We caught up with two of the projects who have so far benefited from WAG’s footprint scheme to discover how they have put the grant to use in order to reduce their impact on the planet and promote sustainability.
First is Ben Gregory from Cymdeithas Tai Eryri who said:
“Cymdeithas Tai Eryri has been working with Best Foot Forward since the spring of this year, to measure the carbon and ecological footprint of the housing association. The draft report is now completed, and the results will be disseminated to the sector, in partnership with Community Housing Cymru.
The process of measuring the ‘internal’ or ‘office’ footprint was straightforward, based on an analysis of work orders and bills. Calculating the footprint for maintenance and building work was also simple. The last part of the footprint, associated with energy use of our tenants in the housing stock, took more time, and is more of an approximation. This is due to the time needed to interview a sample of tenants, and the lack of records for tenants’ utility bills.
The biggest revelation is that the carbon impact of our housing stock is 27 times that of the office, whilst the ecological footprint is 12 times higher. Within the office footprint (i.e. which CTE can directly control), travelling and commuting account for over half the carbon footprint, but waste accounts for over half the ecological footprint. The recommendations point to ways which Cymdeithas Tai Eryri can reduce its footprint. It also poses the challenge of how housing associations can work with tenants to ensure they reduce their energy use and cut their ecological footprint as well.”
Secondly we caught up with Peter Draper of Rounded Development Enterprise who said:
“Rounded Developments Enterprises (RDE) had the idea some months ago that in order to make informed choices in sustainable construction easier for the industry it needed better quality and more accessible information on building products. At present the only way to get the information that you need is to dig through mounds of data sheets and try and find people who have used the emerging products to see where any fitting/use issues might be. This amount of work, of course, stifles the uptake, so the mainstream industry tends to use what it has always used.
The new Construction Product Database aims to tackle this by effectively taking information out of data sheets and putting into a searchable on-line database. This means that people can search through product data using the criteria of their choosing. This might initially be for purely performance data, but the search and reporting mechanisms will have Ecological Footprint based information embedded within in. So all products will have items like: waste potential, recycled content, embodied energy, location of manufacture, longevity, training information and case studies included. This means that if a search needs to be refined then these issues can be used to choose more sustainable products.
The database is being compiled by RDE in partnership with the Housing Association Consortia in Wales. The database itself will be housed on the Sustainable Building Portal that is presently being upgraded by Cardiff University (School of Engineering), so it has the potential to be a major influence on the construction industry. Additional funds are being sought to enlarge the project, as it has turned out to be a real monster! RDE want to have the initial pilot study finished by the end of 2010 so that it can be tested by the industry before going out on a much larger and commercial scale in 2011.
Thanks to the Ecological Footprint Fund from WAG for seeing the potential in this project and giving us the means to get off of the ground.”