Circular Interior Design: Sustainable Restaurant Object Space Place — Biofilico Wellness Interiors

Sustainable restaurant design with David Chenery

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circular economy

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restorative restaurants

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Sustainable restaurant design with David Chenery 〰️ circular economy 〰️ restorative restaurants 〰️

Welcome to episode 55 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality.

I’m your host, Matt Morley, founder of Biofilico healthy buildings, and in this episode I’m in the UK talking to David Chenery of Object Space Place, a sustainable interiors company specialising in hospitality environments. The construction industry plays a crucial role in implementing circular design principles to minimize waste and improve sustainability.

Our conversation covers the Restorative Design Framework that David has developed with his business partner over the past five years, the role of circular economy principles in restaurant design, designing out waste and lowering embodied carbon while still delivering memorable customer experiences, as well as the pros and cons of sustainability assessments for restaurant spaces.

David is an interior architect by trade, a considered thinker and someone with a rapidly growing client list that may suggest an inflection point in the UK restaurant industry’s relationship with sustainability.

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Matt Morley

David, welcome to the show. It could be really useful for anyone considering a similar shift in their own career to understand how you integrated sustainability into your restaurant interior design work? What was that process of going from being ‘just’ an interior architect / designer into someone with a real focus on sustainable restaurant interiors?

A transition to sustainable restaurant interior design

David Chenery

It’s certainly not that there was one particular lightbulb moment, it definitely was more of a gradual process, slowly feeling more and more uneasy and more and more uncertain. We’ve been going for 11 years now and we started out designing a lot of hospitality.

Then over the years, even though we always tried to do things with integrity, we cared how we treated people we were working with and about designing things with proper materials, avoiding materials on a red list and so on but we never really got to grips with what ‘good’ restaurant interior design would actually look like. This gradual process involved adopting a circular approach to emphasize flexibility, sustainability, and efficiency.

We started working with the Sustainable Restaurant Association about five or six years ago, and we just really started interrogating those questions and started thinking, What does a good restaurant mean?

what is restorative restaurant design?

Andrew Stephen, the CEO of the SRA at the time, threw out a question to us - he’d always wondered what a restorative restaurant would look like, how would that actually be designed? And whilst he gave it to us as a throwaway question, for us, it really stuck, to the point whereby we developed a whole design framework, what we called “the restorative design framework” around trying to solve that. The concept of a circular building, like The Circular Building by Arup in London, influenced our thinking on sustainable construction practices and the ease of disassembly for recycling and reuse.

In the first instance, we boiled it down really simple - to design places that give more than they take. So I guess the point to emphasize there is that we were overwhelmed by the complexity and not sure what this sustainability thing was, and is a SKA rating enough? Is BREEAM enough?

Matt Morley

The idea of almost being overwhelmed with the whole theme of sustainability, and perhaps not quite knowing where to start is something I hear from clients as well, they’re sort of looking for guidance. And by the time someone picks up the phone, I sense something has nudged them in that direction. And it might not be the core tenet of their brand, But there’s enough out there, enough prompts to make them think about how they can integrate sustainability into whatever they’re doing, for example, a boutique hotel group. What about in your sector of restaurant design, would you say the same as true there? Or are there more restaurants that have sustainability at their heart of their proposition?

a shift to sustainability in the UK restaurant sector

David Chenery

Well, I mean, it's one of the reasons we now call ourselves sustainable hospitality designers to begin with, we kind of shied away from that a little bit. Because if you stick your hand up and say you are sustainable, then you know, you're putting yourself in the firing line. And ultimately, you know, once you dig into it, and start pulling all those threads around sustainability, you realize that if you do anything in this country, the UK, you immediately have a carbon footprint, six to 10 times higher than anywhere else in the world.

So can you ever say what you're doing is sustainable. But we realized that to begin with, we had to educate our clients and bring sustainability into our projects. But the commercial reality is that building stuff is hard at the best of times. And unless someone comes to you with that sustainability agenda, it is very often going to get kicked to the side as you go along.

So we had to sort of stick our hands up and say we are focused on sustainable hospitality design, which therefore means we now attract the people that want to pursue that agenda. So I guess it's hard because we have pushed ourselves to live in this bubble. But I definitely think there's been a huge shift in understanding and even more so in in the last year or so.

