As required by the National Construction Code and all other relevant standards and codes applicable to the Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre, building products were necessarily considered for structural safety, combustibility and many other factors related to fitness for purpose – depending on their actual application at the Brickworks Shopping Centre. Like with any building, all regulatory requirements for the construction had to be met, with the requirements of the Living Building Challenge® being addressed as well as possible in this context, noting that compromises often needed to be made.
Anyone using any building product, whether listed on the Greensheet or otherwise, should take all necessary measures to ensure that the products that are used address all relevant standards and codes for their own application.
The Greensheet is not specifically focused on structural safety nor on combustibility. Every construction product anywhere naturally has usage limitations. The purpose of the Greensheet is not to endorse any product nor is it a list of materials that will work in every given context. Anyone specifying products for their own projects need to satisfy themselves that their choices are appropriate to the application, including in respect of structural safety and combustibility.
Consideration was given to product ingredients, air quality impacts, location of manufacture/assembly, embodied carbon, lifecycle impacts, responsible sourcing, energy/water consumption where applicable, as well as a project’s typical criteria, for example, time, cost, fit-for-purpose/scope.
The Greensheet is updated periodically and usually when batches of new products are used at Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre.
There were thousands of products that were researched that are not listed on the Greensheet, either because they were non-compliant, or were not procured at the time. Due to respect for supplier privacy, we are not able to provide the list of products that did not make the Greensheet.
There are a few ways to search. Either, enter words freely into the main search bar, search by product category (which mimics the NATSPEC categories – Australia’s construction specification system), or by specific product supplier/manufacturer. It is also possible to sort the order by Declare Status, Product Category, Type, Supplier/Manufacturer, and Name.
The Greensheet may be incrementally updated and is not available for download as a whole. It can be accessed and viewed at any time on the website.
Names of products change, as do what they’re made of, and their associated websites and webpages. As these aspects are out of our control, we opted to provide product supplier/manufacturer and name only. Please search for the supplier or product using normal search [engine] methods.
Product names do change. Trade names might also be different from product names. It’s always best to check with the suppliers directly.
That’s not technically possible, because the Greensheet lists products that were used at the Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre that were in the scope of the Living Building Challenge® at the time of procurement. We fully expect products to keep evolving, and it’s best to engage directly with suppliers to keep abreast of changes that are being made.
Please read this FAQs section carefully first. If your question is not answered, our team can be contacted at: https://www.frasersproperty.com.au/Living-Building-Challenge/Home/Contact-Us
The Greensheet lists products that were used at the Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre that were in the scope of the Living Building Challenge® at the time of procurement. If you are a supplier and you believe your product was used but is missing here, please contact our team here: https://www.frasersproperty.com.au/Living-Building-Challenge/Home/Contact-Us, providing specific details of what is missing.
The Greensheet is specifically for products used in the construction of Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre. If a supplier/manufacturer wishes to get on to Living Building Challenge® projects, the most appropriate way to do that is to obtain a Declare Label.
See https://living-future.org.au/declare/
The best way is to go through the Living Future Institute’s Declare program.
See https://living-future.org.au/declare/
See the info provided by the International Living Future Institute here: https://living-future.org/lbc/
See https://living-future.org/declare/declare-about/red-list/
Declare is a global transparency platform and product database. Products with a Declare Label disclose several aspects about a product, and this information is publicly available.
The Greensheet, by Frasers Property Australia is specific to the Burwood Brickworks shopping centre project. It contains several products where the project team had to seek significant information from suppliers that, for whatever reason, is not made publicly available by those providers.
See https://living-future.org.au/declare/
Not necessarily. Every project is different, and every product needs to be assessed in the context of its application. The Living Building Challenge®, related standards, and materials supply chains themselves change over time. The Greensheet might best be seen simply as a helpful resource and starting point for projects undertaking the Living Building Challenge®, and project teams need to contact all suppliers and manufacturers for their own projects.
The Living Building Challenge® handbook for materials provides guidance on all the requirements. We suggest you engage with the supplier directly to determine if their product meets these in the context of your application.
No. Some products that contained Red List ingredients were required to fit the project needs and there were external standards and other conflicting technical factors (e.g. fit-for-purpose) that pushed the project team to make compromises like any other project. As required by the Living Building Challenge®, advocacy was undertaken to all suppliers who had Red List ingredients in their products.
