How Garnica products can get you BREEAM credits

The Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, or BREEAM for short, is an internationally recognized method for assessing and certifying the sustainability of buildings. Owned by BRE, a profit-for-purpose organization with over 100 years of building science and research background, BREEAM’s sustainability standards have helped implement best practices at all stages of the construction process. To date, 270,000 buildings have been certified in over 63 countries around the world and counting.

It is worth highlighting that BREEAM certification is for buildings, but construction materials – like Garnica plywood – play a key role in determining a building’s green credentials. They’ll also get you BREEAM credits. Keep reading to discover everything you need to know about BREEAM certification and how Garnica products can boost your sustainability score.  

What is BREEAM?

BREEAM is a standard that enables teams to certify the sustainability of their projects. The certification tailors its requirements to different categories of construction projects, namely:

• New construction – evaluating the design, construction, intended use and future-proofing of new builds
• Buildings in use – providing a framework to help teams put in place sustainable and cost-effective solutions
• Refurbishment and fit out - evaluating the design, construction, intended use and future-proofing renovation projects

During the BREEAM certification process, credits are awarded to individual buildings for compliance with the requirements set out by BRE. The framework covers a wide range of issues in the construction industry, which we will discuss below.

BREEAM credits explained

There are a total of ten BREEAM credit categories:

• Sustainable management – considering the performance of the building throughout its lifetim
• Health and wellbeing – awarding buildings that seek to maximize user comfort
• Energy – taking into account the CO2 emitted by buildings and emissions from manufacturing, transport, and people
• Transport – working in tandem with the Energy category to minimize emissions related to transport
• Water – looking at how designers can reduce users’ water consumption
• Materials – taking into consideration both the raw materials used in the building and how much energy is used to create each element
• Waste – assessing how much waste is generated by the build
• Land use and ecology – looking at builders’ choice of location 
• Pollution – evaluating the building’s impact on environmental phenomenon like acid rain, ozone depletion, and flooding 
• Innovation – promoting constant improvement in terms of both technologies and the market

All the credits are added up to give a total, which corresponds to one of six benchmarks: Unclassified (<30), Pass (>30), Good (>45), Very good (>55), Excellent (>70), and Outstanding (>85). Choosing Garnica products can get you credits in the Materials category. For more information on this, check out our helpful guide.

The benefits of BREEAM certification

BREEAM has countless benefits. Not only does it reduce the operational costs of buildings, increase the value of assets, improve users’ wellbeing, attract tenants and support company’s ESG, BREEAM also challenges the widespread belief that high quality, sustainable buildings are significantly more expensive to design and construct than those that meet mandatory regulatory requirements. Indeed, studies show that sustainable options often do not increase the investment cost of projects; sometimes they can even reduce it.

All this, in turn, is good news for the environment. Sustainable buildings play an essential role in tackling the climate emergency. Construction is one of the industries with the furthest ways to go in this regard – accounting for around 37% of energy- and process-related CO2 emissions and over 34% of energy demand globally – and here at Garnica we’re dedicated to going the extra mile. 

Choose Garnica and you’ll be sourcing a plywood panel manufactured from wood grown in local sustainably managed tree farms in Europe. Many of our products use poplar – a species with huge carbon sequestering power – and our production centers are just a stone’s throw from the forest. It doesn’t get much greener than that. Take the first step in making a sustainable swap by finding out where your nearest provider is today.