Towards a zero footprint architecture

Our decisions hold the key to this 21st century environmental enigma.

Is it really possible to go 'zero'?

Consider this. Every act and process putting together a building nowadays involves huge amounts of energy and impacts the environment. Let us assess a few areas:

1. Utilisation of materials to build- virgin, reused, recycled or otherwise
2. Extraction of the raw materials
3. The transportation of these materials
4. The manufacture of building materials..
5. The generation of direct and indirect wastes, and pollution.
6. The consumption of materials in operations- water, energy, fuel, etc.

When we look back, not too long ago, say just over a 100 years, we find that there were hardly any emissions of any kind involved in the usage of materials for building. Energy for extraction, or the synthesis of materials involved the usage of higher degrees of human labour to compensate for any other form of energy. This was so stark that the construction of large institutional buildings like forts, palaces or temples resembled the efforts put in to build the dams of today. Having said that, in India we are still a labour intensive construction industry... which is not altogether a bad thing considering the great amounts of employment that it generates. What is required though is a drastic improvement in working environments and skill levels.

Surely some CO2 emissions and environmental fall outs did result from some construction activities (the institutional causing greater damage than the vernacular). For example, the burning of bricks used as building blocks has remained much the same as today, with vast amounts of wood/coal being used to fire the brick kilns. Sun dried bricks, or Compressed Soil Stabilised Blocks, or, rammed earth walls, using lime as a mortar, need no firing and use solar energy. If we are able to tap into renewable energy sources for construction or material production, we could make material production and usage emission free. 

An iron ore mine in South Goa that has eaten into the biodiversity rich Western Ghats!

Extraction is altogether a different matter. The energy of extraction today involves the spending of large amounts of energy for mining, excavating, etc. In earlier times, the low demand (non-institutional) dictated the rate of extraction, but a market driven new world economy exerts too much pressure here. To keep up the indices of performance, more material is extracted. I have written about this in another blog post. The methods of extraction have also changed significantly. Granite is now blasted out of the ground, while one method from the past used in some places even today , involved the insertion of wooden dowels into the ground and soaking them with water, which would expand during overnight cooling and crack the granite in the desired size. The extraction of stratified rocks like marble and sandstone has seen a similar change, with the inclusion of heavy machinery  against the use of skilled manual labour who would split the marble along its grain, by driving wooden/metal  wedges into the rock. Today, more often than not, vast areas of forests are cleared to reach these raw materials. This leads to the destruction of CO2 banks and the release of these green house gases due to the rotting of this cut-down biomass. Also, forests are sponges of the earth and ensure a healthy water balance, by keeping the ground well hydrated and holding together the top-soil. Once removed, the land gets parched and erodes the soil of essential minerals for sustaining plant life. Dependent fauna are the immediate victims. The massive scale of raw material extraction today has impacts that affect the region beyond the immediate context. I am not too sure if there can be a zero impact extraction method as an alternative, but perhaps we should look at the kind of raw materials that we consume as a start. A larger use of waste as a raw material, easily re-fashionable building components, a more spread out usage of material according to geographic regions might help.

With a booming modern day construction scenario, such sights aren't
that uncommon, but what is not visible to all is the energy consumed!

Today's building materials have often travelled many a mile to get to our construction sites. We do not bat an eyelid about this specially since all aspects of our lives have ceased to be limited by matters of distance. Being a relatively large nation, geographically speaking, industry has spread its tentacles close to their source of raw materials. Vast transportation networks and corridors constantly feed stocks close to our sites relentlessly. The effort to pick up these materials for construction is usually from the local outlets, obscuring completely the energies that go into getting those materials there from the points of manufacture. There are other forces that define the distances our building components travel...  Global aspirations of the project initiator may attract faucets all the way from Europe, or, kitchen equipment from Italy, or, Paints from Korea and so on. This very global economy sometimes also creates a seemingly  improbable yet financially lucrative incentive to by overseas.... a whole lot of building materials today (as many other goods) originate in China.
Over a 150 ears ago, such sourcing would have been the exclusive habit of the kings!! The masses would invariably build what was available locally, therefore more affordable. While it is easy to talk of the use of locally available material, we ought to compliment that with supporting market incentives, upgradation of skill-sets & technologies, and most importantly a sustained education and advocacy effort to sensitise people to the ills of stretching these geographic limits. A few disincentives like a transportation emission tax could provide an encouraging nudge. 