We're now being approached by restaurant groups who don't make big claims around sustainability. But they might have, you know, 5 to 10 restaurants already and they're aware of as they continue to grow they want to do that in a way that is going to minimize their environmental impact. And they don't quite know how, like you suggest, but they're trying to find some people to help make it happen.

Matt Morley

So I see similarities there between, say, the office sector and hotels, where it's about a soft sustainability, so it's not absolutely defining them, like, say, a hard sustainability brand that's completely committed to the cause. And yet, they know that they need to make baby steps in that direction. But then that raises the question of, where does it start and end if it is a sustainable design that you're creating for a restaurant?

And clearly there are these rating systems, whether it's BREEAM for a new build, or SKA that you mentioned in the past around your interiors on the restaurant work. Did you initially rely on those certification systems more and step away from them over time?

sustainable restaurant design certifications

David Chenery

I think what we’ve realized when we created our own design framework, so that the assessment systems are rigorous, independent, and they make a lot of sense. And we had to learn to work in BREEAM, how to work in the SKA system, definitely.

It’s only through doing that, that you might start to see some of the the flaws, or some of the shortcuts or the kind of bureaucracy associated with them. If you have a one-off independent restaurant somewhere in the country, that won’t have a huge budget for such assessments so they’re just going to run it all directly themselves.

That’s a very different approach than trying to do something for someone like a Wagamama who’s got hundreds of outlets around around the country and has processes in teams and all this stuff.

So our framework acknowledges that. And we really will tailor it to the client we’re working with. Ultimately, we want it to be as sustainable as possible. But we know that different clients will come with a different level of ambition. So we might work with a chef like Chantelle Nicholson for Apricity, where she wanted to push as hard as she could, you know, we were really trialing the circular economy ideas in terms of the materials, we were measuring the embodied carbon to get that as low as we could, the landlord Grosvenor, were really behind us pushing that as hard as they could. Reducing construction waste by incorporating circular design principles and a lifecycle approach is crucial in this context.

So there was a lot of energy in that same direction whereas we might work with Gail’s bakeries, you know, who are beautiful, and they care about sustainability. And they care about the social side and the environmental. And they’re also doing about 30 sites a year. So there is a commercial reality to the speed and the cost of doing those.

So we are working as hard as we can within that commercial framework to make the best decisions. And that’s to be honest, what we quite enjoy is that we are constantly being challenged not to just live in an ideal dream world. But actually some of it is very, very ambitious and we can set a new benchmark in sustainability and sometimes it’s more about raising the bar slightly.

measuring sustainability in restaurant interior design

So I think assessments are really interesting when it comes to the measurement, this is really what we’re talking about the measurement of sustainability. I think there’s some interesting nuances to dive into there. The first one we’ve realized is that quantitative measurement, the idea of numbers almost always comes down to carbon, because that’s the thing we can reduce down to a number, the bigger the scale of the organization we’re dealing with, the more you need numbers, because it’s just really hard for everyone to grasp the qualitative, multifaceted layer of sustainability without numbers. So it’s, it’s not really a good enough representation.

Optimizing production processes for energy efficiency and waste reduction is crucial in the circular economy model, which seeks to create sustainable practices that allow for resource reuse and minimize environmental impact.

But carbon is really, really useful as a tool. You know, I always say that carbon is to sustainability, what calories are to a healthy diet, you know, I could eat 1000 calories a day, and I would lose weight. But if it was all chocolate, and I did no exercise, that is not a healthy diet. In the same way, carbon is an oversimplification of all the other stuff around you know, VOCs Indoor Air Quality and the social side of things which we can go into as well.

But if the planet managed to get down to dealing with that carbon, we’d be in a lot better place. So I do think that that’s thing with the conservative side. And then the other is you’ve mentioned with the assessment systems A good thing about those are that they are more qualitative They have much more, you know, many more features within facets within them that measure things like the air quality or looking at glare or their staff wellbeing, all these sorts of things. So that’s the way we sort of broke those two things down, when it comes to measurement, I think it’s kind of worth understanding the differences of those.

