NOTE: While we are building a permanent website at dontwastebuildings.com, this page will provide some introductory information about the campaign.

DON'T WASTE BUILDINGS is the campaign to put a spotlight on embodied carbon and make the case for the productive use of empty and underperforming buildings.

These buildings, all over the UK, are untapped economic and social assets, not structures to be casually discarded.

DWB is calling on the UK government to tackle this by introducing regulation and financial incentives that will make the reuse of existing buildings simpler and more profitable.

The campaign is non-party political and is run by a collection of individuals made up of leading architects, engineers, property developers, financiers, heritage experts, and others.

DWB was co-founded in late 2022 by Leanne Tritton, Chair of The London Society and Founder of ING Media, Will Hurst, Managing Editor of The Architects’ Journal, and Richard Nelson, Managing Director of Abyss and Chair of the Institute of Directors Property and Built Environment Group.

We have about 150 members who attend our regular in-person meetings and case study tours, as well as over 800 members of our LinkedIn discussion group.

Please visit our LinkedIn group page to read the previous discussions, learn about the issues, and join the campaign to help reduce the impact of embodied carbon in the UK construction and real estate industries.

If you would like to get involved, feel free to message Richard Nelson via LinkedIn or the Take Action form on this site.

Read on for more details and background.

Introduction

Almost two-thirds of all waste produced in the UK (66 million tonnes) is construction and demolition waste. (Defra statistics, March 2020.)

Demolished buildings are typically replaced with new ones, but this creates the demand for new fossil-fuel based materials such as steel, aluminium, concrete, and brick. The emissions caused by their production, known as ‘embodied carbon’, are released into the atmosphere immediately and amount to more than 64 million tonnes of CO2 every year in Britain. (UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) ‘UKGBC Whole Life Carbon Roadmap Progress Report’ launched at COP28.)

According to the Commons Environmental Audit Committee, this is more than UK emissions from aviation and shipping combined. (EAC, Building to Net Zero, September 2022.)

What’s the issue?

Across the UK, we urgently need buildings of all shapes and sizes to serve many needs – providing space for uses such as retail, office, health, community, education, and especially housing. Yet, for decades, our regeneration approach has been to demolish and replace shops, offices, and housing blocks which are viewed as past their sell-by date.

While some buildings should be demolished or partially demolished, we now know this approach not only causes noise and disruption for communities, but also it is fuelling the climate crisis because of the sizable upfront carbon emissions caused by demolition and replacement (new build) construction. This embodied carbon is one of two types of emissions associated with buildings, the other being ‘operational carbon’, which results from the energy used to operate the building or its infrastructure, such as heating, hot water, cooling, ventilation, and lighting.

Reaching Net Zero is a major challenge that is unachievable without bearing down on both these parts of our built environment’s carbon footprint. Yet progress, especially on embodied carbon, has been far too slow.

As the UK Green Building Council has reported, for buildings and infrastructure to hit its delivery pathway or ‘roadmap’ to Net Zero, embodied carbon emissions needed to fall 17% between 2018 and 2022, yet fell by just 4%, less than one-quarter of the amount that was needed. (UKGBC’s ‘Whole Life Carbon Roadmap Progress Report’.)

What’s the answer?

“The greenest building is the one that already exists.” (Carl Elefante, former president, American Institute of Architects.)

Every empty or under-utilised building presents an opportunity to tackle the climate crisis and help communities. And there are a lot of these, especially in challenged sectors such as office and retail. The national office vacancy rate throughout the UK now stands at 7.6%, the highest in nine years (according to data from commercial real estate information company CoStar), while more than 10,000 shops closed in 2023 alone (according to the Centre for Retail Research), yet we have a national shortage of housing.

What if we viewed these numbers not just as a problem but as a potential opportunity for regeneration and possible change to better use that would attract considerable support from the general public?

In most cases, threatened buildings can be restored, repurposed, revitalised. They can be adapted for new uses and, where they are unpopular or viewed as ugly, they can be made attractive, helping to restore vitality to our High Streets and local neighbourhoods.

Continue reading more in our ‘hymn sheet’ below about what we are doing to try to impact this issue, plus our ‘Financial incentives’ and ‘planning policies’ guides.

JOIN OUR LINKEDIN GROUP AND JOIN THE CAMPAIGN!