Opting for Carbon Friendly Materials
How does a building reduce its embodied carbon emissions? This is what our partner, Investa, set out to achieve at 347 Kent Street in Sydney, Australia, as part of their overarching net zero carbon target (to reduce the embodied carbon emissions intensity by 50% below their reference standards by 2040).
Embodied carbon considers the carbon footprint of materials throughout the supply chain, the very materials that make up our buildings. With 347 Kent St positioned for re-development, it was a perfect opportunity to determine potential embodied carbon emissions reductions by comparing typical materials used with that of carbon friendly alternatives.
The goal – Align with the first stage of the net zero target and reduce embodied carbon emissions by 15%.
The result – 17% reduction (~2,040 tonnes of avoided CO2 equivalent), a savings that exceeds the building's pre-refurbished annual operations scope 1 & 2 carbon emissions (~1,903 tonnes CO2e).
Some of the key initiatives that contributed to this outcome include the re-use of ceiling grid (which had initially been programmed for demolition and disposal at the project's outset); the adoption of 30-40% fly-ash replacement concrete mix; 100% second hand formwork; recycled content re-bar; re-purposed steel temporary structures; and retaining the heritage façade.
Our Natural Materials Masterpiece
Arbora in Montreal, Canada is one of the most recent additions to our multi-family residential portfolio.
It is one of the first buildings in Québec to be built with local, eco-friendly solid wood frame of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels from the boreal forests of northern Québec. CLT is a proven technology known for its strength and performance in terms of energy efficiency and acoustics.
Arbora was designed to celebrate the natural materials used in its construction. The building features exposed wooden beams and posts, hardwood flooring, and stone surfaces throughout. It also features ample windows providing an abundance of natural light, 9-foot ceilings, and an on-site green space.
Arbora is also Certified LEED® Platinum for Homes – a first for Oxford’s multi-family residential portfolio.
Swipe Right to Recycle
In 2019, Investa, our property management partner in Australia, launched the real estate industry’s first sustainability waste and recycling engagement tool, Binder. The online and mobile game was developed to improve individual customer and overall building recycling rates and to ultimately, help address the confusion that is often generated from the varied recycling standards across Australia.
The tool is designed in the style of a dating app which encourages users to flick through common office waste, swiping right if an item can be recycled and swiping left if it goes to landfill. Users have three chances to help the animated, yellow recycling bin character find ‘true love’ via correct answers, before they luck out of the game. Binder is integrated with Investa’s online Sustainability Tenant Toolkit and its online and building-wide tenant engagement program, Insite, allowing for an integrated approach to encourage continual improvement and a clear connection to resources.
By gamifying the process, Binder makes the world of recycling light hearted and fun. So far, the tool has proven effective, with rave reviews, particularly from the younger demographics who are used to swiping right or left to get the information they need. With broad usage, it is anticipated that the game will enable customers to reduce landfill waste and contribute to lowering the carbon footprint of the Oxford-Investa buildings.
Developing with Performance & Materials in Mind
St. James’s Market Phase 2 (SJM2) hasn’t missed a beat in developing plans as the next sustainable building in London, England, following Phase 1, which saw the creation of a new destination in the West End hosting a selection of leading shops and restaurants. The project team is working to set ambitious targets informed by WELL, LEED, and BREEAM certifications; and have plans for solar paneling, rainwater harvesting, urban greening and whole life energy and carbon emissions reductions.
The design team is taking an integrated approach, marrying design and operations best practices to create a space that offers the highest standards of sustainability and wellbeing for the people that come to work at and visit the building.
Notably, as part of the Better Buildings Partnership and Design for Performance (DfP) initiative, our partner, The Crown Estate, has signed SJM2 on as one of the first buildings in the UK to form part of a new benchmarking scheme aimed at improving the energy performance of buildings in-use. SJM2 will serve as a prime example to help spur continual improvement and accountability within the sector, surely paving the way for existing buildings to follow suit.
Additionally, the SJM2 team is taking a thorough approach to the materials used to develop the building to reduce carbon emissions across its supply chain. In 2018, the project colleagues were part of Oxford’s global working group to develop a Restricted Materials List that posed a risk to human health. Following a lifecycle assessment of materials to be used on the project, the team have sought to do one better and will adopt a matrix detailing a list of minimum requirements considering four areas – responsibly sourced, healthy and safe, low impact and resource efficient materials. Categorizing in such a manner will help the team choose alternative materials that could result in a potential 5-10% reduction in embodied CO2e emissions.
SJM2’s integrated approach sets the bar high for development projects within our portfolio and across the industry.
A Dry Take on Organics
In 2019, the team at Chateau Lake Louise set out to find a viable recycling solution for the hotel’s organic waste. The hotel resides deep within Banff National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and while this represents much of the appeal, it also limits its resources and accessibility.
After much research, the team decided to install an on-site organic waste dehydrator which turns leftover food into biomass. This biomass is then used to fuel a set of boilers in the city of Calgary. The hotel’s dehydrator processes 1 tonne of dehydrated organic waste per day, which generates ~165 kWh of energy/day. That’s equivalent to removing 2,000 garbage bags from the landfill in one year.
The dehydrator not only converts the organic waste into a viable energy source, it also reduces the weight of the waste by 5 times, resulting in reduced storage and hauling costs.
With such success, the team is looking to invest in two more dehydrators to service all their organic waste generated and increase their waste diversion from landfill. Furthermore, the team is looking into the opportunity to use the biomass directly on-site, which would close the recycling and reuse loop and off-set their carbon emissions by over 300 tonnes of CO2e a year.
Offsetting Costs with Paper Waste
Hauling and storing waste and recycling can be expensive, especially when there is a lot of waste that doesn’t weigh very much. Here’s where baling, the idea of compressing and bundling, comes in to help make for more efficient storage and hauling of waste.
The property team at Centennial Place, an office complex located in Calgary, Canada, along with their waste management partners, are using bales to store their paper and cardboard recycling. By baling and storing this type of recycling, the team can significantly reduce their recycling costs.
The team can bale one MT of paper products in one week. The team decided to purchase five vertical balers, which have the capacity to collect 5 MT of paper waste. This allows for a 2-year payback – the team stores the paper and then sells it back to their waste management partner, ultimately offsetting their future pick-up and hauling costs.
The work involved to capture these savings was minimal – measuring the amount of space they had for the bales, some electrical work and a power jack purchase to help move the bales around.
A ‘solid’ investment with long term benefits.