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Creating more roles for women in sustainable construction

Posted on December 5, 2022 by dishanth

Since being elected as the first female President of Morocco Green Building Council, Wiam Samir has played a vital role promoting sustainable construction
In 2017, a study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) claimed that under a quarter of women in the Middle East and North Africa are employed – one of the lowest rates in the world. At the same time, the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report stated that women in the Middle East and North Africa will not see equal political representation with men until the year 2116.

However, the green building movement shows a promising future for women in leadership. Out of the nine Green Building Councils in the MENA region, six are led by women, each of whom dedicate their lives to overcoming the negative impacts of climate change in the Middle East and North Africa.

Wiam Samir, the first female President of Morocco Green Building Council from 2018-2020, is one of the women demonstrating exceptional leadership in the sustainability movement. Now, Samir is a Sustainability Consultant and Projects Manager for ALTO EKO, an environmental services company that strives to improve the sanitary quality and living comfort of spaces in Morocco.

“It is a truly great feeling to be part of the movement leveraging and leading the green sphere. Being an advocate for a topic that matters on different scales, from civil society to governmental entities, helps us realise the importance of our cause and double our efforts to make change happen,” said Wiam.

An advocate for a green and sustainable environment built on collaboration

After acquiring a degree in Engineering and Management Sciences from the Al Akhawayn University, Samir went on to gain experience as an intern for multiple manufacturing, supply chain and infrastructural companies. From there, she sought to gain a more permanent role as an engineer and consultant in environment, energy, and sustainable construction.

Between 2016-2018, Samir worked as a QHSE and LEED certification manager for the Casablanca Finance City Tower project. Designed to minimise ecological impact, the tower set precedents in building performance, scale, and technology throughout the MENA region.

In 2018, while serving as the first female President of Morocco’s Green Building Council, Samir decided to reinforce her engineering and technical skills with a Masters in Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment from Cambridge University. Since then, she has continued to collaborate with other sustainability pioneers to transform the MENA region’s construction landscape.

Speaking about her role at the 5th Edition Real-Estate Development Summit in Morocco, 2019, Samir said: “The targets of the project are to increase awareness and education, to achieve alignment between approach and certification schemes, and also to target the global market by showing examples of leadership. All of this started at COP21 for the Paris Agreement … the final objective is to limit global temperature rises below 1.5 degrees.”

A role model for female leaders pressing for progress around the world
Samir and other women leaders in the green building movement are not only addressing the issue of climate change; they’re also challenging gender inequality and fighting for equal opportunities in their countries.

Strict cultural rules in the MENA region mean that many women lack the same professional rights as men – including the freedom to pursue certain careers. Despite this, Samir’s dedication to collaboration and sustainable construction has given her a strong platform to demonstrate the important role women have to play in addressing environmental and social issues.

In 2022, Samir achieved WELL AP accreditation and received the community award from the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI). As Sustainability Consultant and Projects Manager for ALTO EKO, Samir continues to advocate for buildings, organisations and communities that support global health and promise a healthier future for all.

Source Sustainability

Five of the best sustainable holidays across Europe

Posted on August 22, 2022 by dishanth

Green Wellness Route, Slovenia

This summer the country’s tourist board launched a new Green Wellness cycling route. A looping cycle trail of nearly 200 miles linking natural spas, it starts in Ljubljana and heads north towards the Austrian border and then south-west towards Croatia, winding through mountains, plains and vineyards. There’s a castle on an island, a beer fountain and miles of wild flowers. The first leg ends in medieval Kamnik, a red-roofed town of castles and monasteries with a view of the mountains, Slovenia’s biggest arboretum (sporting 2m tulips in April) and the Terme Snovik spa in the forested Tuhinj valley.

Resorts along the route are all certified by Slovenia Green, which encourages recycling, renewable energy, arriving car-free, eco-friendly cleaning, locally grown food, natural building materials and so on. The spas offer pools fed by thermal springs, mineral waters to drink and wellness experiences involving salt, saunas, massage and barefoot paths.

