Ideas & News

Our blog is where we share our opinions, ideas, news, and resources we find helpful for the industry. If there’s something you think we should be talking about, reach out!

A bar front clad in e4E brick slips in grey, cream, orange and red

Manufacturer Spotlights Oct 15

e4E Brick Slips: All the Brick, None of the Kiln

e4E makes brick slips from excavated soil, pressed rather than fired. See how they are made, the formats you can specify and the verified EPDs behind the range.

Close-up of Organoid Wildspitze wallcovering by CaraGreen, made from hand cut alpine hay pressed onto a flax fleece backing

Manufacturer Spotlights Oct 15

CaraGreen’s Organoid Wildspitze: A Wallcovering Grown, Not Manufactured

CaraGreen's Organoid Wildspitze is a wallcovering made from hand cut alpine hay, backed by a third party verified EPD showing 2.2 kg CO2e/m² GWP and stored biogenic carbon.

Carbon Before the Servers: business-as-usual data center buildout at about 137M tonnes CO2e versus about 106M with better steel and concrete specs

Data & Research Oct 08

Data Centers’ Hidden 137M-Tonne Carbon Bill

New data centers could lock in ~137M tonnes of CO2e before a single server switches on. GGBS concrete and recycled steel could cut about 31M of it.

Data & Research Sep 28

Built to Beat the Heat

This summer's drought wasn't a fluke, it was a preview. Here's the material data that actually decides whether a building shrugs off a heatwave or quietly cooks behind a great winter U value: decrement delay, solar reflectance, SHGC, and the real products behind each one.

Bar chart of cost per tonne of CO2e removed for three embodied carbon swaps: cement replacement with 75% GGBS at £10/t, facade brick buildup at £130/t, and timber vs steel or concrete frame at £190/t

Data & Research Sep 23

The Cost per Tonne Test for Embodied Carbon Swaps

Not every embodied carbon cut is worth paying for. Test any swap on cost per tonne of CO2e, see which band it falls in, and try the free calculator.

Data & Research Sep 02

PFAS Compliance Meets Countdown

Sealants, membranes and insulation are next in line for PFAS restrictions. The window to get ahead of it, rather than scramble to catch up, is closing.

Aerial view of the 300kW solar PV installation on H.G. Matthews' Brickworks roof in Bellingdon

Manufacturer Spotlights Aug 17

H.G. Matthews: Beyond the EPD

H.G. Matthews' new solar-biomass energy system at The Brickworks, Bellingdon is cutting diesel use and lowering embodied carbon, the latest step in a track record of measurable, verified environmental improvement backed by published EPDs.

Data & Research Aug 07

Cost Meets Carbon: 3 Value Engineering Swaps

A cost consultant flags a line, a substitution goes through, and the carbon target set at Stage 2 quietly doubles. Here are the three value engineering swaps we see most often, the real kilograms of CO2e behind each one, and the five minute check that catches them before they happen.

Resilient Cork Collection featuring ten low carbon cork building products with verified environmental data on the 2050 Materials platform

Jul 31

The Resilient Cork Collection: 10 Cork Products Worth Knowing

Cork never asks a tree to die for it. We gathered ten cork products on the platform, from underlays to a sprayed coating, one raw material doing six very different jobs.