By Angela Reid, Director and Environmental Engineer of TÜV SÜD’s UK Real Estate division, an international building services engineering consultancy, specialising in sustainable MEP (mechanical, electrical and public health), BIM (Building Information Modelling), lighting design, and vertical transportation.
Buildings account for a large amount of land use, energy and water consumption, as well as air quality and atmosphere alteration. Reducing the volume of natural resources buildings consume, and the amount of pollution given off, is therefore seen as crucial for future sustainability.
A report from the World Green Building Council (Doing Right by Planet & People. The Business Case for Health and Wellbeing in Green Building. April 2018) defines the business case for building green as being:
- Reductions in energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants – companies can save money by occupying a green building.
- Improvements to occupant wellbeing, satisfaction and productivity – employees prefer green buildings that make them feel healthier and more productive.
- Strong financial returns for the companies owning or occupying these buildings – a building’s asset value increases the greener and healthier it is.
The environmental benefits of a manufacturer’s building products are now becoming a core element of their marketing strategy. Likewise, refurbishment can be the more sustainable option, especially when considering long term environmental impact and a building’s whole life cycle. Consequently, building owners are increasingly undertaking energy-efficient and sustainable retrofits of existing properties.
In order to cater to this growing market demand for Green Building products, manufacturers often use labelling, voluntarily providing environmental information about their products. However, there is a confusing array of environmental claims, certification standards, and labels. This includes 65 building ecolabels and an estimated 600 green product certifications worldwide.
A word of warning here is that some manufacturers have also created their own green labels, which often have no independent verification, but are simply used as a sales tool. The most authentic and trustworthy certifications are those awarded by an independent third-party, which has no business or monetary relationship with a product’s manufacturer, or a building’s contractor, designer or specifier. You might need the support of such independent experts to effectively deal with the proliferation of ecolabels, as well as identify successfully which category a label falls into, be that government, proprietary, or independent agency.
There are a vast range of country-specific Green Building rating schemes, each having their own ecolabel. For example, standards and certifications include the following:
- BREEAM (UK) – property industry’s recognised benchmark for the environmental rating of new and major refurbished buildings.
- Energy Star (USA) – government certification using a benchmarking method.
- Green Star SA (South Africa) – Green Building rating system for office, retail and multi-unit residential.
- LEED (USA and globally recognised) – Green Building certification programme that recognises best-in-class building strategies and practices.
- Green Star (Australia) – recognised benchmark for the environmental rating of the design, construction and operation of new buildings, fit-outs and communities.
- Well Certification (international) – framework to help improve the health and wellbeing for all building occupiers.
As there such a wide range of ecolables and certification options, if you are undertaking a refurbishment project, you need substantive assurances from manufacturers of a product’s environmental integrity. Therefore, look for ecolabels that use the globally recognised ISO 14024 methodology, which provides world-class specifications for operating ecolabel schemes.
