We’ve upgraded our Waste Rating for Office Buildings to include a Material Recovery Score (MRS), which will be applied to every Waste Rating. This score is a measure of the quality of the end-of-life outcome of waste leaving a commercial building. It aligns to the waste hierarchy and circular economy principles. This change ensures that waste ratings more accurately reflect a building’s environmental impact.
Through the MRS we’re targeting:
- reduced carbon emissions
- faster transition to a circular economy
- support for better resource recovery through clean stream source separation
- reduction of pollution, or risk of pollution.
In its first release the NABERS Waste Rating benchmarked how much waste was separated into the different recycling streams on-site. With the MRS, the rating will also measure how likely those materials are to be recovered. For example, rewarding buildings that work with their waste contractors to get their organics collections to a composting facility, or ensure their PET bottles are chipped for new PET products.
With the MRS we hope to incentivise waste contracts and on-site management practices which are more likely to result in materials being re-used. The MRS is a more sophisticated measure of a building’s performance and will lead to improved conversations with waste companies and ultimately higher rates of resource recovery from office buildings across Australia.
We're thinking beyond the bin. Are you? #thinkbeyondthebin #CitySwitch #betterbuildingspartnership #wipeoutwaste
For more information, click here or send us an email at nabers@environment.nsw.gov.au