At
the end of a hard week, the average third sector employee
probably has achieved more ‘good’ than many people
working for other organisations. How galling, then, that this
pleasant thought should so often be undermined by the knowledge
that you work in a building that consumes an obscene amount
of energy each day while spewing out tons of greenhouse gases,
pollution and rubbish. Yes, you may be doing good, but you’re
also helping everyone else to trash the world. Oh dear.
Many organisations of all kinds have implemented green initiatives
in recent years, recycling more, using energy-efficient light
bulbs and switching off electrical equipment overnight. After
all, going green isn’t just a charitable act: wasted
energy is wasted money. But while there are plenty of things
you could do to make your current office less of a burden
on the environment, it would obviously be better if you could
go the whole hog and move into, or even build, a truly environmentally
friendly building.
The Pump House
Later this year the Pump House, a 19th century waterworks
building on the banks of the River Severn near Shrewsbury,
will complete its transformation into a new £1.8 million,
9,000 square foot green office building.
The Pump House will emit 70 per cent less CO2 than a standard
new building, thanks to improved insulation technology and
a heating system that uses locally sourced woodchips as
fuel. It will also use solar panels to generate some of
its electricity and solar thermal panels to heat the building’s
hot water supply, and a rainwater recycling system will
be used to flush toilets.
Tenants waiting to move in include the Marches Energy Agency
(MEA), a charity which runs a number of projects that improve
and promote the use of sustainable energy. “Obviously
the organisation’s ethic fits well with a building
like the Pump House, and we like to practise what we preach,”
says Nancy Davies, project manager at the Carbon Forum,
the educational and events section of the MEA.
“We’re all really looking forward to the move.
We’re in quite an old building at the moment that
takes a bit of heating in the winter, so we’re looking
forward to being able to reduce our [carbon] footprint.”
The MEA will also be able to use its own offices as a showcase
for the technologies it encourages other organisations and
individuals to adopt. Davies highlights the woodchip heating
system as a particularly valuable demonstration of the value
of low energy technologies. “Woodchip is a really
good renewable energy,” she says. “People don’t
necessarily think of it like that, but as long as the wood
is grown locally it’s much more affordable than other
energy sources, and by using it you can support local businesses.”
Finally, MEA hopes the fact that the Pump House is located
close to the train and bus stations in Shrewsbury should
also help encourage visitors and staff to travel there using
public transport.
British Red Cross
In June, the British Red Cross opened its new £1.4
million headquarters in Worcester, an environmentally friendly
office building designed by architects at Panton Sargent.
Its most valuable green feature is a passive cooling and
natural ventilation system instead of standard air conditioning.
The building has ‘wind catchers’ installed on
its roof, with two of each set of four acting as inlets,
bringing cool, fresh air into the building, and two acting
as outlets, regardless of the wind direction. “This
allows you to get natural ventilation into the deeper parts
of the building,” explains Jason Whittall, associate
director at Panton Sargent.
The system uses the pressure exerted by the wind to move
fresh air into and around the building. Air is also sucked
into the building through louvres in the walls above windows
and by automated window opening at night, controlled by
a Building Management System (BMS).
“During the evening, when the temperature is dropping,
the BMS tells the units to open and let the cold air in,”
Whittall explains. “It’s then absorbed into
the structural mass of the building and released again during
the day. The building is sort of pre-chilled, which helps
to keep it cool as the temperature rises outside and inside
the building during the day. So you’re getting a free,
or practically free, way of regulating the internal environment.”
Economic factors have been at least as important as environmental
ones in persuading the Red Cross to invest in these technologies.
Buildings that use passive ventilation use less than half
the energy of ones with air conditioning.
Panton Sargent has put together a cost comparison for a
sample office building of 2,800 square metres using either
passive ventilation or air conditioning. It reveals that
a passively ventilated system costs £200,000 less
to build (approx. £3.4 million instead of more than
£3.6 million), and cuts annual running costs in energy
and maintenance by almost 50 per cent.
Other aspects of the building also help reduce energy consumption.
Its lowest elevation faces south, where the sun shines when
highest and hottest, to reduce the amount of heat absorbed
by the building at that time.
The building has also been designed to take maximum advantage
of natural light, thus cutting lighting bills, and solar
shading technology is used in the glass on the building
to stop solar radiation heating up the building like a greenhouse.
