Breath of Fresh Air for Shoppers

A visit to the most environmentally-friendly shopping centre in Australia and the first retail centre in the world to be awarded a six star rating by the Green Building Council Australia, in the same week as Local Governments for Sustainability USA launched a comprehensive resource to guide cities and countries through the process of greening their communities.

A visit was arranged this past week by the Green Building Council of Australia to see Mirvac’s Orion Springfield Town Centre.

ABC Carbon’s Ken Hickson went along to see for himself why it has officially been confirmed as Australia’s most environmentally friendly shopping centre and the first retail centre in the world to be awarded a six star rating.  

From the moment one arrives by bus at Orion Springfield, eyes cannot help but focus on the symbolic solar panel tower, suggesting there’s something special about this shopping centre.

While the facts and figures speak for themselves when it comes to energy and water savings, it is always wise to see for yourself to evaluate if the shopping experience itself suffers in any way with a sustainable approach to building and management.

A breath of fresh air? Yes, its true there’s ten times more fresh air in Orion Springfield due to greater use of natural ventilation. The building is designed to minimise the use of air conditioning, even in a warm south east Queensland location.

See the light? Yes, there’s much more natural lighting coming into the public space inside the buildings than you’d normally expect in a shopping centre, thereby minimising the use of the massive lighting and electricity use.

What about water? No problem. There’s 68% reduction in potable water used here compared with standard industry practice. Recycled water is used for all the non-drinking, non-washing purposes.

Waste not, want not? Besides the reduction of waste during construction, this building encourages all occupants to deal with waste in a responsible fashion, managing to achieve a very high level of recycling and reducing the amount of waste going to landfill.

The management team will tell you – and you can check this out in the brochures and online – that overall, Orion Springfield manages to achieve the following:

• A 42%saving in power use (enough to power 500 Queensland homes per year).
• A saving of 5000 tonnes of green house gas emissions – equivalent to taking 1162 cars off the road per year.
• A saving of 5000 tonnes of landfill waste.

So in design and construction, Mirvac has achieved top marks for sustainability and reduction in energy and emissions. The test comes with management as well, and it’s here that the shopping centre company has also excelled.

So much so, that management is currently looking at ways to further enhance its high sustainability position, which has already won for it many national awards.

Maybe it will come with even greater use of renewable energy, going beyond the attractive, but largely symbolic solar tower, to fitting photo voltaic panels all over its extensive roofs.

There’s also work to be done to reduce the dominance of the private car as the primary means of getting to and from Orion. There is a bus service, but shelter and access for public transport users (and pedestrians), is not as good as it should be.

There will come a time when a rail service will bring shoppers (and workers) directly to the place, but there’s a wait expected of some years for that.

Since the first stage was completed in 2007, and as work is about to begin on the second phases, there’s technology and innovations now available that could lead to additional savings in energy, water and waste.

Keeping an eye on any competitors. Mirvac will be making sure that it keeps its reputation intact in this the first six star green shopping centre, taking advantage of new energy efficiency and renewable energy opportunities.

Source: www.mirvac.com and  www.orionspringfield.com.au

By GreenerBuildings Staff (3 December 2009):

OAKLAND, CA — ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability USA launches a comprehensive resource today to guide cities and countries, step by step, through the process of greening their communities.

The 55-page Sustainability Planning Toolkit is modeled after the city of New York’s highly successful PlaNYC guide and was developed by ICLEI in collaboration with the New York Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.

“Our toolkit is a roadmap to guide any local government, big or small, through the process of creating a sustainability plan,” ICLEI USA’s Senior Communications Officer Don Knapp said in a statement provided to GreenerBuildings.com. 

“Staff from ICLEI’s local government members have been telling us how eager they are for a resource like this toolkit, because creating a sustainability plan can be a complex and lengthy endeavor,” Knapp said.

“There are so many steps to go through, so many individual initiatives to consider, so many stakeholders to involve, and it’s hard to know where to begin. Municipal staff didn’t want to have to reinvent the wheel and create their own process from scratch, especially when their resources and manpower are often so limited. Fortunately, big cities like New York have acted as the trailblazer.”

The toolkit is replete with best practice examples, checklists, templates and guidelines that provide an explicit how-to for users. Steps covered include building the planning team, structuring the planning process and a look at the strategies and measures to include in plans.

The guide is premised on “five milestone” tasks that authors say local governments must complete to in order to move forward:

Milestone 1: Conduct a sustainability assessment

Milestone 2: Establish sustainability goals

Milestone 3: Develop a local sustainability plan

Milestone 4: Implement policies and measures

Milestone 5: Evaluate progress and report results

By following that path, local governments can devise effective, measurable goals that can be measured over time, the organization says.

“Our toolkit shows local government staff how to create a plan that won’t just sit on a shelf, but will become an integral part of government operations,” Knapp said. “We believe this toolkit is going to empower and accelerate the efforts of our local government members, who are already the leaders in sustainability initiatives.” 

The toolkit is the first of two key resources that will offered by ICLEI USA. The second is the STAR Community Index, which is expected to formally launch in 2011 and is to provide a framework for “gauging the sustainability and livability of U.S. communities,” the organization says.

A soft launch of municipal goals for the framework is targeted for early 2010. One-hundred-sixty-five people representing 135 groups — among them 60 cities and 10 counties — are helping to develop the framework.

The U.S. organization has 600 cities, counties and towns as members. The international group is made up of 1,107 member towns, cities and counties in 67 countries. The organization was founded in 1990 and initially was called the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.

More information about the organization is available at http://www.icleiusa.org/.

Source: www.greenerbuildings.com