Pre­sen­ta­tion of the Spe­cial Prize for “Resource Effi­cien­cy” – An Appeal for Digi­ti­sa­tion Strategies

The tenth annu­al Ger­man Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Award, a two-day event held in Düs­sel­dorf on Decem­ber 7 and 8, 2017, was attend­ed by a large num­ber of par­tic­i­pants who came from the fields of pol­i­tics, the econ­o­my, and research. For the third con­sec­u­tive year, the Insti­tut Bauen und Welt e.V. (IBU) served as insti­tu­tion­al part­ner to the Ger­man Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Award (DNP) for the spe­cial prize in “Resource Efficiency”.

Verleihung Nachhaltigkeitspreis Sonderpreis Ressourceneffizienz 2017This spe­cial award recog­nis­es exem­plary cor­po­rate com­mit­ment to both the man­age­ment of raw mate­ri­als and resources as well as to recy­cling, and presents new approach­es for the effi­cient util­i­sa­tion of resources. It rewards com­pa­nies for the devel­op­ment of excep­tion­al strate­gies and mea­sures that either con­tribute to min­imis­ing the con­sump­tion of mate­ri­als, ener­gy, space, and water along the entire val­ue cre­ation chain or which are based on inno­v­a­tive recy­cling or life-cycle con­cepts. For the sec­ond time, the fis­ch­er cor­po­rate group, an IBU mem­ber, is also par­tic­i­pat­ing in the award­ing of this year’s prize. Hans Peters, Chair­man of the IBU Board, togeth­er with Jakob von Uexküll, founder of the Right Liveli­hood Award, also pro­mot­ed as “Alter­na­tive Nobel Prize”, pre­sent­ed the prize to„Der Grüne Punkt“ DSD-Duales Sys­tem Hold­ing GmbH & Co. KG. Der Grüne Punkt’s tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions have made them lead­ers in the areas of ener­gy effi­cien­cy and mate­ri­als research. The company’s out­stand­ing achieve­ments in the plas­tics indus­try include the util­i­sa­tion of recy­cled mate­ri­als and the design of recy­clable pack­ing. Der Grüne Punkt’s com­mit­ment to these and oth­er mea­sures cen­tred on the over­all goal of sus­tain­abil­i­ty – i.e., econ­o­my over the course of the entire life cycle – were con­vinc­ing to the jury.

Rinn Beton is the sus­tain­able com­pa­ny in 2018 — IBU Mem­bers Con­sid­er Sus­tain­abil­i­ty a Cor­po­rate-Wide Responsibility

blankThe IBU, a vol­un­tary ini­tia­tive of con­struc­tion mate­ri­als indus­try man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies and asso­ci­a­tions, has laid the ground­work when it comes to the top­ic of sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the con­struc­tion sec­tor. “Through our part­ner­ship with the GSA we want to call atten­tion to the impor­tance of sus­tain­able build­ing and the oppor­tu­ni­ties it presents”, empha­sised IBU Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dr Burkhart Lehmann. The IBU is par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­py that the IBU mem­ber Rinn Beton- und Naturstein GmbH & Co. KG has been award­ed as Germany’s most sus­tain­able medi­um-sized com­pa­ny. With DAW SE, anoth­er IBU mem­ber was among the nom­i­nees at DNP 2017. “For these com­pa­nies – as with many of our mem­bers – the issue of sus­tain­abil­i­ty is viewed as a cor­po­rate-wide respon­si­bil­i­ty”, accord­ing to Lehmann. The com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty influ­ences not only the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, but also the activ­i­ties of the entire com­pa­ny. “A well-thought-out range of prod­ucts com­bined with strate­gic cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion will slow­ly bring about a change in think­ing in both sup­pli­ers and cus­tomers.” Burkhart Lehmann firm­ly believes that the demand for recy­cled prod­ucts will con­tin­ue to grow.

