CONSTRUCTING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change is no longer just an “Inconvenient Truth” but a living reality as we witness daily disasters caused by global warming, wreaking havoc on people and property. Our homes and buildings should provide refuge and reduce our vulnerability to such disasters – mitigating risks, enhancing safety and sustainability, and future-proofing our built environment to face the storms ahead. Leading composite materials manufacturer Eva-Last looks at why and how to build and beautify our built environment for our purposes without destroying the natural one…
The imperative for building resilience – defined as increasing our capacity to cope, adapt or recover from disasters – and to construct resilient structures considering climate change challenges is now hotter than ever. According to some estimates, investing in more resilient infrastructure could save a whopping $4.2 trillion from climate change damages!
Various factors affect our resilience to climate change disasters including the design and location of houses or buildings. These should be carefully considered in context against the relevant risks of rising sea-levels, increasing or decreasing temperature extremes, strong winds, heavy snowfall, or the possibility of floods or unprecedented precipitation, to implement an appropriate solution.
Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?
The building and construction industry is responsible for around 38% of global energy-related CO2 emissions causing the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, waste and pollution 2. Not only must the sector urgently halt, reverse or minimise any detrimental impacts on the natural environment to limit global warming to below 2°C, it must do so whilst also simultaneously providing resilient structures responsive to the imminent challenges of climate change. There is no Planet B.
Historically, much of the construction sector’s progress has been centred around reducing our buildings’ “operational” CO2 emissions from HVAC and lighting. Meanwhile, efforts to mitigate the “embodied” carbon emissions from traditional building materials – cement, steel and aluminium – have lagged.
UNEP’s ground-breaking report “Building Materials and the Climate: Constructing a New Future”3 highlights the pressing need to decarbonise building materials. It recommends three overarching principles to decarbonise materials:
- Avoiding unnecessary extraction and production,
- Shifting to regenerative materials, and
- Improving the decarbonisation of traditional materials.
Earth Mission
Eva-Last has elected to be part of the solution. The company is on an “Earth Mission” to provide sustainable building materials that won’t cost the earth. Their advanced composite building materials are manufactured from resource-efficient and renewable bamboo fibres (which aid carbon sequestration) combined with recycled plastic polymers (which reduce plastic waste and pollution).
Bamboo polymer composites (BPCs) outperform traditional timber, providing superior durability able to withstand extreme weather, whilst preventing deforestation and concomitant biodiversity loss. With a guaranteed lifespan of decades, there’s no unnecessary replacement meaning no unnecessary production, and your structure will weather any storm!
In 2017, Eva-Last installed 32 858 solar panels (88 716 m²) on their factory roof, using solar energy instead of fossil fuels for manufacturing, reducing harmful carbon emissions. Eva-Last’s extensive range of products are engineered to enhance resource-efficiency by reducing raw material requirements and replacements due to their longevity.
By choosing eco-friendly materials like those from Eva-Last, together we can build resilience against climate change and safeguard our planet for future generations.
