We cannot win the race to net zero offices without the 3 R's: React, Reuse, Retrofit
I hear a lot of people question whether or not the UK will stay on track with its Net Zero 2050 targets. Whilst I don’t claim to speak for the nation, I know for a fact that a considerable amount of change still needs to happen well before that date if we wish to halt the disastrous effects of climate change by the middle of this century.
The next big milestone of 45% emissions reduction by 2030 looms large and I fear that, we, as a nation, are far from ready for it.
It’s not to say progress is not being made. As a society, we’ve made it our mission to eliminate single-use everyday products and packaging such as shopping bags, straws, plastic water bottles and so forth. It’s time to make this mindset more common in commercial office design.
Perhaps the skyrocketing prices, driven by the shortage of materials and scarcity of resources is the catalyst the industry finally needed to invest in the circular economy.
For several decades, longevity was not a top consideration of commercial office spaces. But against the backdrop of the race to net zero, the rise of climate protests and COP27 drawing near, the pressure has never been higher for the built environment to consider its emissions and re-evaluate its impact.
There’s no denying tremendous progress has been made over the past few years when it comes to office building and design, the industry has had to address a major waste issue.
However, recycling is not how we will achieve net zero. Reusing and retrofitting existing products and building structures need to become the primary drivers in the commercial fit-out realm.
Favouring a circular approach has clear financial benefits. The Ellen McArthur Foundation* has found that altering the production and consumption of products can cut CO2 emissions by 45 per cent. Placing a value on waste generates significant new wealth in an era of growing emission taxes and increased investor and consumer pressure. Prolonging a product’s lifecycle has developed into a strong competitive factor.
The necessity for circularity, however, advances a larger variety of organisational, environmental and societal concerns and goes far beyond the question of finances. Building product manufacturers have had to compete for increasingly expensive raw materials, glass and aluminium for example. The need for such virgin resources is significantly decreased through a circular strategy.
Here, it’s important to acknowledge how circularity reduces energy consumption over new production by up to 90% as the nation currently battles one of the biggest energy crises in its history.
A further virtue of the circular approach is that it also enables manufacturers to maintain and recapture the maximum inherent value of the initial product at every level and across the course of many life cycles.
Traditionally, it’s been a common practice to strip down and replace an office space every time a new tenant takes occupancy , creating an endless cycle of make-deliver-use-scrap for office fit-outs. At end-of-life, many of the products are then either recycled or, more frequently than not, sent to landfills. In the majority of instances, this is completely unnecessary and if we change our approach to how we reuse suitable products to give them a new purpose, we can deliver long-term value with low environmental impact.
One potential solution to this is for manufacturers to adopt a lease-based approach to their production. This means the fit-out system will be demounted once it is no longer needed by the occupants and it will find a new purpose elsewhere. This gives manufacturers the opportunity to support their clients, extend the lifecycle of the products and recapture value at every leasing. Unlike cars, fixtures, fittings and finishes retain their value very well over time with little depreciation to the quality of the product, offering an exceedingly longer lifecycle.
It sounds quite straightforward, but those who are used to the build, buy and bin strategy will need to change their way of thinking. Ultimately, it will deliver superior value overall, leading many organisations to abandon asset ownership in favour of a thriving and more accessible market for renting construction materials.
If properly implemented, this scenario might offer the greatest flexibility while minimising energy and waste generated by the ongoing production of brand new, but carbon-intensive, systems.
Some additional things to consider when retrofitting a commercial office space are to favour a layout and fixtures that allow for maximum efficiency. For example, glass doors and partitions are a great way to passively bring in more sunlight and capitalise on natural sources of heating, cooling and ventilation in order to maintain comfortable conditions for users. Furthermore, the “fabric first” approach, which involves maximising the performance of the components and materials that make up the building fabric, can significantly reduce the demand for energy.
Two-thirds of the buildings that exist today will still be standing in 2050, and since nearly 70 per cent of our cities’ carbon emissions originate from buildings, this means some form of retrofit is necessary to reach net zero targets. Adopting a circular approach which finds value in reusing is the only way to go.
Related Content
- © Ocean Media Group