Octatube develops tool to measure environmental impact

How can we reduce our carbon emissions as a design & build company? Since the beginning of this year, we at Octatube have been working on this question. We are glad to share that we are developing a tool that will help us assess the environmental impact of every of our building envelope projects to make better choices.

From next year, we aim to undertake a life-cycle carbon assessment for every building envelope project. As a design and build company, we focus on both the early stages of Life Cycle Assessment and the embodied carbon generated by manufacturing, transport of materials and the construction process. Significant because research (from the WBCSD and Arup) shows that an estimated 50% of carbon emissions from buildings throughout their life cycle come from embodied carbon.

We are now investing in research, external collaborations and a tool for our internal teams that integrates various methods to assess our environmental impact and embodied carbon.

The tool extracts components such as mass, length and surfaces from our Inventor digital fabrication models and applies a carbon factor based on a selected digital data source (such as EPDs, EcoInvent, Idemat, The ICE Database, EC3). The first step focuses on the embodied carbon of the components arriving to us. The designer gets information about the different options and their carbon levels. A significant step allowing us to assess our impact and share it with external partners and clients.

Our aim is then to go a step further and fully integrate complex project-specific data on transport, waste, execution of works in the factory, office energy consumption, etc.

We will further reduce our carbon footprint. Together we can make a difference, in the construction sector as well. Being a B corp encourages us!

Want to know more? Contact Maria Meizoso, Design Manager at Octatube and lead of the ECO2 tool team. She will be happy to tell you more.