Week 12 - Materials

BREEAM (UK)

Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method for buildings (BREEAM) is a UK based initiative.  This is an assessment system designed to describe a building's environmental performance. BREEAM sets the standard for best practice for sustainable building performance in the UK.  This can be used to rate any type of building and also for new constructions.  This assessment consists of 49 individual assessment issues spanning 9 environmental categories.  The categories include management, health and well-being, energy, transport, water, materials, waste, land use and ecology, pollution and innovation.  Each of the categories has a different rating with energy having the top ranking of 19% and water the lowest at 6%.

Green Star (Australia, NZ & SA)

Green Star is the major Australian green building assessment scheme and is similar in approach and structure to BREEAM.  This assessment system awards from one to six green stars but only those buildings with ratings of 4+ stars are consider to indicate high performance.  Nine categories are assessed in a Green Star rating and the number of green stars awarded is based on the percentage of total points available.  

As globally, there is no single approach to assessment of buildings, the use of Life Cycle Analysis of materials and operating impacts is a more recent improvement for a holistic approach.