Construction and the Environment - How can you help?
One of my favorite hobbies is reading, at the moment my book of choice is David Attenborough’s; A Life on Our Planet, and it really got me thinking about the impact we all have on our environment and how we can try and work towards a more sustainable world. BQI specialize in insurance for the construction industry, and I thought I would do a bit of research on what can be done by this sector to help our planet.
The current Situation
- Roughly 40% of global man-made carbon emissions are derived from the construction and operation of buildings
- Around 30% of the above relates to operation – the bulk of construction carbon emissions is generated from the initial construction
- Construction produces the largest waste stream by tonnage
What can the construction industry do to help?
According to James Low, Operations Director for Sustainability there are several ways the construction industry can help reduce carbon emissions and drive our planet towards a more feasible green outcome. Effectively we can take steps now to save our planet:-
1. Switch energy resources from the use of heavy carbon heavy emitting such as gas and diesel to renewable electricity. Businesses can also switch to LED lighting and other lower energy technologies which produce less waste
2. Reducing the consumption of water will massively effect carbon emissions as water use can produce up to 5% of carbon emissions per building. Installing water meters or reduced flush toilets and sensor-controlled taps can help reduce the amount of water used and potentially wasted
3. We recycle so readily and easily in our homes every day, and this is something we should and could incorporate within the construction industry as well. Any waste produced by any workplace that isn’t separated and recycled correctly will inevitably end up at a landfill site. We can ensure that there are facilities on site to enable we can separate waste and recycle where we can
4. We also need to reduce the amount of single use plastic that is used, and this is so easily done with simple changes such as using reusable mugs and water bottles
5. Refrigeration is a huge source of greenhouse gases particularly Hydrofluorocarbons which are more potent than carbon dioxide and contribute even more to global warming. We need to continue to handle and dispose of them with care, we need to ensure all refrigeration systems are well maintained and serviced, all leakages reported and dealt with immediately and logged. We can even go as far as to switch to refrigerants that are less damaging to our environment.
The long and short of it is we are living beyond the means of our plant and at some point this is going to have even more disastrous effects than we are already noticing across the world. If we ALL do our part and make those little changes, with the help of governments across the nations we can make our planet healthy again.