Matt Morley

And then to some point in that process, you felt comfortable enough to set your own working model of how you go about integrating these various themes and topics into something that you put your name to.

developing principles and a process for designing sustainable restaurant interiors

David Chenery

Absolutely. What we realized was, firstly, when we started looking at the assessment systems at the beginning, we think, how do we make this a sustainable design? What does that even mean? If we get SKA gold or BREEAM Excellent? And then coming across the circular economy and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation website in particular. That’s why I can’t get happy with this idea is because it’s still within the scope of one project. And we need to understand the ripple effects and the circular flows of everything else, and how stuff goes together.

So our framework then becomes about that, because we see that as a bigger understanding of the material construction design ecosystem. Using sustainable materials to adhere to circular design principles is crucial in this context. So I think that’s just a more intelligent place to start as well for us because it then leads us to ask a lot of different questions. And what we start to look at a design approach that is slightly different, based on a set of principles.

the problem with sustainability assessment systems

The danger of an assessment system is you end up with this huge checklist and a really complex spreadsheets. And you know, you’ve got to get however many points out of however many other points, and then you start getting tactical about what decisions you’re making, right? Because you got to get to the certain levels. And if we just get a couple more, we can get up to silver, and it becomes a different weird game, that clearly is better than doing nothing. But it’s not engaging with the core idea.

You know, and I think for us, we wanted to step outside of that and think, Well, if we really want to make a difference here, how are we going to do it. And the other realization is that it’s all very good saying, let’s get the lowest embodied carbon we can. But if you sit down with a blank piece of paper and try and work out let’s just design something low carbon it’s almost impossible, you can’t design to that it’s meaningless.

So we need a design strategy. The unsustainable extraction and consumption of raw materials contribute to environmental degradation and resource scarcity. And that’s why circular economy is so good for us. We’ve managed to prove that if we design out waste and pollution, if we design to keep materials in use for as long as possible, if we get reclaimed chairs and tables, if we sand the existing floorboards, if we expose the walls, if we use the right type of paint, if we cut the staircase up and make it into a wall cladding, that guess what we managed to reduce the embodied carbon of that of typical fit out by 45%, just by doing that for a high end restaurant in central London.

So that connection for us was kind of a key moment of saying, well, we can design this way we have this strategy of designing out waste, of thinking about principles. But the point in developing the framework was, it gives us a way of working. And I think without that, that’s where so many designers feel a bit lost, because we don’t know how to interrogate those decisions and ask enough questions.

If someone can give you an EPD, that says, this has three kilograms of CO2, and another one says this one’s got four. If that’s all you know, then you’re just going to pick the three, even if it comes with all kinds of other compromises on the sustainability, or huge water usage, or all kinds of all kinds of stuff. So that’s why we had to develop a framework and we certainly don’t have all the answers, I wouldn’t sit here and say, we have it all down. The point of having the framework and the point of us applying that to these projects is that we are learning every day.

consultants for a sustainable restaurant interior project

Matt Morley

Maybe that opens discussion then around how far your role goes in terms of the design of the space? Typically when I’m looking at say an entire healthy building project, whether it’s new build construction or refurbishment, I’m often on a call as one of 10+ different consultants from a QS, to MEP, to project management, lifts and so on… but with a restaurant are you operating effectively as a One Stop solution or are there others that you might bring into the mix with you?

David Chenery

Again, it’s a question of scale - a one off independent restaurant with a focused brief, lean budget, then yes we might do most of that sustainability work.

If we didn’t have a sustainability consultant, we often with a social enterprise called Bio Regional who can do assessments for carbon, SKA or bespoke metrics that we’re developing around the circular economy.

And then on the MEP side, we are definitely not MEP consultants. So particularly operational carbon, that energy efficiency piece, we would look to partner with someone like MESH (net zero carbon building performance) then a landlord or or contractor may have their own people they will bring along, but on smaller projects, what we’ll find is you will tend to have specific conversations with, say, the HVAC contractor, or the plumber, or the electrician, to see what we can do with them to get things better. And if it goes slightly a notch above that, then we will have an MEP consultant, similar to ourselves, who will give input on that. The significant climate impact associated with the production of office furniture and the potential reduction in emissions through circular economy practices like refurbishment and repair should also be considered.

