The partnership project is aimed at creating economically viable housing that is environmentally-friendly
A pioneering research and development partnership launched this month is to lead to a world-first in the move towards carbon zero, plastic-free and fuel-efficient homes, which are set to be built and tested in Liverpool.
Changing Streams CIC, a not-for-profit environmental company, is joining forces with one of the UK’s largest housing providers, Your Housing Group, and The University of Liverpool to design and build six prototype houses, which they hope will provide a blueprint for sustainable home development worldwide.
The partnership project is aimed at creating economically viable housing that ‘is environmentally-friendly in every way possible, whilst helping to eradicate fuel poverty – by significantly reducing running/heating costs’.
Based in the Liverpool City Region, the prototype houses will include six different solutions to tackle carbon, plastic pollution and fuel poverty. The first house will be designed and built to prioritise carbon reduction, while the second will aim to prioritise plastic reduction. The remaining four will be developed as a chain of hybrid carbon/plastic-reduced homes that will be used to identify and address the potential clashes between these two objectives.
Once built, six families will be asked to move into the homes and to work with the research team to understand how they function in everyday life.
The partnership hopes the learning from this pilot will set a new standard in the industry and go on to underpin Your Housing Group’s plans to develop new homes over the next 25 years.
Brian Cronin, chief executive of Your Housing Group, said: The Board at Your Housing Group is fully committed to Zero Carbon and the wider ESG agenda and Chris Mackenzie-Grieve, a non-Executive director at YHG, will act as our lead Board member to ensure this remains a strategic priority for the Group.
He added: We have a substantial, multi-million-pound investment programme to deliver over the next five years that includes the development and delivery of a carbon reduction strategy. However, we recognise that this alone will not achieve our ultimate goal of making our homes truly sustainable whilst providing social equality.
He said: Talking with Changing Streams we recognised that plastic pollution is a serious threat, which we cannot ignore, whilst the embedded carbon in plastic conflicts with our carbon reduction program. We do not want to develop carbon-free houses that move the problem from a climatic emergency to an environmental one.
Dr Gareth Abrahams, head of the University of Liverpool’s Changing Streams Research Centre and co-founder of Changing Streams CIC, said: When we talk about carbon-zero housing we often think about what a building does: how much heat it retains. But we overlook another important question: what are these houses made of? Many of the products we use to build and insulate new homes are made from plastic-based materials. The risk is that by focusing on carbon-zero targets alone we produce housing with larger quantities of plastic.
