The Fifth Estate dropped into Futurebuild Australia in Sydney last week to have a chat with some of the more sustainable exhibitors on show for our newfound plaything of video interviews. See below for some of the clips. We also checked in with the panel discussion on passive house, to make sure we caught any new insights after our own Passive House Debate last month.
The exhibition and conference event at Sydney’s International Convention Centre, the building, construction, and development industry, featured some well-known names in our pages. Such as Andy Marlow, director at Envirotecture and PassivHaus Design and Construction, and Talina Edwards, director of Envirotecture.
Marlow moderated the session and prised some interesting insights from expert panellists Linden Thorley, architect and designer at Passivhaus, Georgina Wilson, principal at Georgia Wilson Associates, and Richard Jefford, managing director of EcoTHERM Australia.
Each of the panellists shared their priorities for developing energy efficient homes, including downsizing to reduce overall energy demand, airtightness to maximise mechanical ventilation systems, and proper insulation to control airflow and save energy.
After about an hour’s debate, the panel’s consensus was that all of the above facets of home retrofitting are beneficial, but the strategies only become effective through consumer demand and trust. The topic of how to shift consumer market behaviour towards eco-conscious efforts was also a major focus throughout the Futurebuild event.
Thorley shed particular light on this subject, acknowledging that communicating with a diverse audience adds complexity to overcoming the challenge of climate-proofing homes; however, he said, “part of our job is to communicate it effectively to the person that we’re dealing with.”
“We need to help them understand that it’s easy to do what we’re doing, and once we’ve done that, then it’s a relatively price-effective process.”
Ultimately, however, Jefford said the goal with retrofitting homes is to provide “comfort that doesn’t cost the Earth.”
The panel agreed that this idea of selling environmental resilience alongside comfort is the primary message they want to convey to consumers to encourage a positive response.
The challenge of Passive House is exactly in line with the challenges of the broader built environment, and it’s what the show was at least partly designed to tackle, (while partly also showcasing glamorous kitchens and bathroom design options beloved of so many consumers).
Some of the people we happened across for our Vox Pops follow:
Autex Acoustic Australia
Liliana Cervantes, specification and commercial account manager in NSW for Autex, said responses from attendees at the event were enthusiastic and abundant. It was near the end of day two of the show when we spoke, but Cervantes was still impressively bubbly and fully engaged in her job. Check out the video.
The company (which sponsored our recent Big Debate on the National Construction Code at Arup offices earlier this year) manufactures a huge range of high-performance acoustic panels and sound-absorbing treatments. It claims to have a keen eye on working towards a sustainable future, is the first business in the interior acoustics industry to achieve global carbon neutrality and operates zero-waste manufacturing processes, offering product takeback and reuse programs.
Planet Protector Group
Karina Deboar, compliance and communications director for Planet Protector Group, chatted about how her company is diverting landfill-bound waste into recyclable products while maintaining a zero waste, circular economy model.
She showed off the company’s flagship “Jeanius” product, a high-performance, non-toxic insulation material made entirely using recycled denim jeans and textile offcuts, which Deboar says has received gold-standard global green tags and is receiving significant interest from both consumers and industry professionals.
The company transforms other waste materials, including sheep’s wool and other recycled textiles, into high performance, eco friendly insulation and packaging solutions.
Low Carbon Materials Hub
AI had to show up, of course and at the show, Jason Zhang, CEO of the Low Carbon Materials Hub, told us about his business working with climate technology and data platforms for the built environment. The hub uses AI powered tools to automate carbon measurement assessments by matching project files to verified Environmental Product Declarations, streamlining the process for tracking and reducing embodied carbon in the construction industry.
By utilising new technology, the company says it is eliminating slow, manual data entry to automate data mapping, making low-carbon construction substitutions easier.
Jason told us the goal is to “demystify carbon to enable the industry to measure and access carbon within real time.”
Recycle All
Recycle All is an Australian waste management business specialising in sustainable, circular-economy solutions for the construction industry.
Founder and director Damien Collins told us the company’s goals are to divert construction and packaging waste from landfills by providing clearly labelled, segregated bins for materials, an app to manage recycling scheduling, and upcycling resources through a network of manufacturing and processing partners.
The company has recently launched in Sydney, and its website claims it is Australia’s first tailored digital platform directly linking the construction industry to the circular economy.
Magnetite
Windows lose so much heat and coolth, we know. So we could not resist checking in with this Magnetite, which retrofits double-glazing systems to thin and leaking windows. It can save a lot of money compared with full replacement, but it’s not cheap. One interesting side benefit is that the materials also add acoustic insulation, which can be handy when the new apartment is on a busy, noisy road, and the developer didn’t bother putting in anything beyond the minimum product, as we learned in our chat with window solutions director Adrian Lafleur.
ADBRI
ADBRI is a major Australian manufacturing company that supplies construction materials and industrial minerals, including cement, lime, concrete, aggregates, and masonry products to metropolitan and regional areas. Now this is a tough industry to bring into the low-carbon world, but the technical marketing lead Zoe Schmidt told us that despite this, the company has a strong policy to reach for decarbonisation, or as close as possible to this with material substitutions that lower emissions but don’t compromise on quality.
