1st November, 2009 - Posted by admin - Comments Off Professor
Geoff Hammond and Craig Jones of Bath University produce the
Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE), an inventory of building
materials giving their embodied energy and carbon dioxide. It is
a very useful resource. But NoHighBuildings takes issue with the
methodology they choose for assessing recycled materials. It is
the recycled content approach. They say Using the recycled
content approach the incoming metals to the building could be
split between recycled and primary materials. If this gives 40%
recycled metals then the recycled content is set at 40%. This is
a start of life method (i.e. start of life of the building) for
crediting recycling. Using this method the materials entering a
building takes the recycling credit (thus upstream of the
building/application). This approach is particularly relevant to
metals. This approach may be compared with their treatment of
the carbon footprint of timber. They do not count the carbon
held in timber for it’