There are numerous reasons why certain products contain Red List ingredients. More-often-than-not, they’re a result of market limitations in the context of the product application. Using tapware as an example, procuring the very wide array of taps needed in a mixed-use building like Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre that meets Australian and other Standards sometimes leaves no choices. Those completely lead-free taps to those specifications simply do not exist – yet. The Living Building Challenge® is also a powerful advocacy tool, and as such, every single time a product contained any Red List ingredient, the project team advocated to manufacturers and suppliers to encourage the removal of these ingredients. Even if it were possible to go overseas and procure all lead-free taps for the project, this would have had a limited impact on the Australian supply chain or the Australian Standards. With the advocacy that has taken place in conjunction with support from other parties, we are proud to be part of a shift to reducing lead in Australia.
The Greensheet is product-specific, not supplier-specific. Suppliers will supply products that might comply with the Living Building Challenge® and other products that don’t. It’s always best to liaise with the supplier directly and never rely entirely on this Greensheet.
The list does not provide procurement advice nor is an advert for products. We encourage project teams to contact specific manufacturers and distributors if interested in purchasing their products and inform them what is driving your investment decision!
Yes, all new timber is Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC) certified. Remaining timber has been salvaged, i.e. used timber that has been repurposed wholly in its original form or with slight refurbishment or alterations.
Note – we found it important to be especially-careful in the area of timber procurement, because whilst many suppliers in the chain state that they provide FSC timber, some is certified and some not. It was necessary to continually specify exact requirements when purchasing and following up through to installers and contractors on site.
Every product was specified for numerous reasons – timing, cost, application, as well as compliance – it’s all context-specific. There is no doubt that over time, the product and materials supply chain will keep progressing and improving, which is the very point of the release of the Greensheet and the Living Building Challenge®.
With limited research, we found some products were compliant with the Living Building Challenge® without needing to look at alternatives. In other cases, up to seven alternatives were researched. The average was around one compliant product in three. Note that sometimes products that were not used may have been compliant, but due to lack of supplier transparency, it was not possible to ascertain that at the time.
Materials specification for any project is often a process of managing many competing factors and adding the requirements of the Living Building Challenge® to this certainly added extra considerations. We found that communications about what the Living Building Challenge® is about and why we were trying to do it depended on who we were talking to and what their drivers may have been. It was helpful to think about the broader supply chain – from the individuals working in manufacturing through to the end-of-life of construction products, and everything in between, particularly with a focus on human and ecosystem health. Despite these challenges, we were encouraged to see how well people across the industry all the way to individuals coming to the building have responded to our efforts.
Some alternative materials are shaped differently – or are more difficult to shape - from those that have historically been used in mainstream construction. For example, non-PVC electrical cabling and hydraulic fixtures might be less flexible or fewer in type respectively, which meant the project team had to carefully consider service runs, or tolerances and accessibility for the installation.
PVC-alternatives included Low Smoke Zero Halogen (LSZH), Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), silicone, polypropylene, and polyethylene in its various forms. There were scenarios where plastics were avoided altogether through design and/or through material substitution, e.g. rubber, copper, linoleum, etc.
Design-for-disassembly is not explicitly reflected in the list of materials, as more-often-than not, design for disassembly relates to how materials are designed into the application and installed.
Given the retail typology, the project team focused on both the potential flexibility and disassembly of the base building, and for tenancies, looked at numerous approaches, e.g. undertaking assessments of pre-used spaces prior to any demolition or removal of materials, “take-back” services from suppliers, reducing additional systems/services being required in the first instance through passive design, prioritising modular components over a standard structural grid, using prefabricated assemblies, separating out high-traffic components from others and anticipating differential wear and tear so that only parts of such systems need replacing, allowing additional tolerance in spaces to increase likelihood of use-flexibility, minimising composite materials that are difficult to separate, leaving natural “honest” finishes, avoiding superfluous coatings that make items less likely to be attractive to future salvage, opting for plug-in over devices hardwiring where possible to avoid re-engineering the controls and the entire system for small future changes, avoiding “wet” assembling products that are difficult to cleanly remove once cast in place; prioritising repeatable mechanical (over chemical) connections, and having a complete materials list for each tenancy to allow for easier reassembly in the components’ next life.
This was not possible due to the staging of the construction itself, but every product was researched prior to determining installation. Materials substitutions had to be approved prior to procurement and / or installation.
A volatile organic compound (VOC) is any compound of carbon, excluding carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, metallic carbides or carbonates, and ammonium carbonate, which participates in atmospheric photochemical reactions. As gases, VOCs are emitted into the air from products or processes and are often harmful to human health and to the environment by themselves, as well as by reacting with other gases to form other air pollutants after they are in the air.
