Labbad stresses the need for companies to report their environmental performance as his firm reveals its own carbon impact

The boss of Lend Lease’s UK retail and regeneration division called for the industry to be more open in reporting its collective carbon footprint.

Daniel Labbad said companies needed to commit to measure the environmental impact of their projects regardless of how bad or good they were.

Speaking at the launch of Lend Lease Retail & Communities’ first sustainability report, Labbad, the division’s chief operating office, said: “We have to measure now.”

Labbad also praised the work of the new UK Green Building Council (UKBGC), of which Lend Lease is a founding member. He said: “It has a major contribution to make to making sense of what is a highly complex area.”

UKGBC chief executive Paul King, who also spoke at the event, backed Labbad’s call for more and better measurement. “We need some truth telling, for the industry to get real about the buildings we are designing and the way they are used. They do not perform the way we design them. We are encouraging all members to report on the impact of their buildings. We need a campaign for real data.”


Lend Lease report

The report showed the full environmental impact of Lend Lease’s retail and regeneration scheme. Highlights include:
  • The total carbon footprint of the assets managed by the division is 13,533 tonnes of CO2
  • The firm’s Bluewater retail centre has by far the biggest footprints of the Lend Lease portfolio. It emits 65% of the total CO2 of the seven retails centres the firm manages. The scheme uses 332KWh/m2 of electricity and 21KWh/m2 of gas. It also consumed 80% of the total water used by the seven centres
  • In 2006 the firm’s retail assets and office produced 10,492 tonnes of waste – of this the firm recycled or reused 3,835 tonnes, sent 458 tonnes to a waste to energy plant and sent 6,197 tonnes of waste to landfill

Bluewater shopping centre
Credit: Alamy
Bluewater shopping centre


Targets

The firm has set out key environmental targets:
  • Achieve net zero energy in management of its asses, embodied energy of its buildings and during construction of its developments by 2016
  • Achieve 80 litres/person/day in residential developments by 2016
  • Achieve zero waste to landfill by 2016

Postscript

Full Lend Lease sustainability report

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