Slovenia launched a Green Wellness cycling route this summer, including stretches along the River Savinja

Along the route cyclists can visit the world’s oldest noble vine at Maribor or sip a crystal glass of magnesium-rich water at Rogaška Slatina. Slovenia’s temperate Mediterranean climate means good cycling for most of the year, though April to October is recommended. The Wellness route has several companion trails, including a Green Gourmet cycling route or a three-day Pannonian route through the Pomurje region. The Gourmet trail starts with a train ride on the Bohinj railway under the Julian Alps. A free pass encourages public transport use in the area for those who want to linger.

Sustainable city break in Berlin, Germany

When luggage storage company Bounce recently surveyed sustainable hotels and transport, Berlin emerged as Europe’s most eco-friendly city. According to its analysis, 84% of tourists and residents get around on bike, foot or public transport. And Germany’s summer scheme, offering unlimited travel on local and regional trains for €9, has got even more people out of their cars.

An upcycled caravans in Neukölln’s Hüttenpalast. Photograph: Jan Brockhaus

From upcycled caravans to a hammock-strung hotel overlooking the zoo, Berlin is full of cool places to stay

Berlin joined the Global Sustainable Tourism Council in August 2021 and Visit Berlin lists eco hotels, restaurants and sights. They include places like SPRK Deli, which makes everything from surplus food. Klub Kitchen is popular with Mitte’s hipsters, serving up salady bowlfuls of sweet potato, ginger, pumpkin seeds, edamame and other tasty things. From upcycled east German caravans in a former vacuum cleaner factory in Neukölln’s Hüttenpalast to the hammock-strung 25 Hours Bikini hotel overlooking the zoo, the city is full of cool places to stay.

To explore Berlin’s wilder corners, buy an all-zone travelcard (€10 a day, including Potsdam with its parks and palaces). Buses 100 and 200 are good sightseeing routes, running from Alexanderplatz to Zoo through leafy Tiergarten. Head into the Grunewald on bus 218 to find Berlin’s best hike, the cliff-top Havelhöhenweg. Follow this six-mile waymarked walk past sandy beaches for wild swimming and leisurely woodland cafes.

YHA Festival of Walking

Those lonely months of strolls during the Covid lockdowns sparked a lot of interest in walking. The UK’s Youth Hostel Association hopes to tap into that with its new Festival of Walking. There will be group walks, routes to download, free tea or coffee for walkers, and 25% off at various youth hostels. There’s a guided Snowdon dark skies challenge – climbing up the mountain by torchlight and down as the sun rises for breakfast in the hostel. Lots of hostels, such as Eskdale in Cumbria and Blaxhall in Suffolk have been pioneering sustainable practices: energy-efficient lighting, solar hot water, and community recycling schemes.

The festival runs from 4 September to 20 October. “We want more walkers to discover our hostels and all they offer,” says YHA chief executive James Blake. “Whether it’s a bed for the night, a day visit for a cuppa, filling up a bottle at a refill station, using a drying room or just grabbing a loo break.”

A guided Snowdon dark skies challenge will feature in the festival

Individuals and groups can log their miles on the festival website to tramp round the world in 46 days. Blake points out that if 5,000 people walk five miles each, together they will have walked around the world. The YHA was set up in 1930 to help foster a “greater knowledge, love and care of the countryside – an aim that feels as fresh and necessary as it did 92 years ago.

Bird watching in Extremadura, Spain

Extremadura is one of Europe’s top birding destinations, with everything from bee-eaters to honey buzzards. The birds of prey are particularly dramatic, with 23 breeding species including 1,200 pairs of black vultures. More common cranes overwinter here than anywhere in Europe. Covering 16,000 square miles, Extremadura is bigger than the Netherlands, with a human population of just over a million and a huge range of habitats.

As most visiting birders get here independently, the Extremadura tourist board set up the world’s first bird tourism club, following the model of wine or whisky routes, to help travellers find information, guides and places to stay. Travel can actually help conserve biodiversity because the bird-watching cash provides a sound economic reason to preserve habitats.

