New building guidance aims to help reduce waste

Multi-disciplinary consultancy Pick Everard has developed new guidance to help project teams identify opportunities to retain, reuse and specify materials more effectively.  

Its new Material Playbook sets out the actions project teams can take at each stage to reduce waste, lower embodied carbon and keep materials in use for longer – all with the goal of driving whole life value.

Tim Danson, director of sustainability and energy at Pick Everard, said: “One of the biggest challenges for sustainable material management is that historically, responsibility fell between different disciplines, teams and stages of a project.

“This playbook provides a practical, step-by-step framework to help designers, engineers and specifiers make better and more collaborative decisions, make those decisions earlier in the project lifecycle, and thereby afford the greatest opportunity to reduce a project’s environmental footprint.

“Too often, the default response is to specify new materials because that’s what we’ve always done.

“We want clients and project teams to deeply and robustly challenge that approach by first asking whether materials, technologies and other physical assets can be retained, reused or replaced with a lower-impact alternative that delivers the same performance.

“Sanitaryware, furniture, flooring, doors and glazing are examples that represent just the tip of the potential iceberg.”

To download the Material Playbook, click here.