Manufacturing today is a complex science, involving complex systems, resulting in complex products.... and ever so often a set of complex (read harmful) residues/wastes. In the yearning for 'long-lasting' solutions we have taken complex engineering to higher and higher levels, and devised materials that are made of  unbreakable bonds. Be it the plastics that cater from protective sheeting to transparent screens, the laminates for flooring or cladding, the chemical veneers for roof and wall covering/protection, the non abrasive tiles that span our floors (and walls),.... the resulting side-effects are equally strong in their environmental impacts. High energies needed for manufacture of these complex bonds result in high CO2 emissions, Chemical by-products take a toll on our air, soil and water as emitted pollutants, and the products themselves end up leaching poisonous chemicals into their built environs over their lifetimes. For example, Volatile Organic Compounds like lead, Mercury and Arsenic are spewed by most chemically coated surfaces from paints to laminates to carpets. Bituminous compounds used in waterproofing (and in road tops) break up relatively quickly and leach into the ground, contaminating the local aquifers. Perhaps the trick is to stick to near natural states of materials, like earth for construction, bamboo/wood for building structures, lime/mud for wall plaster, stone as cladding and building block, etc. Physically fashioning a natural material to suit an application involves no further chemical contamination, whereas chemically altering compounds is saddled with these toxic extras.

The sun sets behind the smoke stacks of one of our many industrial backyards.

There are scores of materials today that claim to be energy efficient. But we have to put that in context. Energy efficiency in usage (while good) need not be energy efficient in manufacturing. Also, energy efficiency only implies a betterment from the current benchmarks, and does not mean that they are energy positive. Furthermore, when one refers to a zero energy building, a common term today, one normally means the net energy consumption during its lifetime, which does not include the energies that went into the making of the building and its building components. Depending on building use, the energy in building (or embodied energy of building) could be equal to the total energy consumption of the building in its operations. Thus the often used term for zero energy building refers mainly to the operational energy equation, and is not therefore truly zero energy.

I have covered the topic of consumption in an earlier post, and it takes very little to understand that consuming less would have a proportionately lesser footprint. So far, we have seen that we have big decisions to take in the choice of materials to reduce the upstream environmental impacts during extraction, transportation, manufacturing and utilisation. Is it possible to occupy a truly zero ecological footprint architecture? Many examples exist, in our past, in our rural hinterland and in some truly commendable contemporary projects, that hint at the fact we can get there. The necessary ingredient for that though is a complete overhaul of our thinking and gaining insights into our every decision in the building process, from design to occupancy. I remember a Star Trek episode which spoke of a race that chose a passive and low tech living against the high-tech unbridled alternative, for very much the same reasons... to preserve a way of life! 

Toilet Talk

Fill it, flush it, forget it. How the lowly toilet has become a serious
issue to address.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been working on an initiative to reinvent to the western toilet as we know it, and bring forth innovative toilet systems that will address sanitation issues in many developing economies around the world. This is a truly laudable quest since more than 2.6 billion people worldwide are said to be using unsafe toilets, or are simply, defecating in the open. Poor sanitation is the root cause for many diseases, including diarrhoea, which kills about 1.5 million children a year. Contamination of groundwater surely leads to many other diseases, including cholera, which kill even larger numbers in the developing world. They believe that “smart investments in sanitation can reduce disease, increase family incomes, keep girls in school, help preserve the environment, and enhance human dignity.”

The endeavour to come up with a toilet, or toilets, that are waterless, not connected to a sewer, hygienic, and affordable is no easy task. The Foundation has set-up a ‘challenge’ in about 22 universities worldwide and is funding programmes that are potentially promising. The goals of the programme are quite comprehensive and aim to address complex multiple issues that stand in the way of innovation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/watersanitationhygiene/Documents/wsh-reinvent-the-toilet-challenge.pdf

The history of the western toilet is quite interesting. While there are many variants and types evolved over time, the western toilet that we now use is attributed to Thomas Crapper (yes, yes, now you know) who popularized the model in the late nineteenth century. So, what are the other toilet types beside the western flush toilet and the Indian latrine, so to speak? Here are a myriad names for you to glean from: UDT (Urine Diversion), UDDT (Urine Diversion Dry), Chemical, Portable, High-Tech, Floating, Chamber-pot, Gauderobe, Squat, Urinal, and a host of others.

The problem is that the western toilets are too water intensive for third world ‘conditions’ and the handling of this sewage waste poses major challenges of contamination of ground water, space availability, odour and handling. New and more adaptable versions are required on the pronto. Over the past couple of decades we have seen the 12 litre overhead cisterns (a relic from colonial times) reduce to a slim-line 7.5 litre flushes, down to dual flush systems with a 6 litre flush for the big job and a 4 litre flush for the small job. There is also a product in the market that claims a further reduction to a 4.5 / 1.5 litre dual flush. Some serious challenges remain, for example the bowl design to efficiently flush all matter out using minimal amounts of water.

Here are some of the concepts are scientists and environmentalists are grappling with – if you have new one please write to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. While it is not possible to describe any of them in great detail in this blog, a basic one-line description of each programme itself is quite revealing, if not fascinating.