But that does really depend on the scale of a project and your average high street restaurant of 3000 square foot is probably unlikely to have that person. So you know, that’s probably where we develop our knowledge, particularly often they’re contractors or installers within the industry, that can have a similar mindset to us.

If I go into my garden here, and I pick a pear off the tree, I don’t need a carbon lifecycle assessment or a sustainability consultant to tell me that that’s a good choice. You know, there are some straightforward, common sense principles that we can apply.

The Pareto principle applies suggests 80% of the impact will come from 20% of the decision. So you know, if we’re looking at the water systems, we know even just from looking at the SKA systems that if they are the same 5-7 things you do in terms of water management, such as low flow taps, and WCs, leak detection systems, you do those right and you’ll get most of the impact anyway.

Circular design principles and end-of-life in a sustainable restaurant

Matt Morley

In the past I’ve studied green and health building certifications from LEED, to WELL, FITWEL, and so on following the checklist. And then at some point, you just start, you just start freestyling without needing to hold on to the sides of pool, let’s put it that way. Then you start to combine elements or leave certain bits out, knowing that you’re getting 20% of the value.

So what about end-of-life phase with your restaurant designs? How do your clients manage that?

David Chenery

Well, I guess since we’ve been focused on doing this, fortunately, nothing we’ve designed has had to be taken apart. So you have to say that that’s theoretical in a way and it’s just a really important acknowledgement as a designer that most restaurant fit outs will last about five years whether it’s because the concept has failed or they want to make changes or simply update the look and feel of the space. Even the average building gets fitted out 20 to 30 times in its lifetime.

So, yeah, we haven’t had to be challenged on that yet. But we are aware when we’re designing, you know, whether it’s a counter going in or material finishes on the floor? How is this going to come out again? Can we use particular materials that are in as useful a format as possible? Can we avoid cutting tiles?

Last week, I was looking into an issue for Gail’s, the difference between a timber floor and a tiled floor. Now at end of life, those both become quite difficult. You know, we spent two hours talking to a tile manufacturer about how realistic is it actually that we’re going to get these tiles up, and then once that tile adhesive goes down, are those coming up in pieces, or are they going to be able to be reused? Again, if you can get them up whole, they’re still going to have all the adhesive on the back. And it’s going to be such a labor intensive process to take that off, it’s probably unrealistic to use that for anything other than aggregate, which isn’t really good enough.

We need to as an industry find a better solution for that timber again. Likewise, if we’re looking at a herringbone floor, now that can stay in longer, you can re-sand that, you can refinish it, you can re-stain it, it’s going to have a lower carbon footprint, if you take the carbon sequestration into account and having carbon negative score effectively. But again, you’re not because that has to be glued down in a commercial setting, you have to glue that timber down no matter what you do, because it’s going to move over time. So therefore, you’re not going to be able to take that floor up, even if that’s in 30 years time, for example, without and be able to reuse those elements quite easily. So some of those questions I don’t have the answer to at all.

In many cases, if you do something of quality, you’re maximizing the chance it can stay in there for a long time. But yeah, it’s it is a challenge, I really do think it is, you know, we need to understand how materials come apart. Again, we need to design for disassembly, so that elements can be taken apart using mechanical fixings wherever we can, rather than glue - that is a general principle. But you know, in, in commercial or hygienic environments, like restaurants where we’re talking about cleaning down every day that that can be quite difficult as we come up against standard best practices. Additionally, it's crucial to regenerate natural systems while addressing the tension between resource extraction and environmental protection.

Matt Morley

I think that sort of transparency and honesty is, is really the only position any of us in this game can take because you know, we’re all always learning, but simply doing the best we possibly can at any given time. Right? And as long as it’s a sort of circular but forward motion, we’re heading in the right direction.

restaurant design trends and sustainability

What about restaurant design in general, when you look at what’s happening in the industry, particularly in London, but around the UK, Are you broadly optimistic of where it’s going?

