The built environment is responsible for around 40% of global carbon emissions and in the UK, new build construction alone accounts for approximately 25% of the country’s total emissions. On most projects, concrete and steel account for the majority of these new build emissions and demand for both is expected to grow by almost 50% by 2050.
Carbon isn’t the only issue. According to Environment Secretary Steve Reed, 62% of all waste in the UK comes from construction.
As part of Hubexo, we’re led by the vision that with the right technology, we can empower the construction sector to address these alarming challenges. This means that at NBS we not only focus on our own emissions and achieving carbon neutrality, but also on developing the content and features needed on our platforms for sustainable specification.
Here are some of the changes we’ve been making, to support smarter, lower-carbon design decisions.
1. Providing more sustainability data
Our Sustainable Futures Report, launched in 2024, found that nearly half of specifiers and 52% of architects will only select manufacturers with better-than-average sustainability credentials. To reflect this, we’ve been asking all manufacturers that list their products on NBS Source to provide sustainability metrics and certification for products since 2023, with development work underway to capture additional sustainability information, further enhancing information available to specifiers.
To help manufacturers focus on and showcase their green credentials as a company, we’ve introduced a dedicated ‘Sustainability’ tab to Manufacturer profiles in NBS Source. This area can be used to give an overview of their approach to sustainability and display related organisation-wide certifications, such as ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems or Carbon Footprint Standard.
Figure 1: An example of the ‘Sustainability’ tab within a manufacturer profile on NBS Source
When it comes to products, specifiers can now apply key filters in NBS Source to find products that meet the environmental requirements for their projects. Manufacturer products can be filtered by
- whether sustainability data or an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) has been provided
- embodied carbon A1-A3 (production stage)
- level of recycled content
- country of manufacture and more.
We know that designers want to access consistent, transparent and third-party backed data to confidently select products, so we’ve also introduced a filter for product certifications. This means that while searching, specifiers can easily filter by sustainability related certifications such as BREEAM, LEED and Cradle to Cradle.
2. Benchmarking against industry averages
With this additional sustainability data now available in NBS Source, we want to help specifiers make informed choices.
To do this, we have introduced the normalisation of units for embodied carbon and recycled content, which allows more accurate comparisons to be made between products.
When browsing product categories, a blue banner now displays ‘Industry average’ embodied carbon and recycled content values for that category, calculated from all the data provided by manufacturers in NBS Source.
Figure 2: Industry averages banner, for embodied carbon and recycled content, in NBS Source
Clicking on this banner opens a summary, with the average CO2 or recycled content values across the various manufacturers in that category, presented in a table which also shows the range and number of products used to make the calculation.
Figure 3: Average CO₂ values across the various manufacturers in a category
3. Making reporting easier
Increasingly, designers are required to keep track of large quantities of complex information about the sustainability of the materials and products chosen for a project, often to inform carbon measurement and life cycle assessments.
Rather than spending hours sourcing and compiling product information manually, specifiers can now easily download this data from NBS Source. For example, when comparing the credentials of different products or shortlisting products in a ‘Collection’, a ‘Sustainability report’ gathering the data of all these products can now be downloaded.
Similarly, specifiers can now use the 'Export sustainability report' tool in NBS Chorus to create a report covering all the products in a specification. This report retrieves the available sustainability data for products added from NBS Source, with links to EPDs, but also includes entries for building products and materials which have specified in plain text, or categorised as contractor actions.
Figure 4: The ‘Export sustainability report’ feature in NBS Chorus showing sustainability data
4. Supporting high-impact decisions
In 2023, we partnered with the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS) to incorporate its robust data on cost, carbon and lifecycle into NBS Chorus, as part of our ‘Early Stage’ library. This allows designers to make strategic decisions with environmental factors in mind, at the project stage when there is the most opportunity to make an impact.
The data from BCIS gives an indication of the relative cost and environmental impact of typical constructions, including their embodied carbon, operational carbon and life expectancy.
Figure 5: Benchmark costs delivered by NBS and BCIS for early-stage design
Find out more
If you want to find out more about sustainability and NBS:
- Watch our latest webinar - Measuring Sustainability: The Role of LCA and EPDs
- Download the Sustainable Futures Report 2024
- Find out more about features in NBS Chorus with a demonstration
- Browse NBS Source to view the sustainability credentials of thousands of construction products
- If you’re a manufacturer and would like to find out more about listing your products on NBS Source, get in touch.
