Inner city sustainability precinct (Younghusband and IIG)

Great to see ongoing development and progress with the Younghusband development by Impact Investment Group (https://www.impact-group.com.au/).

IIG announced two big tenants and move towards delivering stage 1 of the masterplan - announced in the AFR yesterday: https://www.afr.com/property/commercial/fresh-legs-for-a-younghusband-20200213-p540gr

Wave Consulting drafted the initial sustainability master plan, with a target of zero water and energy use across the whole precinct. We put forward a range of innovative ways to achieve these targets.

We continue to seek and develop creative ways to reduce water and energy demands, and create distributed and smarter local systems.

(Image source: AFR, IIG, Woods Bagot)

Will this become the most water sensitive house in Melbourne?

I spent the morning at a residential house in Boroondara (eastern suburbs of Melbourne), talking about the potential to create the most water sensitive house in Melbourne (big call I know!).

Already the owner has a 26,000 litre tank that captures runoff from the entire house, a greywater system, an bund to capture overland flows, and an irrigation system across the whole site (but not always in operation).

We spent some time going through how to maximise every single drop of rainfall, reduce overland flows, increase infiltration, increase evapotranspiration, support the veggie patch, plant more natives and fruit trees, and the creation of a new ephemeral wetland.

We mapped out a plan for:

• A new leaky tank drip fed line from the 26,000 litre tank

• Ephemeral wetland fed from overflow

• Adjusted sump pump to extract more water from pit that collects all roof runoff

• Reconfigure of greywater to act as a back up for tank water

• Reconfigure of greywater to add a natural filter bed at source prior to gravity fed irrigation

• Two new infiltration trenches

• One new raingarden for overflow from stormwater pit

• A maintenance regime

The stormwater on this property will then virtually never leave via a pipe!

What I think is interesting is that we were able to identify some small but very significant issues to improve the performance of this household system. For example the stormwater sump that was collecting all runoff from the house and pumping to the tank, had a lot of standing water due to the location of the float. I think we could harvest 25% more water just by adjusting this float.

What I found particularly inspiring is that this whole project wasn’t driven by any compliance or requirement to meet planning controls. Just a passionate and energetic home owner doing their bit!

Will hope to revisit during construction and verify this is on track to be the most water sensitive house :)

Why is environmental messaging so negative?

Martin Luther King’s famous speech “I have a dream” is something I think a lot about in the context of environmental awareness and engagement. It wasn’t “I have a nightmare”, but a vision of hope.

So why is so much of the environmental news so negative? Yes we need to know the state of the environment and its future trajectory, but is it just feeding into an overall state of "eco-anxiety". I think that is a really good term, that captures the dread people (me included) feel when you hear and read about the dire state of the climate and the world.

I assume the fundamental premise here is that people will change (behaviour, purchasing habits, advocacy, etc) if they know more about what they are doing to the environment and how bad it looks.

The Guardian Australia has started a publication called "The new normal.” It’s a powerful explanation of what is happening across Australia and what could happen under a climate change scenario. But it is pretty dark. I hope they move the series into something positive and some simple calls to action.

For example have a look at this forecast of increased temperatures across Australia.

Click here to follow this series - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/the-new-normal

At Wave Consulting I often feel what we offer clients and people is a path to action. What is the smart thing we can do now, in your organisation or your home.