Hi, I am an architect; I have worked for over 25 years with projects, construction and research.
I have a master’s degree and a doctorate degree, I started to study about the relationship
between sustainability and architecture.
And my work ended up being completely geared towards this area.
Today, along with projects, sustainable construction consultancy, my company is also a Breeam certifier,
certifying buildings and communities.
We also represent some strategic consulting companies such as Space Syntax, we offer classes,
workshops at companies and such.
Well, the theme of construction is strategic for the issue of sustainability, although
for me, at least, it didn’t seem like it until a short time ago.
The construction sector uses the most natural resources of the planet.
Today 20% more resources are used than the planet can replace, 40% of this consumption
is from construction activities and in Brazil, 70% of the illegal wood and 34% of potable
water is consumed by construction activities.
Waste is also very significant.
70% of our waste is urban waste, that’s a lot of waste, comes from construction activities,
more than 90 million tons per year.
So, speaking about this general framework, I also brought some products, some material
that we know, right?
Weather or not you are an architect, we live in a house, work in constructed locations,
that cause a lot of impact.
We consume, for example, more cement than food, per person, per day.
And this material is responsible for 5% of worldwide CO2 emissions.
Asbestos, found in roof tiles, fiber or cement water tanks, has already been prohibited in
50 countries and is related to 90 thousand deaths per year from diseases such as silicosis.
There is also the issue of domestic sewage systems, 50% of our sewage is collected.
And less than 35% is actually treated.
And water, we know that our planet is a Water Planet.
But of this water, 95.7% is salt water and less than 1% is fresh, clean and potable.
This map shows the availability of water on the planet.
By country, by region.
The areas in blue are those that do not have any problem with water availability.
The areas in red are the opposite, they are places that have a lot of problems with water
availability.
So of the 7 billion and something people that we are today, 1 billion already have a lot
of problems with regards to access to potable water.
Energy is also a very complex issue.
More than 80% of the energy we generate comes from fossil fuels; which are greatly responsible
for global warming.
And the cost of generating energy can also generate a lot of investments.
In Brazil, an electric shower heater that costs 50 reiais can demand an investment of
2 thousand reiais.
And the issue of wood is also a complex issue.
You hear a lot about not using wood to not cut down our forests, right?
Well, we really do have urgent problems with regards to the issue of illegal deforestation,
but is it really that simple?
The issue of illegal deforestation is actually a very, very complicated issue.
An area like this one was probably cut down because someone wanted to get one, two, a
few big, leafy trees and opened this big clearing to take these few trees away.
When extracted in an illegal or inadequate way, the land stays exposed, deforested without
care and the communities of the forest, because communities exist in the forest, can not develop
adequately So these are some issues that I wanted to
point out about the evidence of the impacts that are relevant, that we generate in our
day to day lives, in the environment.
And why is it that we are not brought to urgent action to learn about all of these issues?
Maybe because we inherited some ideas from the Industrial Revolution that products, that
natural resources are unending.
So we don’t need to be worried about how they are extracted, what kind of impact they
can cause during extraction, production or when they become products, are utilized or
even when they become trash, because Earth, in some way or another, is going to absorb,
will resolve this, will sustain this.
These could be completely reasonable ideas during the era of the Industrial Revolution,
when the Earth had 1 billion human inhabitants.
We have grown an absurd amount in a very short time.
But we continue to have the idea that we should only be worried about what we consume and
what we like because we have money and we want to consume without having to be worried
about the before or after, what happens with this.
This is how we were raised.
And this issue of the economy as well, of this economic model, it also implies a revolution
of demand.
This revolution of having desires, these desires becoming necessities and these necessities
generating consumption to maintain the whole structure that was conceived in this way.
But does it really fit?
Can we really consume as much as we are talking about here?
In the way that Hélio said a bit back.
If we were fewer people, we could consume a lot and the planet could absorb all of this
and then we wouldn’t even be here talking about this issue.
But maybe it is not like this.
The Carbon Footprint does these calculations.
It determines how much of the planet we consume, with the number of people we are, the inhabitants
that we have.
This map shows what each country should consume on average, proportionally.
Those in dark red tend to consume 9 to 10 planets, proportionally.
So, what are the solutions?
How do we solve this issue, besides consuming less?
Buildings were considered to be cheaper and more efficient alternatives for reducing impacts
on the planet.
And I can offer solutions for some of the issues that I pointed out quickly earlier.
In order to reduce the impacts of cement, for example, there is CP III cement, that
uses 70% of recycled material, it is more economic and shows great results.
It is a great option.
For issues of coverings, there are green roofs.
They don’t only provide coverage, they are thermal vegetation cushions that cover and
also absorb heat instead of reflecting it to other buildings.
