Four major global materials in the supply chain of construction firms have relatively low biodiversity impacts, though the built environment overall still rely on ecologically destructive processes, a UK industry-led members network said Thursday.
The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) rated the biodiversity impacts of iron ore, cement, timber, and aluminium as “low impact”, while particulates such as sand have a “very high impact”, it said on its new Embodied Ecological Impacts (EEI) Knowledge Hub.
However, overall the UK’s built environment is “deeply reliant on ecologically destructive and socially hazardous processes for many of its most common materials”, it concluded.
The group rated the impacts of each material on biodiversity, climate, freshwater, ocean, and land.
Impacts of materials on climate, land, and freshwater were often higher than on biodiversity, the network said. For example, iron ore has “very high” impacts on climate and freshwater, and “moderate” impacts on land.
The impact ratings accounted for extraction methods and the source of materials in a “high-level approximation”, UKGBC said, and the results were based on information from the US Geological Society, Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, Mineral Products Association, Office for National Statistics, and the British Geological Survey.
‘Embodied ecological impacts’ are effects on nature that occur as a result of extraction within the supply chain, offsite from construction.
PRINCIPLES LAUNCH
The construction industry must prioritise actions to drive down ecological impacts of supply chains using the network’s new set of six principles as a “priority”, UKGBC said.
A first action would be to prioritise best use of existing assets to eliminate the need for new construction materials.
The hub is the first resource from the UKGBC EEI task group, launched in March, which includes construction firm Berkeley Group, engineer Atkins, and real estate firm JLL, alongside investor and advisory firm Pollination.
“The hub is the first step in building greater awareness of EEI across industry,” UKGBC said in a press release. “The task group is working to develop and mainstream more effective tools for transforming how the built environment is designed, constructed, and used to halt and reverse nature’s global decline.”
“When we talk about nature in the built environment, the focus is normally at site level, but to truly address the global biodiversity crisis, we must take account of the supply chain of construction products,” said Samantha Deacon, principal of biodiversity and ecosystems at task group member Ramboll.
“Ramboll is keen to support the EEI resource to raise awareness of the ‘hidden cost’ to nature … and lead the industry towards regenerative design.”
The built environment needs to shift towards being “nature-positive and regenerative” with a “deeper understanding” of what these terms mean, UKGBC said.
The network currently understands ‘nature-positive’ as targeting net-positive impacts on nature by 2030, and full recovery by 2050, it said.
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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