BREEAM - Version 2/91: Environmental Assessment for New Superstores and Supermarkets

Environmental issues are becoming increasingly important, and good building design can contribute considerably to reducing pollution and improving the environment. The assessement method described here specifies criteria for a range of issues concerning the global, neighbourhood and indoor environments. The main objectives of the assessment method are: to provide recognition for buildings which are friendlier to the global environment than normal practice and so help to stimulate a market for them; to improve the indoor environmental quality and occupant health; to raise awareness of the dominant role buildings play in global warming through the greenhouse effect, and their significant role in the production of acid rain, through the burning of fossil fuels for energy, and the depletion of the ozone layer; to reduce the long-term impact buildings have on the global environment; to provide a common set of targets and standards so that false claims of environmental friendliness are avoided; to encourage designers to achieve environmentally sensitive buildings. This assessment method, which is carried out at the design stage, is based on readily available and generally accepted information. The method identifies and credits designs where specific targets are met. It is not expected that any single design will meet all of the target requirements. Meeting one or more means that the building is likely to be environmentally better than buildigns where these issues have not been addressed. A scheme which seeks both to improve the health of the building's occupants and to reduce the amount of external environmental pollution faces the difficult problems of assigning a relative weighting to the different effects. However, it is believed that a relative weighting scheme is not possible today because of the great difficulty in putting an economic cost to the long-term effects of environmental issues such as global warming. A pragmatic approach has been developed which accepts that it is important to take action in the short term. No common scale will be used by an individual credits will be achieved where satisfactory attention is given to each of the items in the assessment. The assessment separates the items into: global effects - where the benefits are to reduce global warming, acid rain and ozone depletion; neighbourhood effects - where the benefits are to the outdoor environment near to the building; and indoor effects where the benefits are to the health, safety and well-being of the occupants. Where health aspects are covered by building regulations or by the normal practices of architects and consulting services engineers during design, there is no need to consider them in the scheme. Attention will only be paid to those things which are at the forefront of current knowledge but have yet to become standards aspects of building design. Not all of the issues of current research and media concern have reached the stage where there is sufficient evidence for action through an environmental assessment. Items will only be included where there is authoritative evidence that a real risk is involved and that the risk can be assessed. The assessment scheme may improve the indoor environmental conditions for the occupants beyond those of buildings meetings the minimum standards of building regulations. Future versions of the assessment scheme will be modified in the light of further information becoming available.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Global effects: carbon dioxide emission targets; CFC emissions; timber and timber products; recycling of materials. Part 2 Neighbourhood effects: Legionnaires' disease; noise; reuse of an existing site; vapour recovery; overshadowing of other buildings and land; water economy. Part 3 Indoor effects: domestic water system designed to minimize the risk of Legionnaries' disease; indoor air quality; hazardous materials; lighting; references. Appendices: appendix a - summary of credits; appendix b - future issues.