David Chenery

I try and kind of cultivate quite a stoic mindset but we will do everything we can to make it better. I think that depends on which side of the bed I’ve got up in the morning. I think I’m nervous how everyone has rebounded straight back into growth mode After COVID. I think people are just trying to build things. And I don’t know if we’ve necessarily learned the lessons we could have done. But I’m happy that initiatives like Net Zero Now and the Zero Carbon Forum are getting more traction. I’m happy that, you know, the SRA is, is getting good traction with its members.

Right now, I honestly believe it’s probably like a five year problem. And I don’t think you can be running your business, for the benefit of your stakeholders and shareholders. with them front of mind, if you’re not tackling this issue of sustainability, because you’re just not building a resilient business,

So if you don’t dial back in and actually look at your business model and look at your supply chain, and look at how you run your buildings and your energy usage and all of that stuff, you’re just going to have a tougher and tougher time in the years to come. I don’t believe The whole industry has got that and agrees with that. I think there are a number of people who still want to think it’s business as usual but maybe a little bit more green. - we need to move faster than that! By incorporating circular design principles, the restaurant industry can promote a more sustainable future, significantly reducing environmental impact and fostering a healthier planet and society.

David Chenery's current sustainable restaurant interior design projects

Matt Morley

What have you got going on at the moment? What do you have in your pipeline?

David Chenery

We’re certainly fully booked until September at the moment, which is great. I mean, there’s Gail’s - a great client for us. And we’re doing a number of new sites for them - we just opened one in Epping recently. These projects aim to be resource efficient by minimizing environmental impact and maximizing the longevity and adaptability of materials. There’s actually a hair salon project we’re working on as well.

We’ve been approached by some other people like L’Oreal to help them apply our framework to a hair salon. So there’s a flagship I’m working on with them at the moment, which I’m not actually allowed to talk about But that will be quite high profile in central London. And then alongside that, we’ve got some some independent restaurants, we’ve got a six tenant food hall we’re working on.

But also we’re doing a number of more consultancy pieces now, as you can probably imagine. So some of the larger groups, were talking to them about how we can bring these principles and this framework to their sites, whether we end up designing them ourselves or not. So that’s quite an interesting conversation, how we can educate internal property teams on carbon literacy or this disjunction between net zero targets and daily operations.

Matt Morley

Very good. Well, it sounds really positive. So people are looking to follow along or see your news and updates. What’s your chosen format?

David Chenery

Yeah, LinkedIn is definitely best. That’s definitely the place to find me.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidchenery-sustainablehospitalitydesign/

What is Circular Design?

Definition and Importance of Circular Design

Principles of Circular Design

Benefits of Circular Design in Interior Design

Applying Circular Design Principles

Flexible Spaces for Adaptability and Reuse

Embodied Carbon in sustainable Real Estate ESG

What is Embodied Carbon in Sustainable Real Estate Developments?

In the context of sustainable buildings and interiors, embodied carbon is essentially a question of materials.

Unlike ‘operational carbon’ or indeed ‘building energy efficiency’, embodied carbon accounts for the cumulative impact of building materials from extraction all the way through to construction; including transportation, manufacturing, and installation. 

The embodied carbon of a given material is therefore the amount of carbon emissions involved in first producing it and ultimately deploying it in a construction project.

Embodied carbon impacts from building and infrastructure projects have been estimated to account for 23% of global carbon emissions (McConnell, Mithun). 

In general terms, we can say that operational energy use has improved considerably as a result of sustainable green building principles, yet embodied carbon has lagged behind, remaining relatively constant over time despite the efforts of real estate sustainability consultants! 

Due to the negative impacts of embodied carbon, and its inherent relationship with sustainable material procurement policies, it is an area of particular interest for sustainable building and interior consultants, such as ourselves.

How to reduce embodied carbon in sustainable real estate development?

The bulk of the opportunities come in the early phases (pre-design and design) of a real estate development project as a small number of construction material choices will carry massive weight in the final embodied carbon status of the building. 

For this reason, project teams need to align behind sustainability objectives early on if they want to avoid playing catch-up.

Taking a step back further, developing a Sustainability Plan with objectives and priorities as early as possible, even doing so in broad principles for the development company as a whole in order to have an initial blueprint to apply as each new development deals comes online.

How to determine embodied carbon in building materials?