Note: VOC content is different from VOC emissions. Using paint as an example, VOC content is the amount (by weight) of VOCs that are in the formulation of the paint, while VOC emissions are the number of VOCs released into the air following the application of that paint. We found that even paint with “low or zero” VOC content may still emit VOCs at surprising levels.
Applicable products with the potential to emit Volatile Organic Compounds (as defined by the International Living Future Institute) were tested for emissions where possible. In addition, various parts of the occupied building were tested on multiple occasions to assess air quality impacts, which is also a requirement of the Living Building Challenge®.
Yes.
At the time of construction, applicable interior materials had to comply with the CDPH Standard Method v1.1-2010 (or international equivalent). All interior products with the potential to emit, including wet-applied products, that do not meet CDPH compliance must be third-party tested at an ISO 17025-certified laboratory by one of the Living Building Challenge® accepted standards, and meet specific VOC thresholds.
Alternate standards / protocols / methods compliance for interior products include EN 16516-1:2018; ISO 16000-0; AgBB; French VOC Regulation; agreed EU-LCI values; Berkeley Analytical ClearChem; SCS Indoor Advantage Gold, EC 10.2 Standard Addendum; FloorScore, EC 10.2 Standard Addendum; Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), Procedures and Standards for Product Inclusion Version, NSF 332; UL GREENGUARD Gold, UL 2818 and UL 2821; Intertek Sustainability, Clean Air; Blue Angel (Der Blauer Engel) DE-UZ 113; EMICODE EC1 and EMICODE EC1PLUS; Finnish Emission Classification of Building Materials: M1; Indoor Air Comfort GOLD.
Note that methods and standards for compliance continually evolves, and project teams should refer to the appropriate version of the Living Building Challenge®.
Sometimes. Every labelling system is different, and all provide different benefits both in terms of their coverage and the way each communicates those benefits. To comply with the Living Building Challenge®, either use the Declare database, or engage with the supplier directly to ascertain whether they can meet the requirements for your project.
Not explicitly. However, when suppliers and manufacturers had previously used or experienced “green labelling systems” it was a positive starting point when it came to assessing individual materials and products for the project.
There are two primary reasons: sharing the information is a requirement of the Living Building Challenge®, and secondly, we wanted to encourage other project teams and the whole supply chain to work together towards ever-healthier materials.
The Greensheet does not intend to replace any of the other excellent materials websites and databases available but contribute in the journey to a better built environment.
The Greensheet is focused on the Living Building Challenge®, but hopefully might be a helpful point of departure for other tools and frameworks.
The impact of the Burwood Brickworks project on IAQ in our industry has been positive, with a combination of progressing a culture of products emissions testing and on-site air quality testing. Almost all rating tools are evolving to include ever-increasing IAQ requirements, and we’re glad the project and the resulting Greensheet has aided that drive.
Embodied carbon for the project was third-party independently reviewed and certified in accordance with ISO14044 and EN15978. Through design, material substitutions, a focus on local procurement and salvaging pre-used materials, the project reduced embodied emissions by 50.5% compared to a reference case (a typical shopping centre of the same size and configuration). For the remaining emissions, verified carbon offsets were procured as per the requirements of the Living Building Challenge®.
Note that methods and standards for compliance continually evolves, and project teams should refer to the appropriate version of the Living Building Challenge®.No.
The Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre is also a Green Star Design and As-Built project, and part of a Green Star Communities rating as well.
No. The Greensheet is specific to the Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre project. All Living Building Challenge® projects will need to publish their own materials lists in any case. This is a part of continually moving the industry forwards as an ever-evolving program shaped by the experiences of project teams as they continually break new ground.
Whilst the residential buildings surrounding the shopping centre were not in the scope of the Living Building Challenge®, there is a crossover of numerous products that are on the Greensheet that were and/or are being used in the residential buildings.
Yes. Frasers Property Australia have already started using the Greensheet as a resource in other projects.
We genuinely were – and continue to be – inspired by our tenants, who not only met the requirements of the Living Building Challenge®, but often came up with ideas to meet the requirements that we hadn’t thought of ourselves. Some of the national tenants were instrumental in using their influence to ripple through their supply chains, and we’ve already seen what was done at Burwood Brickworks being repeated in their other assets.
Frasers Property acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land on which our business operates. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Elders past, present and future.