EPDs: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-found­ed Infor­ma­tion for Sus­tain­able Building

The DGNB (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nach­haltiges Bauen – Ger­man Asso­ci­a­tion for Sus­tain­able Con­struc­tion) prize in the cat­e­go­ry of Sus­tain­able Build­ing was award­ed to Gemein­schaftlich nach­haltig bauen – wag­nis­ART. Because envi­ron­men­tal prod­uct dec­la­ra­tions (EPDs) are an inter­na­tion­al­ly-recog­nised instru­ment for cer­ti­fy­ing build­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the DGNB, as oper­a­tor of a build­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, relies on EPDS for eval­u­at­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of build­ings. The IBU, as the major Ger­man EPD pro­gramme oper­a­tor, along with its mem­bers – com­pa­nies and asso­ci­a­tions from twen­ty-two dif­fer­ent coun­tries – are pro­mot­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in the con­struc­tion indus­try through the use of EPDs. The under­ly­ing rea­son, explains Burkhart Lehmann, is that “rather than mere­ly eval­u­at­ing the indi­vid­ual aspects of a prod­uct, EPDs, on the basis of life-cycle assess­ments, pro­vide trans­par­ent, unbi­ased, and ver­i­fi­able infor­ma­tion on all rel­e­vant envi­ron­men­tal effects”. They there­by pro­vide sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-found­ed key envi­ron­men­tal sta­tis­tics. In a final, inde­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion process that mon­i­tors for com­plete­ness, plau­si­bil­i­ty, and con­for­mance to stan­dards, and fol­low­ing pub­li­ca­tion of the EPD by the IBU, users can access this infor­ma­tion for the plan­ning of sus­tain­able build­ing projects or for eval­u­at­ing build­ings in terms of their sustainability. 

Digi­ti­sa­tion: the IBU’s IBU.data Facil­i­tates Opti­mal Data Utilisation

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To sim­pli­fy plan­ning process­es and cal­cu­la­tions, the IBU makes mem­ber EPDs avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mat on the IBU.data plat­form. “By pro­vid­ing com­pat­i­ble data, we hope to make the jobs of those who rely on EPDs for cal­cu­lat­ing build­ing life-cycle assess­ments as easy as pos­si­ble”, explains Burkhart Lehmann, who views machine-read­able data as the cor­ner­stone to sus­tain­able plan­ning, build­ing, and admin­is­tra­tion. Every­one involved in the process must have com­mon access to all data – includ­ing life-cycle assess­ments. To attain this goal, IBU is par­tic­i­pat­ing in the devel­op­ment of European/international stan­dards where­by uni­form EPD data is avail­able. Anoth­er impor­tant aspect is the abil­i­ty to link digi­tised life-cycle assess­ment data to infor­ma­tion on build­ing prod­ucts used in a Build­ing Infor­ma­tion Mod­el­ling (BIM) plan­ning approach, which is used by a num­ber of dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers in a project.

The DNP pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for experts and prac­ti­tion­ers to come togeth­er in a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the top­ic “Digi­ti­sa­tion and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty”. They debat­ed such top­ics as per­spec­tives for digi­ti­sa­tion with­in the dif­fer­ent indus­try branch­es and the con­se­quences of dig­i­tal struc­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion on sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. Par­tic­i­pants includ­ed research and data secu­ri­ty experts along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the finan­cial ser­vices sec­tor, large and small retail enter­pris­es, the logis­tics branch, and the con­struc­tion indus­try. The IBU’s IT and process con­sul­tant, Oliv­er Kusche, dis­cussed the poten­tial digi­ti­sa­tion holds for sus­tain­abil­i­ty infor­ma­tion, based on the exam­ple of the con­struc­tion indus­try. He showed how dig­i­tal EPD data facil­i­tates both inte­gral plan­ning as well as cal­cu­la­tions for the life-cycle assess­ments of build­ings. “Even in the plan­ning phase of a build­ing, an ide­al com­bi­na­tion of build­ing prod­ucts can be select­ed accord­ing their eco­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics”, Kusche explained. He was delight­ed that the com­mon data for­mat for envi­ron­men­tal infor­ma­tion is mak­ing the build­ing mate­ri­als indus­try a pio­neer in dig­i­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty infor­ma­tion. The dia­logue forum made it clear that indus­try ini­tia­tives are the alpha and omega to move for­ward in dig­i­ti­za­tion. The build­ing mate­ri­als indus­try is on the right track here.