Completing Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) is the main strategy to determine embodied carbon for materials or projects. Embodied carbon can be reduced by limiting material use, choosing low-carbon solutions, decreasing transportation related emissions, and reusing and recycling materials whenever possible.

Reduce Material Use in Sustainable Real Estate Development

An important strategy to reduce a real estate development project’s embodied carbon is to optimize and reduce overall material use. Sounds simple, perhaps deceptively so.

One major way to do this is to identify opportunities to use or repurpose existing buildings rather than demolishing or developing Greenfield sites. 

Real estate projects designed with adaptive reuse in mind effectively plan ahead for this eventuality, baking in flexibility for future owners or developers to facilitate the process of repurposing old buildings or structures. 

Demolition and construction is by comparison extremely carbon intensive, as it requires both material disposal and the extraction of new resources.

In addition, looking for efficiencies in the volume of certain structural materials used in a redevelopment or construction project will also diminish embodied carbon. 

For example, research has shown that on average, the quantity of structural steel used in buildings can be up to two times the necessary amount from an engineering perspective, greatly increasing embodied carbon (Isaac). 

Ensuring that material use is optimized and using stronger, more efficient materials will mean less volume overall.

In addition, the use of more efficient building strategies such as modular construction reduces waste and increases the sustainability of the project. 

Other sustainable design decisions such as reducing the need for / specification of finish materials in favor of simply leaving certain elements of the building structure exposed also decreases overall material use, lowering a project’s embodied carbon and helping it achieve its sustainability objectives whilst also adding an appealing aesthetic dimension. 

Summary - Material Optimization and Reduction Strategies

• Use and repurpose existing buildings

• Optimize structural framing by volume and materiality

• Reduce material volume through efficient design choices

• Implement modular construction methodologies

Using Low-Carbon Materials in Sustainable Real Estate Development

In any sustainable development project, it is likely that there will need to be some integration of new materials. Materials should therefore be selected based on the lowest feasible embodied carbon impact, commonly determined through the completion of LCAs. 

LCAs consider the amount of carbon (and often other emissions) required to take a material through its entire lifecycle—from extraction all the way through to disposal. These analyses are invaluable to compare a project’s material options and the associated embodied carbon. 

Whenever possible, select sustainable materials that have been manufactured using comparatively less energy or using renewable energy. Options with high recycled content, those that are bio-based and rapidly renewable will also help achieve sustainability targets, especially if they can also be reused at their end of life (McConnell, Greenbuild). 

Healthy building materials such as cross-laminated timber (CLT), bamboo, cork, hemp, straw, sheep wool, and even mycelium are bio-based, carbon-sequestering options that can greatly reduce a project’s embodied carbon as part of a real estate sustainability strategy for example (“Whole Building”).

In addition, when choosing materials, it is important to consider their durability, specifically when calculated alongside local climate and weather patterns. It is essential to understand how different materials react to heat or moisture, for example, to make smart choices that will stand the test of time and not need replacing within a few years. 

The more durable the material in the specific climatic conditions of the project location the less materials will be needed in future for upkeep and replacement, therefore reducing the risk of provoking additional resource extraction later on (“Whole Building”).

Sustainable interiors and embodied carbon

Most embodied carbon reduction efforts have been focused on significant structural elements such as concrete or steel, which require energy intensive processes and are often used in large quantities. 

However, as substitutes such as CLT become more accessible, consideration for the embodied carbon of a sustainable interior also becomes more relevant. 

Common interior finish materials such as acoustic ceilings, gypsum wall boards, and nylon carpeting can have a considerable impact on a project’s embodied carbon if not assessed from a sustainability perspective as early on as possible in order to account for any budgetary adjustments they might require (McConnell, Mithun). 

Summary: Low-carbon sustainable building and interiors material strategies

• Reduce fossil fuel energy required for extraction and manufacturing

• Choose those that contain high recycled content

• Bio-based and carbon sequestering resources

• Prioritize rapidly renewable materials

• Consider climate-specific durability of materials

Reducing Transportation Emissions in Sustainable Buildings and Interiors

When considering a material’s embodied carbon and its life cycle, transportation emissions can also have a considerable impact meaning we need to look into material supply chains, aim to source locally or regionally, carefully plan construction material deliveries to limit wastage, and choose low-emission transport options whenever possible. 