1. Professor M. Sohail of Loughborough University and his team are endeavouring to Harald Gründl of develop a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water.
2. Professor Georgios Stefanidis and his team at Delft University of Technology, using microwave technology, are attempting to turn the toilet into an electricity generator for local use.
3. Dr. Tove Larsen of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology and Dr. EOOS are attempting a functional model of a urine-diverting toilet that recovers water that is good enough for cleansing purposes.
4. Professor Christopher Buckley and his team at the University of Kwazulu-Natal are proposing to design a toilet system that mineralizes human waste and recovers clean water, nutrients, and energy from community bathroom blocks.
5. Brian Von Herzen of the Climate Foundation and Professor Reginald Mitchell of Stanford University are pursuing a community scale ‘biochar’ (biological charcoal) production plant fed by human waste.
6. Professor Yu-Ling Cheng and her team from the University of Toronto are using a system of mechanical dehydration and smouldering of faeces to recover resources and energy. They are also trying to sanitize urine through membrane filtration and ultra-violet disinfection.
7. Professor Michael Hoffman of the California Institute of Technology has envisioned a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen (gas stored in hydrogen fuel cells) and electricity for local use. 
8. Professor How Yong Ng and his team at the National University of Singapore are experimenting with a decentralized modified pneumatic flushing urine-diversion dehydration community toilet block for five to six households at a time.

There have been several examples of toilet reinventions or adaptations in the Indian context. While some have addressed the design of the toilet itself, there have been those who have focused on the waste handling end of it. Sulabh, DEWATS, the segregated defecation system (where you have a separated bowls/exits for faecal matter and urine) are some of the examples. 

We encourage one and all to put on thinking caps and redefine the 'crapper'.

Seeking an alternate world- Making sense of going green with respect to the modern day development paradigm

Times they are a changing. Boy, can you feel it or what? Never before in modern, post industrial times has the common man been so aware of changes in rainfall, temperature, freak weather... the list is endless. Every other day, we read about new records being toppled in the these very categories. Climate and weather occupy more and more space in our newspapers alongside burgeoning development, pollution, and infrastructure woes. The mood is sombre and sometimes on edge, predicting various doomsday scenarios. There are calls for action, change, and even questioning the very way of life that we have grown so used to.

Within this environment of climate change and demands to reduce emissions of green house gases our nations are preoccupied with pushing up growth indices in order to convince themselves, and others who they hope to attract investments from, that we are doing fine. If anything at all, the 2007-09 recession years have shown us that current models of development and modern day economics have serious flaws. This model implies that nations have to keep ticking to stay above. In other words, this means that we have to keep selling, keep consuming, keep producing, keep extracting, keep mining,.. to project a healthy rate of growth. Sales have to be better than before to ensure that a business is afloat, no matter if the consumer needs it or not. This has lead to a world of misinformation, exaggeration and titillation.We buy because we dread the fall-outs of not doing so, we buy because we feel that we are being benefited, we buy because we feel we are doing well and we also buy because we don't want to feel left out. Along the way we have grown to believe in these globally disseminated messages of size, gloss and finesse. Modern day economics have meant that we have lost, or are rapidly losing, any connects with the way we lived earlier. With that is the disappearance of traditional knowledge systems of carrying capacity- how much to take, when to take, how to give back and so on. What all this means is the struggle to resurrect ourselves from the graves of climate change is arduous. The important question is 'how can we maintain both modern day growth economies, and do less harm to the environment simultaneously?'

20th Century Economics necessitates increased consumption. Today's green initiatives are overwhelmingly about clean energy. While this is essential, you cannot forget other aspects of sustainability. The old adage, 'too much of anything isn't good...' is perfect to describe the situation. For the building industry to do well, it necessitates more building (whether we need it or not); the building materials sector too needs to keep doing better that they did last year to retain value in the market; this only means more raw materials needed and so on. The same applies to the Automobile, Fishing, FMCG, Textiles, and essentially every fathomable industry. We have already out-consumed natures bounty in many ways. Entire oceans of fish are vanishing, various ores and minerals have been 'mined' dry, forests have been denuded....it gets clear where this is headed. The growth based valuation of modern day economics is sending us over the precipice.

So how do we see any credible green initiative in today's context? Essentially, it is about painting a picture of an alternate world. To borrow the slogan of the World Social Forum- "Another World is Possible".Are the answers all there? Gosh no! Each initiative is about exploring possibilities and building on promising ones. We need to stop looking for overarching solutions for current day problems, and rather find what is most appropriate to us in our respective regions. Some solutions may cross borders, yet many more would be specific and limited. As professionals, serious about seeking out alternate models of development, we need to  recognise what our roles are in the prevailing economy. We are either catalysts of change, slowing down the processes of decline, or, are charting new courses development wise. There are always the nay-sayers who would label such thinking as regressive, but they act as if there exists no other possibility.

What is important are the choices that we make. We need to constantly ask ourselves questions like, 'is this good for me in the long run?', or better yet 'Is this sustainable?' before we act on our choices. It is a tough one no doubt. This 'recent past' in the context of human history is also 'the memory of our times'. The challenge is unlearning the trappings of our lifetimes and seeking connects with the past and possible futures that would ensure long term sustainability. We have begun to get connected like never before... it is important we stay the course.