The 2021 UN climate change conference – COP26 – taking place in Glasgow is big news for obvious reasons.
The event has extra significance for the construction industry due to its focus on the built environment, making it a topic that we had to address in this month’s newsletter.
Focus on product data and product information
As part of our ongoing series looking at “What do you need to know about…?”, this month we’re looking at some of the terminology and initiatives surrounding product data and product information.
Much of the current focus is on building safety, but specifiers increasingly require reliable and accurate information about environmental performance in order to make responsible decisions that can contribute to tackling the impacts of climate change.
Read our new blog post on construction product data to find out how better conversations between specifiers and manufacturers can help both parties to achieve better and more sustainable buildings.
Design Resources
With so much talk about increasing renewable energy capacity and the role that hydrogen could play as part of the future energy mix, you’d be forgiven for sometimes thinking that there’s been a loss of mainstream focus on simply making buildings more efficient. And by ‘efficient’ we mean both energy efficient, and efficient in terms of resource use.
For the built environment to play its part in protecting people from the worst impacts of climate change, it’s absolutely essential that we achieve high quality buildings that deliver long-term performance – something that this article from ArchDaily summarises neatly.
A lot of businesses and organisations still talk about using offsetting to address some of their carbon emissions, but it remains a controversial topic. The potential lack of effectiveness of carbon offsetting has been thrown into sharp relief around the world, as forests that are part of offsetting programmes have caught fire as a result of the increased frequency of extreme weather and climate events.
That’s not to say that some carbon offsetting programmes can’t and don’t work. There needs to be more clarity about what programmes actually deliver, however – which is exactly what this integrity initiative aims to provide.
The pace of change in this area remains rapid, and as ever it will be interesting to see how the construction industry adapts its behaviour in response to wider societal change. Equally, the built environment has a significant role to play in demonstrating that net zero can be achieved while keeping the need for offsetting to a minimum.
Getting More From Polyfoam XPS
Polyfoam XPS offers extruded polystyrene insulation for use in ground floor and inverted roof applications, among others.
View our complete range of Floorboard and Roofboard products, as well as accessories such as Slimline Zero WFRL for inverted roofs.
Product literature, declarations of performance and BBA certificates are all available online, or you can contact us to discuss which XPS product is best suited to your project
What Caught Our Eye This Month ?
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