Improving sustainability of commercial buildings

It is becoming imperative to have a strategic plan for waste management, giving investment companies opportunities to achieve such accreditations.

The last five years have seen this trend increase significantly, with investment companies in the UK and around the world looking to achieve GRESB & BREEAM accreditations to enhance the sustainability of their property portfolios.

Such accreditations add capital value to properties, the impact of which is an increased level of responsibility to the nominated managing agent and waste partner.

The Better Buildings Partnership Programme

The Better Buildings Partnership (BBP) is a collaboration of the UK’s leading commercial property owners who are working together to improve the sustainability of existing commercial building stock.

The programme focuses on setting standards and assisting UK property managers find a better way to procure waste services to help them achieve their sustainability targets. Achieving these targets will assist investment companies with GRESB & BREEAM accreditation.

This behaviour change is great for raising awareness, improving performance, and generally being more sustainable. In our many years in the property market, we have seen clients become more engaged with waste and recycling.

Waste has historically been seen as a poor relation to other sustainability programmes like energy and water. Now, it is coming to the forefront of investment companies’ minds. Organisations like the BBP are helping property managers understand what “good looks like” when procuring and implementing waste strategy.

Low unit rates are now being put into context as property managers understand there is greater need to look at overall costs, and how these can be driven out for good.

Managing Agent Programme

We’re pleased to have been chosen as a partner to work with the BBP to set standards and drive out best practice across the industry.

The BBP implemented a Managing Agent Programme (MAP) to provide documentation which can be used by investors and managing agents alike. The documentation ensures they procure waste services in the right way to help them achieve their environmental targets.

In addition to the procurement documentation, MAP focused on the need for the industry to have standardised metrics in place for reporting, as inconsistency in weight data and reporting is an issue throughout both the property management and waste industries.

Each supplier or agent uses their own mechanisms to calculate weight data, the impact of which means investment companies cannot compare agent to agent or property to property – figures can also be severely affected if a managing agent changes service provider.

To eradicate this issue, we have developed guidelines for all weight assumptions by mode, waste stream, and property type where actual weight data isn’t available.

If you’d like to learn more about the BBP and their goal to improve sustainability, you can view the following resources: