Slowly but surely, the construction industry is waking up to the reality that we’ve been painting over the cracks in our sustainability drive with empty promises. Demand for certified-sustainable buildings continues to grow, as the Overton window slides towards rigorous, evidence-based discourse that calls out greenwashing for what it is — a damaging barrier to progress.

Despite these small green revolutions, you only need to walk through the City of London and observe the brightly lit empty offices at 3pm on a Friday afternoon to see we are still a long way off our sustainable goals.

It seems that our fixation on Science Based Targets and environmental badges of honour —BREEAM, LEED, Zero Energy Certification, you name it — although well intentioned, is distracting us from the bigger picture. While drilling down into the detailed, box-ticking exercises required to achieve these credentials, we are ignoring a key part of the sustainable building picture: human experience, and levels of use.

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