The construction industry currently consumes some 3 billion tonnes of raw materials per annum, around 40% of the global total (Spiegel and Meadows, Green Building Materials, 2006). This enormous consumption of resources goes hand in hand with energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and waste production. Obviously, the way these resources are obtained, processed, transported, used and disposed of has very significant impacts on the environmental, economic and social spheres. In all our efforts to define, specify and use more sustainable building materials, however, we mainly ignore the social: Justice or, more specifically equity, goes missing.
Equity is an ethical value which denotes some measure of fairness and impartiality, both between and within nations. It is closely akin to social or distributive justice. If the term sustainability is to retain a meaningful link with the paradigm of sustainable development as outlined by the Brundtland Commission in Our Common Future, then we should not let the issue of equity slip between the straw bales and the hemp-lime render when we select materials. Many of us can probably recite that 'sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. It rolls off the tongue so glibly we may forget that meeting needs is not only a matter of guaranteeing future generations essential resources, like sufficient sources of energy and carbon sinks. It also means prioritising the needs of the world's poor in the here and now, which surely includes not exploiting their labour.
In Britain, at least, the mainstream construction sector can look to such sources as BRE's Green Guide to Specification and the Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE) for guidance when seeking to specify sustainable building materials. Guides based on life-cycle assessment (LCA), or calculating embodied energy or carbon, tell us little or nothing about equity, however. Our material that is non-toxic and has low embodied energy may still be the result of exploitation. We carry this injustice over into the way we design, assess and construct buildings, into BREEAM and the Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) as significant examples. Moreover, by using an inequitable material we may literally build injustice and exploitation into the fabric of our buildings, perhaps perpetuating it for generations. I will return to this latter point.
At the other end of the construction spectrum, those involved in the low-impact development (LID) and the eco-village movements typically select materials according to whether they are 'natural' or perhaps traditional and/or locally produced. In between what we can consider as these poles, those seeking to build more sustainable homes are making decisions based on a combination of emotional preference, peer pressure, assessed technological information (such as that provided by greenspec) and, of course, cost. A number of authors, including some of my own colleagues, have offered expert guidance based on notions of what is ecological, green or sustainable (see notably the Green Building Handbook, Natural Building (Volumes 1 and 2), The Whole House Book, Natural Building, and The Ecology of Building Materials).
Common to this spectrum of selection criteria, I argue, is a lack of attention to equity. To my knowledge, and I stand more than willing to be corrected, the construction industry does not even have any Fairtrade schemes on materials? My internet search did however reveal that one can buy Fairtrade fashion bags made from recycled cement sacks! Perhaps the Forest Stewardship Council comes closest to addressing the issue of equity. According to their website, FSC seeks to prevent deforestation, conserve the habitat of sixty million people and countless species dependent on forests, and safeguard the livelihoods of up to 1.6 billion people. Okay, we can make the choice to use timber that seems to have a claim to real sustainability, but where I wonder are equivalent schemes for the production of bricks, steel or cement? Just in my own experience of working in Africa, I have seen the deforestation, soil erosion, desertification, loss of agricultural land, food insecurity and consequent increase in poverty that producing such building materials for export and for elites causes.
Let me return to my argument about how using unjust materials may be building injustice into the fabric of our building and hence perpetuating it. Fairly obviously, if we accept a definition of sustainable that excludes equity, the currency of that definition will spread: We will come to believe that we have covered the all bases vis-à-vis selecting sustainable building materials, sigh contentedly and uncork our organic and Fairtrade red wine: Job done. How to counter this trend, though? Equity, admittedly, is a slippery customer. Between us we will hold many different views of what is fair and impartial, and translating these into general, everyday practice is a stiff challenge. It is a challenge we should not shirk because it is arduous, however. The work that evidently goes into the Green Guide to Specification, ICE, greenspec and so on, demonstrates our commitment to the environment and what we are capable of. True these guides are not perfect, but they are useful and are evolving as our knowledge evolves. Should we demonstrate a lesser commitment to securing justice for our fellow human-beings?
Finally, I want to touch upon the interface where building materials selection meets architecture. This is where any knowledge I may have in building materials technology or sustainable development bleeds into my ignorance of architecture. Nevertheless, the moral imperative of the equity issue demands that some fools do rush in. Crudely, we could ensure that our sustainable buildings proudly display their FSC and - one day perhaps - Fairtrade logos. Sustainable architecture can surely take this a large and more sophisticated step further, though. When colleagues and I visited the BRE Innovation Park, we were impressed by the Renewable House. The house was then CSH Level 4 and upgradeable to Level 5 or 6. We reported back that it was 'remarkable in its ordinariness' and that it seemed the most practical and affordable design for sustainable mass housing in the UK.
Upon reflection, though, I wonder about the wisdom of hiding sustainable architecture under a bushel of ordinariness. Without labouring the point here, I suggest that sustainable architecture should make a statement of its low-energy, low carbon, environmentally friendly and equitable credentials. An architecture which does not rock the boat surely can not help generate the radical social shift that sustainable development demands and climate change in particular underscores. If sustainable, eco or green architecture is not to remain always on the margins while the world builds its collective mausoleum, we need a movement to inspire dramatic, widespread change. We need something that goes beyond earnest citizens like me pasting equitable logos on ordinary looking houses. The challenge is a truly transformative architecture.