Technical Lead Sustainable Buildings - World Green Building Council
In this interview, we'll find out what Carolina sees as the challenges around the circular economy and the built environment, her thoughts on how to bridge the gap, and what she thinks the Circular Buildings Coalition (CBC) will aim to address and overcome.
Introducing Carolina Montano-Owen
Carolina is a civil engineer with a PhD in low carbon building design and modelling from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. She works as the Technical Lead of Sustainable Buildings for the World Green Building Council, where she delivers and leads the technical work for the Circularity Accelerator and the CBC.
Why is it important for you to be part of the coalition – both personally and for WorldGBC?
A: The core partners of the CBC have been working for years on strategies to achieve a sustainable and circular built environment, and although we have worked together in the past, we saw a great opportunity, but also a need, to formalise a strong alliance and join forces to bring a harmonised vision on circular economy strategies for the sector, to promote impactful solutions that would help us fill existing gaps and address challenges, and to foster collaboration and hopefully clearer and more ambitious targets that would help us align faster with global climate goals.
From a personal perspective, this is exciting and challenging work, and from a WorldGBC perspective, these objectives align very well with our vision and goals of creating a built environment with net zero life cycle resource use and working towards the restoration of resources and natural systems within a thriving circular economy.
What specific actions would you like to see in the next 2 years?
A: We would like to see a clearer pathway of actions and targets that the sector should follow to operate within planetary boundaries. We would like to see more NDCs with specific actions to promote circular economy practices in the built environment. We would like to see more holistic circular economy roadmaps at the city level, connecting stakeholders with the necessary physical and digital infrastructure. We would like to see commitments to zero waste in construction and demolition and minimal use of raw materials.
Who and what will/can drive the transition – what are the levers we can now benefit from?
A: A truly sustainable and circular built environment can only be achieved through individual and collective efforts, which for me means that individuals should commit to be resource efficient (which includes water, energy and products) and minimise waste in all our actions or activities. Similarly, the private sector should ensure that their products and designs are optimised to balance the three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social and economic. There is a need for new industries - we need a whole physical and digital infrastructure for taking back and storing materials, as well as for re-certifying circular materials, among other things. This will create jobs and a new skilled industry.
The public sector should create regulatory frameworks that, with the right incremental level of ambition, enable faster decarbonisation of the built environment while promoting resource efficiency. Finally, the financial sector should channel finance responsibly, avoiding greenwashing and promoting high performance and innovation.
"The public sector should create regulatory frameworks that, with the right incremental level of ambition, enable faster decarbonisation of the built environment while promoting resource efficiency."
