Environmental Policy Statement

Our Environmental Policy sets out how PAD studio recognises the duty and responsibility to our employees, clients, suppliers, and collaborators to undertake all its business activities in an environmentally, socially responsible, and sustainable manner. Including the design, specification and procurement of our projects.

PAD studio has three core values that align with our company commitments, these are:

Question

Question with research to create solutions with positive impacts on the environment and well-being of all people.

Respect

Respect nature by mitigating negative impacts to the environment.

Celebrate

Engaged with climate and biodiversity issues, celebrating these challenges as opportunities.

 

Both our Business and Project Environmental Policies have our core aims at their heart. These policies have been developed to support one another and to ensure that PAD studio can operate in a responsible manner, to deliver environmentally and socially sensitive work.

Business Environmental Policy

PAD studio commits to:

  • Educate and train our staff to ensure environmental issues are widely discussed and we can make informed decisions based on up-to-date research and data.
  • Encourage all employees to review their individual consumption of goods and services, including travel options and the reduction in single-use products and packaging.
  • Provide staff with Home Office Environmental Guidance
  • Give preference to products and services that are circular in design.
  • Give preference to suppliers who embrace low-carbon solutions.
  • Strive to use products and services that are as low as possible in upfront energy (embodied) carbon and can be reused where possible and disposed of in an environmentally and socially responsible manner.
  • Promote and support local, independent and smaller suppliers where possible.
  • Minimise energy use by; keeping lights off where not required, and carefully monitoring heating demand.
  • Retain a green electrical energy supplier.
  • Ensure all recyclable waste is allocated for recycling by the local authority.
  • Recycle all electronic equipment in accordance with our E-waste recycling policy.
  • Minimise business travel by using public transport or virtual meetings.

Project Environmental Policy

PAD studio are signatories of UK Architects Declare Climate and Biodiversity Emergency and RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge. These two initiatives form the basis of PAD studio’s Environmental Policy Statement. From 2021 the studio is committed to ensuring ALL projects will be designed in accordance with and evaluated against the commitments outlined in these two initiatives.

UK Architects Declare Climate and Biodiversity Emergency

We (PAD studio) will seek to:

  • Raise awareness of the climate and biodiversity emergencies and the urgent need for action amongst our clients and supply chains.
  • Advocate for faster change in our industry towards regenerative design practices and a higher Governmental funding priority to support this.
  • Establish climate and biodiversity mitigation principles as the key measure of our industry’s success: demonstrated through awards, prizes and listings.
  • Share knowledge and research to that end on an open source basis.
  • Evaluate all new projects against the aspiration to contribute positively to mitigating climate breakdown, and encourage our clients to adopt this approach.
  • Upgrade existing buildings for extended use as a more carbon efficient alternative to demolition and new build whenever there is a viable choice.
  • Include life cycle costing, whole life carbon modelling and post occupancy evaluation as part of our basic scope of work, to reduce both embodied and operational resource use.
  • Adopt more regenerative design principles in our studios, with the aim of designing architecture and urbanism that goes beyond the standard of net zero carbon in use.
  • Collaborate with engineers, contractors and clients to further reduce construction waste.
  • Accelerate the shift to low embodied carbon materials in all our work.
  • Minimise wasteful use of resources in architecture and urban planning, both in quantum and in detail.
  • Support those who are working for climate justice and strive to ensure equity and an improved quality of life for all.

RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge

The RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge aims at meeting voluntary performance targets for operational energy use, water use and embodied carbon. Performance targets align with the future legislative horizon. Setting out a challenging but achievable trajectory, to realise the significant reductions necessary by 2030 in order to have a realistic prospect of achieving net zero carbon for the whole UK building stock by 2050.

The RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge does not seek to replace or replicate a building environmental assessment. There is no associated RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge certification procedure. Instead, the RIBA presents a set of performance outcome targets for RIBA Chartered Practices to aim towards. The 2030 Climate Challenge is voluntary and is based on trust. No penalty imposed on Practices or projects that fall short of the Challenge.

Signatories who join the Challenge commit to attempt to meet the targets on all their new and major refurbishment projects and commit to submitting data on these projects to the RIBA, when available. Submitted data will be anonymised and used only for specific purposes

The purpose of the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge is to encourage Practices to take action now. And to collaboratively shift in the profession towards outcome orientated design approaches.