Local sustainable materials 

Select materials that are produced from a low carbon system, both through their manufacturing and transportation. The use of local, sustainable materials will greatly reduce transportation distances and emissions, so it is important to understand what is available within an acceptable radius of your project (“Whole Building”).

Sustainable Transportation of materials

In addition, by reducing the number of site deliveries through close coordination of  manufacturing and construction timelines we avoid the delivery of materials at inefficient times that in turn can cause damage and unnecessary waste. 

Efficient alignment of transportation with project timelines in this way is an essential step to reduce the embodied carbon of a building project (Best Practice).

Finally, whenever possible choose transport options that create the lowest carbon emissions, such as train or barge, when available (“Whole Building”).

Low-Carbon Sustainable Building Transportation Strategies

• Choose materials with a low-carbon supply chain

• Source locally

• Coordinate transport with project timelines

• Utilize low-carbon transportation options

Reuse & Recycle Materials

The implementation of salvaged, reused, and recycled materials greatly reduces embodied carbon as it eliminates the need to extract and manufacture new resources. Salvaged materials only involve emissions related to transportation and refabrication, greatly cutting a sustainable building’s overall embodied carbon (“Salvaged Materials”). 

Hand-in-hand with the use of salvaged materials comes deconstruction, the process of carefully disassembling a building to save its materials rather than the more common demolition strategy. Examples of easily salvageable materials include brick and wood, as well as steel and precast concrete (“Salvaged Materials”).

If materials cannot be salvaged, choose options that contain high recycled content. Paper, plastic, and glass products are increasingly common in building materials and provide greener options for projects aiming to lower their embodied carbon. 

Sustainable Building Material Reuse Strategies

• Salvage materials from previous builds

• Implement deconstruction

• Utilize materials with high recycled content

Helpful Embodied Carbon Tools 

With all of these strategies, it is imperative to first set project carbon goals. As with all sustainable building projects, the use of benchmarking is essential to determine what has been done before and what is plausible for any given project. Within each development, stakeholders involved in the design and construction process will benefit of how their role can positive (or negatively) impact the embodied carbon of the project (“Whole Building”). 

Early on in the design process, various tools can be used by team members to determine the potential carbon outputs. For example, the programs Revit and Tally can work together to store information about material quantities and qualities to pre-form LCAs and determine the carbon impacts of building materials. Tally currently contains more structural, heavy material data but is moving towards containing more interior material information such as for furniture and casework. 

When considering which materials to utilize, look for those with Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) - effectively a way of communicating information on a material’s environmental impact. This information can be found online in places such as the EPD library. In addition, the Carbon Smart Materials Palette provides information on high and low impact materials over their life cycles. 

Finally, there are several free carbon calculators that can be used to compare material options. EC3 is one of the most common in the industry, allowing users to compare construction materials and review material EPDs.

Pathfinder meanwhile is a carbon calculator that focuses more on landscaping elements, even including estimates for natural features such as trees and greenery.  

How to Reach Embodied Carbon Goals for a sustainable building

• Set embodied carbon goals early on in the design timeline

• Ensure collaboration across project team, aligned behind sustainable building interior strategies

• Incorporate design and LCA tools (Revit and Tally) to track data on embodied carbon in materials

• Use online resources or consultants to identify low-carbon material solutions

• Use online carbon calculators for complete transparency

Sources

“ Best Practice Guide to Improving Waste Management on Construction Sites.” Resource Efficient Scotland, Scotland. 

Isaac, Philip, and Jonny Hawkshaw. Elsevier, 2020, Scaling Low-Carbon Construction Materials, thestructuralengineer.org. Accessed 5 May 2022. 

McConnell, Claire, et al. “A Year of Embodied Carbon.” Mithun, 5 Nov. 2021, https://mithun.com/2021/11/05/a-year-of-embodied-carbon/  

McConnell, Claire. “Greenbuild.” Greenbuild, Greenbuild International Conference & Expo, 22 Sept. 2021, https://informaconnect.com/greenbuild/agenda-2021/ Accessed 5 May 2022. 

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