The focus on meeting standards or gaining accolades has at best stifled major impact and at worst has lulled the industry and society into the idea that we were making great strides and further action was not necessary..
We started working on this precious metals refinery in 2016.They refine five different types of precious metal.
The precious metals are obtained in raw form from many sources, but most come from catalytic converters in car exhausts.The metals, once purified, don’t look like much – a grey powder – but they are hugely expensive..They take a product like a catalytic converter, and the first process is to smelt it.
They start with just 0.3% of valuable metal by volume and after smelting, it's still a very small quantity of metal, but it’s at a size that they can put it in the back of a truck to be taken to the refinery where the valuable metals are extracted.. Their present refinery was built in 1965, and is in need of replacement.Our first job was to look at all sorts of options about where they might build a new refinery, from the UK to Europe to Asia.
For a number of reasons, the UK was the best option.
Then of course we had to find a suitable location in the UK and masterplan the site.It should be noted, that for most new developments nowadays it is not feasible to become net zero within the possibilities of the design (energy and material efficiency measures), so the use of carbon offset schemes and PPA is essential.. Why should we focus on sustainable construction and net zero carbon?.
The UK has established ambitious targets to reduce carbon by 2050.The UK aspires to reduce total carbon emissions by 78% by 2035, compared to 2020 levels, and become net zero carbon by 2050.
These ambitions, translated to the built environment, can only be achieved via the implementation of measures to reduce operational and embodied carbon of new buildings, upgrading existing buildings, the use of ambitious policies and crucially via a decarbonised grid..The built environment contributes to around 40% of the UK's total carbon footprint.