Spec Finish

Sustainability In the last two years, there has been a stronger drive from the industry to tackle its carbon emissions. This might be driven by the Government target to be net zero by 2050, by client requirements or because the cost of energy has gone up so much in 2022. Whatever the reason, it drives the industry in a positive direction in terms of sustainability. REUSE MAKES SENSE 14 www.thefis.org T HE construction industry needs to tackle this issue at organisation, product and building level depending on the nature of the business. The requirement for themeasurement of the embodied carbon emissions frombuildings (emissions related to themanufacturing, transport, installation, maintenance, replacement, and end of life of products) or whole life carbon has not yet found its way into building regulations. However, the report published by the Environmental Audit Committee on 26May 2022 andwork done by the BECD, the UKNet Zero Carbon Building Standard 1 , Part Z indicates that thismay happen soon. The industry should look to get ready. The pull from the industry is strong and there a numerous examples of clients requiring somemeasurements at organisational, project or product levels: • Grosvernor’ think zero strategy 2 : their ambition is to reduce the embodied carbon emissions and energy demand of their development and they also want to work with their supply chain to have at least 40% of their suppliers have a Science Base Target by 2030 (a carbon reduction plan at organisational level). • Construction playbook 3 (2022): suppliers bidding for major government contracts must have a published carbon reduction plan. Projects will be required to calculate their whole life carbon impact • Willmott Dixon: has set an ambition to reduce its own carbon emissions to zero by 2030. They have started to indicate that they will soon require that their suppliers put an organisational carbon reduction plan in place. The net zero agenda is not new, but the level of interest is now growing exponentially, and, at a minimum, organisations need to start their carbon reduction plan. Information on how a carbon reduction plan can be created can be found on the Sustainability related to your organisation page on the FIS website 4 and training can be found at the New live supplier carbon reduction plan training – CCS 5 . Organisations such as the Supply Chain Sustainability School provide free to use tools to measure organisational impact: Free carbon calculator for supply chains – Supply Chain Sustainability School 6 . The importance of circularity As part of carbon reduction, the potential for the reuse of products is becoming a growing focus. 90% of construction materials are currently recycled, however, a lot of materials are simply downcycled. That means that they are crushed and used in low value applications, such as fill. Recycling is better than landfilling, however, if a product is still in good condition after its use, why not reuse it in another project? Or even better, why not leave it in the building? This is probably even more obvious in the fit-out sector where products are only used for five to seven years before another tenant moves in and decides to refit the office. The benefits of reusing products are not only that it reduces the amount of waste generated, but it also decreases the embodied carbon impact of the projects in which products are reused. The embodied carbon of reused products is generally considered to be zero plus the impact of transport and potential impact generated from the cleaning, painting or coating of the products. There are a number of initiatives that enable the reuse of products by providing a means to “post” products that come out of a refurbishment, fit-out, or demolition project for someone else to collect to reuse. Most of these products end up in the charity world though and the question is “how do we make this approach more mainstream in the corporate sector?”. There are supply side issues, such as: • The supply of materials can come from three sources: - surplus materials brought to the site and not used - materials that have been used in a Cat A fit-out transitioning to Cat B - possibly unused/undamaged materials - materials that have been used in a building that is now being demolished/ refurbished – used materials in various states. • How to identify the supply of products on site: viability, location, quantities, quality • Logistics: how to optimise transport to ensure it does not create a big carbon impact Flavie Lowres, FIS Sustainability Champion