Expectations on Climate Change to enable investors to assess the robustness of companies’ business plans against a range of climate scenarios, including well below 2°C and improve investment decision-making.

Climate change risk is especially acute for companies that manufacture cement. As the most widely used construction material globally, cement is the source of 7 percent of global man-made carbon dioxide emissions. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest global emitter, behind only China and the US.

RE:Sources

Declare is a construction materials transparency disclosure programme.

The Living Product Challenge is a climate responsible framework certification programme for manufacturers to create products that are healthy, inspirational and regenerative, giving back to the environment and people. https://living-future.org/lpc/

The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), is the European forum for investor collaboration on climate actionand the voice of investors taking action for a prosperous, low carbon, future. 

REVEALed: a new initiative to showcase and compare the world’s most energy efficient buildings.

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REVEALREVEAL – a new building energy performance nutrition label and benchmarking scheme to showcase and compare the world’s most energy efficient buildings. 

Reveal is the latest programme from the International Living Futures Institute (the Institute behind the Living Building Challenge, Living Product Challenge, Declare and JUST) to provide visible and benchmark-able energy data based on real, measurable data. Reveal is aimed at certified Living Buildings, net zero buildings, LEED buildings, BREEAM buildings, Passivehouse projects – or indeed any project with accurate measured energy data. It should be of great interest to the facilities Management and Property sectors

REVEAL taps into performance based reporting – an integral part of the Living Building Challenge and Net Positive Certification to provide a new platform for projects to showcase how efficient they are relative to other buildings.

Evidence for the Reveal using the EUI – Energy Use Intensity index – would be validated from utility provider data and audited by ILFI. Reveal Labels are date stamped and will be renewed on a two-year basis to essentially become ‘nutrition’ labels for building energy performance.

Organisations can use their label on their websites and marketing materials to tout their achievement in being one of the world’s most efficient buildings – and see how their project stacks up to other exemplary projects.

Energy Use Intensity (EUI) indicator: In the absence of a standard or benchmark it is difficult to benchmark energy uses between buildings. Simply measuring the amount of energy used per a chosen time period does not take into account building size, configuration or type of use. The use of an Energy Use Intensity (EUI) indicator provides a means to normalise the way that energy use is compared between various types of buildings, and evaluate the means of reducing overall energy consumption.

When using EUI, energy use is expressed as a function of a building’s total area or “footprint”. For Reveal, as is common in the US, EUI is expressed in energy used per square foot of building footprint per year. It is calculated by dividing the total gross energy consumed in a one-year period (kilowatt-hours or kilo-British Thermal Units) by the total gross square footage of the building ie KbTu/sqft/year  In the UK and elsewhere this would be KWh/m2/year. See Calculating a Building’s EUI

The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) will begin issuing the new energy label, called “Reveal,” in late 2015 according to Eric Corey Freed, vice president for global outreach at ILFI.

RegenerativeBIM … moving the GreenBIM debate

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green bimBuilding Information Management offers huge benefits to Sustainability and to GreenBuild, but needs to move from GreenBIM to RestorativeBIM

Bringing together the two most important themes of todays built environment, Sustainability and BIM, the ThinkBIM and Green Vision programmes at Leeds Beckett are setting the agenda for GreenBIM.

However we need to guard against GreenBIM falling into a trap of being Sustainability and BIM as usual, but to move GreenBIM into the visionary, Regenerative Sustainability arena, as adopted by Green Vision through their association with the Living Building Challenge.

Rethinking BIM for the Ecological Age

It does seems a waste that all the creative and innovative thinking and energy being put into BIM should only incrementally improve built environment sustainability, and that we will be a little less bad next year, a bit more less bad by 2018

Aligning the innovation of BIM and the forward thinking of Regenerative Sustainability provides an immense opportunity that could and should powerfully push the overall built environment agenda forward. And, through the intelligence of a RegenerativeBIM, ensure that each element, not just the building, contributes in a net-positive manner, doing more good, not just doing incrementally less bad.

Where GreenBIM is today and where Green BIM needs to be, RegenerativeBIM.

Where GreenBIM is today and where Green BIM needs to be, RegenerativeBIM.

Imagine then if every building, indeed every ‘facility’ was designed, constructed and operated through a RegenerativeBIM, that;

> is designed and constructed specifically in relation to its ‘place’, positively impacting and benefiting its immediate environment.