More common cranes overwinter here than anywhere in Europe

A magnet for visiting birders since it opened in 2005, the Casa Rural El Recuerdo (three nights from €216 room-only) is a converted farmhouse with an organic olive grove and vegetable garden. The guesthouse generates half its energy from solar panels. Owners Claudia and Martin Kelsey encourage year-round wildlife trips for the large number of migrant birds, plus summer butterfly and dragonfly tours. As a local guide, Martin can take visitors to see species they want to find without having to drive too far, meaning less fuel and more time in the field.

Green Velo, Poland

With more than a thousand miles of linked cycle paths and quieter roads through wild natural landscapes, Poland’s longest fully-signed bicycle trail tours the country’s eastern areas. Five regions, with funding from the European Regional Development Fund, cooperated to create the epic Green Velo trail. Miles of cycle path have been designed to be low-maintenance with no impact on water supplies or vegetation; there are benches, refill points, bike racks and rubbish bins. Accommodation varies from campsites to castles.

The Green Velo trail passes through marshes near the Narew River

The trail meanders through 12 areas or “bike kingdoms”, such as the Świętokrzyski national park, with its huge forests and mountains. In another kingdom, the marshes around the Biebrza and Narew rivers are great for birdwatching and elk spotting, for cycling past gold marsh marigolds and purple Siberian iris. The waymarked Green Velo route circles the edge of protected valleys, with views across the spring-flowering marshes. There are bats, beavers and lots more wildlife along the Narew valley towards Łomża with its convent and cathedral.

Other attractions along the route include the mysterious Krzyżtopór castle near Ujazd, and the city of Kielce, with its palaces and galleries. The Green Velo loops through the centre of Kielce, passing the Kadzielnia Reserve in a limestone quarry; there are concerts here in a natural amphitheatre among fossil-filled rocks.

Source The Guardian

The key to eco architecture is green space and floods of sunlight

Posted on June 3, 2022June 3, 2022 by dishanth

Architects in Australia have built an ‘eco-house’ with estimated bills of just €300 a year. BENT Architecture specialises in sustainable buildings, embracing passive solar design techniques to minimise both energy bills and the environmental impact of the spaces.

The Olinda House is a bespoke eco-friendly design for the owners, in Victoria, Australia, who wanted a space which would sit harmoniously within the landscape and work with nature, rather than against it.

“Like all our projects, the Olinda House embraces the sun and uses passive solar design techniques to ensure the home is comfortable and efficient, year-round,” explains BENT Architecture director Paul Porjazoski.

“We can no longer afford to see the built environment as being separate to the natural world.”
Paul Porjazoski , Director, BENT Architecture

“The home is long and narrow, stretching from east to west to maximise the opportunity to capture northern light – which is perfect for the southern hemisphere! And windows on opposite sides of the home capture cooling breezes. This keeps the interior naturally warmer in winter and cooler in summer.”

By intelligently incorporating sunlight into the designs, the house is both economical and stunningly lit TATJANA PLITT

The design uses solar panels on the roof to meet any energy needs, meaning the property is not just aesthetically pleasing, but low-energy too with an estimated annual power bill of just €300.

“Olinda House celebrates and enhances the spectacular natural landscape of its site,” Porjazoski says, which is something at the heart of BENT Architecture’s ethos. Things like sunlight and wind are seen as fundamental parts of the design, as Porjazoski and his team seek to strike a balance between structures and nature, “we can no longer afford to see the built environment as being separate to the natural world.”

We must “embrace in a celebration of the site, where the position of the sun and prevailing breezes are treated as building materials equivalent to the bricks and mortar of the building,” he says.

Is sustainability affordable?

The team at BENT Architecture has seen that the overwhelming majority of their residential clients are keen to implement sustainable design principles, as they look to minimise their environmental footprint. But what about the people who can’t afford a bespoke housing design?

“Buildings should work for us, not against us, to create a meaningful link between us and the outside world.” TATJANA PLITT

Porjazoski argues that the fundamentals of sustainability shouldn’t require additional expense. By incorporating sunlight and prevailing wind into a project, an architect can minimise energy consumption without having to spend anything extra. “These gifts from nature are free, and we should use them,” he explains, our buildings should “work for us, not against us, to create a meaningful link between us and the outside world.”

