Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle
For years, NABERS has been the guiding light for improving sustainability and efficiency of office buildings with its ratings system for Energy, Water, Waste, and Indoor Environment Quality. It works really well, is now being adopted in other countries, and gives CRE tenants another way to measure one building against another.
The topic of energy has consumed the airwaves for years and hence it has been easy for the CRE industry to follow suit by focusing almost entirely on NABERS energy ratings. But now that the shiny stars have been granted, what about the rest of the NABERS?
Our CREcycle focus is Waste and last week that led us to the Australasian Waste and Recycling Expo (AWRE). With countless exhibitors and all day seminars, the AWRE highlighted how difficult it is to tackle waste and recycling in the office sector.
Some of our major takeaways from the day were:
- How blinkered the CRE industry has been on energy
- There is a huge yet hardly visible effort going on to combat landfill diversion and encourage recycling
- It is challenging in so many ways – regulation, participation, success is hard
- The vast majority of applications are focused on the industrial sector where there is a greater propensity for waste collection and recycling in bulk
- What do we do with all of the finished (recycled) product?
- Things are progressing – it was the biggest day AWRE had ever had
It has given us even more food for thought and there is so much to unpack. But it has concreted in our own minds that focusing on waste & recycling is the right choice; one with more challenges but these challenges are motivation.
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