by jbs022610 g3 — March 1, 2010—The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) has released the draft of a revised Green Star Steel credit that aims to drive best practice steel production and fabrication and encourage dematerialization of steel in structural applications in Australia. The revised Steel credit was released February 19 for a four-week public comment period, following an extensive 12-month review.
According to GBCA, the review found that Australia’s steel industry is already recycling at world’s best practice rates. An estimated 2.8 million tonnes of steel is available for recycling from construction and industrial sources in Australia each year. In the 2007-2008 financial year, 299,681 tonnes of this total was disposed of in landfill, while 2.54 million tonnes was recovered for recycling, for a recycling rate of close to 90 percent.
“With that in mind,” says the Chief Executive of the GBCA, Romilly Madew, referring to the recycling rate, “the Steel Expert Reference Panel concluded that a revised credit was required to remove the focus on high percentages of recycled steel content in new steel products, and instead encourage best practice steel production and fabrication and dematerialized efficiencies.”
Since its inception in 2003, Green Star has included a Steel credit that encouraged the use of structural steel that contained a high percentage of recycled content. The Steel credit was included in the first Green Star rating tool, Green Star–Office Design v1, and has featured in all subsequent tools.
Under the revised credit, up to two points will be awarded where at least 95 percent of the total structural steel and reinforcing steel by mass is sourced from steel making facilities that not only have a currently valid ISO 14001 Environmental Management System in place, and are members of the World Steel Association’s Climate Action Programme, but which meet other key best practice criteria.
The revision of the Steel credit is part of a wider review of four of the GBCA’s Green Star Materials category credits–Timber, PVC, Concrete and Steel. The results of the Timber and PVC credits have already been released, with the results from the Concrete review to be released later in 2010.