The fundamentals of sustainability shouldn’t require additional expense.

Unfortunately, these aren’t necessarily principles which are being considered by every developer or architect, especially when it comes to mass-production of houses in Europe to meet rising demands.

However, one major developer in the UK for first-time buyers, Countryside Properties, does incorporate some green initiatives into their designs. While they aren’t harnessing nature in the same way as BENT Architecture, because the majority of their properties are large-scale developments, it is still something they are considering.

Countryside Properties was the first construction company to open its own timber frame facility, which helps make a house far cheaper to heat, thus minimising the carbon footprint. Associate Director Andrew Fox says that the frame facility is an asset in many regards, “but the biggest benefit is how much it reduces our environmental impact.”

The houses have other efficiency measures in place too, such as water-saving fixtures and low energy lighting, which are estimated to save buyers up to £1,723 (€1,970) a year on energy costs, when compared to a second-hand property from the 1930s.

While the work being done with Countryside’s properties is certainly a step in the right direction, we still seem to be a long way off eco-homes like the Olinda House being the go-to for first-time buyers.

Green non-residential spaces are on the rise

Although mass-produced residential spaces are yet to incorporate the techniques of BENT Architecture, it is becoming de rigueur in community spaces. This means the benefits of sustainable building design are being increasingly opened up to the wider public, not just those who can afford to commission a bespoke design.

Lister House Health Centre in Harlow, UK, uses an environmentally-friendly design to create a welcoming space CAMM Architects

The Lister House Health Centre in Harlow, UK, is an award-winning design by Paul Young at CAMM Architects. Because the purpose of the space is to be one of healing and wellness, Young harnessed the natural environment to create a more positive experience for patients.

Architects should always be aware of the need to use the environment: it’s in our DNA.”
Paul Young Architect, CAMM Architects

“We brought light and air into the centre of the building,” says Young, “as we aimed to make it a cheerful and uplifting experience. Using light colours and rooflights to connect the internal rooms with the sky: we wanted to make people feel well just by entering the building, which is something possible by using sunlight in a space.”

For Young, sustainability should be at the heart of every architect’s practice, no matter if it’s a mass housing development, or for a commissioned, luxury property. “I believe architects should always be aware of the need to use the environment: it’s in our DNA,” he says.

Source Euro News

New company turns 100 tons of non-recyclable plastic into building blocks for construction

Posted on January 28, 2022 by dishanth

Recycling doesn’t always mean chemically separating things into component parts, or finding a new life for an old object. An LA-based startup is proving that landfills need not be dug for plastics, if one can merely smash enough of them together into a Minecraft-like block.

103 tons of nonrecyclable plastics, in fact, have been diverted from entombment since the company was founded, all through ByFusion’s patented machines known as “Blockers.” Blockers have a simple yet ingenious design. They shred the plastic, and then apply mass multiplied by acceleration repeatedly, until the “nonrecyclable plastic” is so squished together that it fuses.

Composite plastics have advanced the world standard of living no end, but often they tend to be unrecyclable.

Many minds are trying to develop thermal or chemical methods of separating the polymers in these materials to allow them to be recycled. ByFusion have avoided this problem by cutting out that middleman and simply turning the material as is into a new, composite, and ridiculously durable construction block.

Called “ByBlocks,” they are a simple 16x8x8 shape and can be used to build bus stops, fences, retaining walls, curtain walls, public terraces, and more.

ByFusion’s full-service operation in LA can process 450 tons of plastic per year into blocks, and hope to install 12 more Blockers soon.

They have partnered with cities across the country, from the island of Kauai, to Boise in Idaho, to get as many blockers into the hands of people who want to use them.

A big advantage of the Blockers is their indiscrimination; they turn every kind of plastic, even fishing nets, into blocks of the same material properties. The only thing they can’t tackle is polystyrene or Styrofoam.

Not one ounce of adhesive glue, mortar, or any kind of extra substance is used. If 22 pounds of plastic go in, a 22 pound block comes out.

The machines come in two sizes, one for industry, and another for community. The latter comes in a shipping container, while the former features an array of blockers for companies that really crank out the plastic waste.

Source Good News Network