The issue of the enormous volume of waste that we generate with constructions, demolitions,
can also be diminished with the use of leftover of bricks, etc to make concrete.
I imagine that many here don’t work with construction, but to make concrete, you need
gravel, small rocks cut into little pieces, and we can use leftover pieces of stones,
bricks, making the same substance, utilizing this in the mixture instead of using mountains
to make our gravel.
Sewage systems can also be better.
Today we have small sewage treatment systems that can be used for small houses or for large
sites, and on the same property, this system can transform 90% of the water in potable
water, for secondary use: irrigation, or for toilets.
And we can economize the monthly cost of this resource by 40%.
For energy we also have options, which have been talked about a lot here, clean and renewable
energy sources that are very positive.
And wood, wood is a solution, wood is definitely a solution, I consider wood a solution.
But it is only a solution if it is used in a certified way.
And I would like to tell you why, because I don’t know if people know what certified
wood is.
Certified wood is wood whose entire process is traced.
From extraction to how it is managed, the labor and transportation that is used.
The transportation that is used until the wood is sold.
So there is wood today that has a seal from Ibama, which is required, but has only this
moment, this transportation certified.
This wood is not considered certified wood, this is wood that has a seal, a transport
document.
And wood has other advantages as well.
It is a material that can be renewed.
You plant it and it grows again.
Many of the raw materials that we use don’t do this.
Stone, for example, you can’t plant it and make it grow again, right?
Just imagine!
There is also the idea of carbon capturing.
That wood is a carbon bank.
So you have a tree, it turns into a table, a door, a floor.
And this floor can last 60 to 70 years, my floor at home, that was my grandmother’s,
is much, much older than this, and the carbon is caught there in the floor.
It will only be released when the wood degrades and becomes waste.
So, what would be good sustainable architecture?
We can consider good sustainable architecture to be that which aggregates value to a project,
quality to a project such as creativity, beauty, but that also incorporates concepts of eco-efficiency,
of comfort due to reducing impacts, waste and with this saving money.
Well, saving money is an interesting topic because I hear that sustainable products are
more expensive.
They aren’t always more expensive.
Some that I mentioned here are not more expensive.
But lets consider those that are.
If a product is not sustainable, this means that it, at some point in its process, creates
impacts in some way.
Either toxicity or pollution in rivers or it directly or indirectly causes some catastrophe.
Lets consider a catastrophe.
If there is a catastrophe directly or indirectly related to an impact of this kind, who pays
to recuperate the areas?
We do, through taxes or emergency measures that are often much more costly than preventative
measures.
And often are irreversible.
You spend money and also have economic, environmental and social harm, certainly the unsustainable
product turns out to be more expensive than the sustainable one.
This is what happens with meat.
Cows, considering all of the herds, emit more CO2 than all automobiles.
But this price, this value, this cost, is not in the price of the meat.
Another issue that people ask me about is sustainable initiatives in buildings.
Sustainable initiatives are always welcome.
But does a sustainable initiative mean that that the building is sustainable?
We consider a building to have various categories of impacts, they can be related to water,
energy, materials, waste, and much more.
If I have an item from these sustainable categories but many others are even worse than other
buildings, can I consider my building to be more sustainable than others because I have
a good initiative?
This is why we have building certification, in urban areas, this certification contributes
to evaluating, informing and teaching new habits of sustainability and also helps to
reduce impacts in the buildings, which, as we saw earlier, are very relevant.
So, to conclude, there are two points that I would like to talk about.
One is the issue of information.
If there is an issue at the moment that we are in, of increasing recognition of the relevance
of this theme, and therefore, information is our best ally.
Now, incorrect information, that claims to be sustainable without being so, what we call
greenwashing, is a huge danger.
This issue of greenwashing today is a huge problem.
I don’t know how much you all work with this area, or directly with sustainability,
but today we have very elaborate greenwashing issues, very sophisticated, that basically
count on our lack of information to exist.
But if a product, if the idea is that a product uses greenwashing is bad, on the one hand,
on the other it is also proof that we are on the path to sustainability.
Because, why would a company that only wants to sell its product worry about appearing
sustainable, if this didn’t mean increase the sales of the product?
And now, to conclude, I would like to talk about what stimulates me to work in this direction,
more and more towards sustainability.
It’s the numbers.
The numbers that increase in problems, I already spoke about some, also grow, significantly
if we consider the clarity that we have more and more these days about these issues and
consider, as Hélio also commented: “If each one does a little and this little is
multiplied by the huge number of people that we are, this reality will definitely be transformed
quickly and very positively.”
I believe that this is the basis of a new reality that we
are constructing in our world.
Thank you.