It took a massive effort from some of the architectural community’s biggest and smallest companies, along with broad industry consultation, but this new tool launched earlier this year to identify sustainable materials is finding a welcome niche in design studios around Australia.
According to key players the free to use Product Aware database will be a game changer. It can guide suppliers on what to look for in their products, save architects from creating their own sustainability guidelines and remove barriers surrounding other paid certifications.
The team behind the data base is the Materials Working group of the Australian Architects Declare collective, which was formed in 2019 to address the climate and biodiversity emergency and which now has more than 1300 members in Australia.
Work to develop the new tool was led by Bates Smart, BVN, COX Architecture, and consultancy Susty Spec.
The technology behind it was designed by COX Architecture’s technology design team.
Its key function is to be a user-friendly platform that helps architects and designers find and compare the sustainability profile of building related products.
It allows users to search for, compare and filter products based on environmental criteria such as the lowest embodied carbon, water usage, recycled content, and more.
Information about each product is supplied on a voluntary basis by suppliers, who will fill out a questionnaire about their product.
The process guides suppliers on what to look for in their products, removes the need for individual practices to develop their own sustainability guidelines and takes down barriers surrounding other paid certifications.
The platform will be free to use and open source, meaning anyone can contribute to running the platform.
“We’ve had 500 people signed up already using this, which we are very happy with. We’ve only been really launched for about a month,” Isabella Peppard Clark, founder of Susty Spec and director of Product Aware, told The Fifth Estate in a recent background interview on how the platform works.
“I had quite a long discussion with a supplier who just said it was so intuitive for a supplier to fill out all of the questions, and it really helps them understand what architects want.”
She said that suppliers were motivated to volunteer information to see what other competitors were doing, and those further along in their environmental journey enjoyed showcasing their products.
“It’s quite objectively clear to people how much better one product is over the other, and we are not biased; they think it’s a very fair summary of their products. It’s also helping other people do better because some people didn’t realise how bad their products were.”
The working group hopes the platform will allow the industry access to objective data about the sustainability of building products proved beyond marketing claims.
It also standardises questions that the industry asks about a product’s sustainability and follows a clear set of sustainability metrics.
The platform was also extensively peer reviewed over the 18 months of its development by peak industry bodies such as the Australian Institute of Architects, Green Building Council of Australia, Living Futures Institute, Materials & Embodied Carbon Leaders’ Alliance, and Suppliers Declare.
Adrian Taylor, the regenerative practice coordinator at BVN, said
“The aim of this movement is to have designers, suppliers, and clients be speaking the same language. To arrive at a collective understanding of the ‘true’ cost of our building products. Product Aware is a common ground, a public exhibition of product information where the industry can discuss openly the individual characteristics, and the broader challenges faced by our local manufacturers when turning ‘responsible’.”
Dr Matthias Irger, head of sustainability at Cox, said that with building materials accounting for about 12 per cent of global carbon emissions, selecting low-carbon and circular products was crucial in addressing the climate emergency.