In addition, the building makes use of motion sensors in
some meeting rooms that dim or turn off lighting if nothing
has moved in the room for a certain period of time.
“When we first started the charity was naturally a
bit wary, because they didn’t understand the technologies,”
says Whittall. “Later on they realised that this was
something they could market when fundraising, telling supporters
that they had built a low energy building, so weren’t
wasting the money they had raised.”
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RSPCA
Another notable eco-friendly building is the RSPCA’s
headquarters at Southwater in Surrey, which opened in 2001
at a cost of £12 million. The organisation’s
previous headquarters, in nearby Horsham, had been designed
to house 150 people, but was accommodating nearly 300 in
cramped conditions. The organisation had also been forced
to rent additional office space elsewhere in town.
The Southwater building now houses all RSPCA employees in
90,000 square feet of space, spread over three floors. It
uses an airflow system for ventilation which sucks fresh
air into the building and then passes it through air handling
units where it is filtered, then heated or cooled as required
and pumped out through vents in the floor. Coffers in the
ceiling then suck the air out of the building.
“So we’ve got continuous fresh air coming into
the building,” says Mike Pearce, building services
manager at the Southwater site. “This is far more
efficient than an air conditioning system, and it can maintain
a constant temperature all year round.” The building
also uses a BMS to control the automated opening of windows
at night – in this case the top row of windows on
each floor – to bring in cool air that can then be
released slowly during the day.
The building incorporates a grey water and rainwater recycling
system, which collects waste and rain water, runs it through
silver and copper ions in a filtration tank downstairs,
then pumps it into storage tanks in the roof to be used
for flushing toilets. This has generated substantial cost
savings in comparison to a conventional building with the
same requirements (47 toilets, used by 350 staff). Water
costs at Southwater are currently about 47p a day, whereas
in the conventional building the figure would be £30
to £40 per day.
The RSPCA building also makes more use of light and motion
sensors to manage lighting throughout the building, with
the lights dimmed to ten per cent output if there’s
no movement in a given area for 38 minutes. Light sensors
also react to consistently sunny conditions outside the
building, dimming the lighting inside. These changes add
up to cost savings of about 40 per cent.
The bottom line is that a more environmentally friendly
office, whether rented or owned, should offer as many economic
as environmental incentives. It will also help you and your
colleagues feel a little bit better about the way you’re
treating the planet, as well as the work you’re doing
towards the cause to which your organisation is dedicated.
This may be what they call a ‘no-brainer’ in
the business world.
Making your own office greener
Unfortunately, we can’t all yet work in inspiring,
state-of-the-art eco-friendly offices. But there are plenty
of things you can do to make your workplace a bit greener,
including:
- don’t leave PCs switched on overnight. The Carbon
Trust estimates that switching off computers each night
saves £40 per screen per year
- use the lighting in your offices more efficiently.
Millions of pounds are wasted lighting empty offices at
night or lighting corridors unnecessarily brightly during
the day. You could try rearranging office furniture and
fittings to take maximum advantage of natural light, and
install energy efficient light bulbs which use 75 per
cent less electricity than conventional bulbs, produce
just as much light and last up to ten times longer
- better insulation can reduce heat loss through the
roof by up to 90 per cent
- there are energy and cash-efficient ways of using air
conditioning. There’s no reason why the office should
be cooler in summer than it is in winter. Cool to 24 degrees
and heat to 19 or 20 – not vice versa l use mugs
for drinks, not plastic cups
- print less, and print on both sides of the paper you
use. If your organisation still doesn’t do this,
bear in mind that Friends of the Earth estimates that
the average office worker uses a tree’s worth of
paper each year (they do not specify the size or type
of tree, but you can probably work out whether you’re
a Bonsai or a Sequoia waster)
- plants in the office can help to humidify and purify
the air, absorb noise, and may even remove chemicals linked
with Sick Building Syndrome
Useful websites:
For information on making your operations greener: www.thecarbontrust.co.uk
For an online audit from Friends of the Earth Scotland:
www.green-office.org.uk
For information about using more recycled stationery: www.recycledproducts.org.uk
For a guide to dealing with office waste in an environmentally
friendly way: www.wasteonline.org.uk
For information on assessing office buildings using Building
Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM)
criteria: www.breeam.org
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