Part One: Why Sustainability Won't Be Enough
More than a buzzword, an ideal, or a solution, sustainability is simply a concept of maintaining. It implies stasis, without movement forward or back, in an effort to maintain the status quo. While it has its merits when applied to the challenge of climate change, solely being sustainable in our practices and lifestyle doesn’t move the needle forward, which is an imperative today. We don’t find ourselves at a distance from the effects of global warming. The change is no longer imminent, it is present, and so must be our action.
There is but one Earth, and one Earth’s resources. Those resources are all we have; nothing man-made is created without the materials that come from this planet. A sustainability mindset would take us as far as limiting the amount of non-renewable resources we use and producing as much renewable energy as possible, but we can surely do more than that. Rather than maintaining convention, we can innovate. Instead of using conventional materials, what if we choose materials that are ecologically beneficial? Instead of just switching to cleaner energy sources, what if we use less to begin with? How we frame these questions impacts the answers we produce and the amount of change we see.
As professionals in the design industry, we have a larger opportunity – and therefore responsibility – to effect this change. Buildings, through their construction and use, are estimated to make up roughly 40% of CO₂ emissions annually, globally across all industry sectors. 20% of that is attributed to materials: their embodied carbon, the cost of emissions for transportation and construction, and the lifespan they will have beyond their use. 80% is associated with the operation of buildings, including what it takes to heat or cool, daily electricity use by occupants, and how efficiently systems inside the building run. Being the largest single contributor to carbon emissions is not something to be proud of, but it is a chance to recognize that our efforts make a greater impact because the margin for improvement is so large.
So, sustainability isn’t good enough. We have a responsibility to go beyond adequate, into a realm of advancement. We must design solutions that are integral to the building, considered from conception to completion. It’s necessary for our lives, our planet, and our future to reject the status quo, and that’s why we do what we do – because we believe buildings can improve our world.