> becomes a provider of water, cleaning all that falls on the building and providing clean water to adjacent facilities.

> generates more energy than required and contributes the net positive difference to nearby homes, community buildings.

> contains no harmful materials. There should be no place in a GreenBIM for materials on Red Lists. An intelligent RestorativeBIM could not allow materials or products such as PVC, formaldehyde, or SPF’s. Every Product Data Sheet would include the elements of the Living Product Challenge, with every product having a net-positive Handprint

>  are based on biophilic and biomimic principles. RegenerativeBIM would constantly ask the question, How would nature approach this?

> focus on a positive, salutogenetic health principle – on making people healthy, not as present on the negative stopping people getting less ill. (Big difference!)

> cleans the air, emitting better quality than intaking.

> delights and encourages creativity …

> intelligently and digitally inspires and educate the next …. BIM.

Such an approach is not only possible but arguably the responsible approach we must take. An approach that in a short time could be the accepted way of designing, constructing and maintaining buildings.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

These ideas will be explored further in upcoming ‘GreenBIM’ events hosted through Green Vision, ThinkBIM and CE Yorkshire.

Watch this space.

Ecological Handprints: Construction materials that do more good not just less harm

One of the more interesting and potentially industry game changing announcements coming out from the ILFI 2015 conference in Seattle last week was the launch of The Living Product Challenge (LPC).

Initially introduced at the LF 2014 conference with more detail released this year along with more on the concept of the “Ecological Handprint” (not a new concept, but one that is set to gain more parlance now adopted by the ILFI)

The LPC challenges manufacturing organisations to make products with a positive “handprint” i.e. encouraging products that are net-positive and transparent throughout the entire life cycle. (Ecological Handprints will measure the positive impact that a product causes across its life cycle, such as harvesting more water and generating more energy than was required to make the product)

There could be reservations with a requirement for LPC accredited organisations to hold  other ILFI standards such as Just and Declare, seeming a little incestuous perhaps. However sticking to the LBC approach of philosophy first, advocacy second and accreditation third, lets focus on the philosophy and advocacy to improve the sector, and address certification issues later. Living Product Challenge is looking to operate in an increasingly crowded healthy material transparency and green directory arena, yet the absolute-ness of the criteria, (you do or you don’t) will undoubtedly differentiate.

Buildings that consists solely of products and technologies that themselves do more good than harm, across environmental, social and economic spectrums, in manufacture, construction and in use is a very powerful statement for a regenerative future.

And its an approach of course that responsible organisations within the built environment should be adopting. And here are a whole new set of questions to ask; before designers specify materials; when contractors procure products and as facilities management upgrade/replace products.

The philsophy:

Re-imagine the design and construction of products to function as elegantly and efficiently as anything found in the natural world.

Products are informed by biomimicry and biophilia; manufactured by processes powered only by renewable energy and within the water balance of the places they are made.

Products improve our quality of life and bring joy through their beauty and functionality.

Imagine a Living Product whose very existence builds soil; creates habitat; nourishes the human spirit; and provides inspiration for personal, political and economic change.

Like the Living Building Challenge (LBC), the LPC consists of 20 specific “Imperatives” under seven “Petal” categories. All 20 requirements are needed for full LPC certification, or Imperative and Petal certification options . Many of the imperatives will be familiar to those already au fait with the Living Building Challenge, with a few new additions and definations, for example:

Positive Handprint: The manufacturer must demonstrate that the product gives more than it takes over its entire life cycle,

Net-Positive Waste: Water use and release from manufacturing the product must work in harmony with the natural water flows of the site and its surroundings.

Net Positive Material Health: The product must be safe for human exposure during manufacturing, use and end-of-use.

Human Thriving: The product must contribute to an active, healthy lifestyle and be designed to nurture the innate human/nature connection.

Product Fit to Use: Durability, warranty, and useful lifespan must have a direct relationship to environmental impact and embodied energy.

Equitable Product Access: Products sold to consumers must be affordable to the people who manufacture them, and products used in buildings must not unduly impair the affordability of those buildings.

The Living Product Challenge ‘brochure’ pdf can be downloaded from here. The UK LBC Collaborative will be getting to grips with the LPC over the coming weeks, with a view to providing more information and introduction sessions later in the year.

Sources #LF15 Tweets,  https://living-future.org