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2050 Materials - online platform for sustainable building data
131 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to episode 61 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we explore the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality.
I’m your host, Matt Morley, founder of Biofilico wellness real estate, and this week I’m in Athens talking to London-based Phanos Hadjikyriakou, Co-Founder and CEO of 2050 Materials, an online database of sustainable building materials and intelligent tools that help architects and designers in their efforts to create low-carbon, circular buildings and interiors.
We discuss the genesis of the company, the unmet need it addresses and the problems it tries to solve, such as toxic building materials and those that are especially damaging to the environment when viewed from a Life Cycle perspective, considering its extraction, use phase and disposal options at its end of life.
We also cover some of the many sustainable certification systems out there now for building products as well as how Artificial Intelligence could start to leverage this type of database to propose sustainable, healthy solutions to architects and designers in the not too distant future.
Check out 2050-materials.com while you’re listening along, you can find me at biofilico.com now let’s talk sustainable materials…
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 61
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to episode 61 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we explore the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality.
Meet the Guest: Thanos Hajikiriaku
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of Biophilico Wellness Real Estate. And this week, I'm in Athens, talking to the London-based Thanos Hajikiriaku.
Overview of 2050 Materials
00:00:32
Speaker
He's the co-founder and CEO of 2050 Materials. It's an online database of sustainable building materials and increasingly intelligent tools that help architects and designers in their efforts to create low-carbon circular buildings and interiors.
Origins and Environmental Challenges
00:00:49
Speaker
In our conversation, we discuss the genesis of the company, the unmet need it aims to address and the problem it's trying to solve. Things like toxic building materials and those that are especially damaging to the environment when viewed from a full lifecycle perspective. So that's considering its extraction.
Certification and AI in Sustainability
00:01:06
Speaker
at the use phase and then disposal options at the end of its life. So they're essentially tackling that problem and presenting a range of options. We also cover some of the many sustainable certification systems out there for building products as well as how artificial intelligence could start to leverage this type of online database
00:01:25
Speaker
to propose sustainable, healthy solutions to architects and designers in the not too distant
Call to Action: Visit 2050-materials.com
00:01:32
Speaker
future. So this is a really kind of future gazing perspective, but it's real and it's happening right now. So check out 2050-materials.com while you're listening along.
Thanos' Journey and Engineering Background
00:01:43
Speaker
You can find me at biofilico.com as always. Now let's talk sustainable materials.
00:01:52
Speaker
Well, first of all, thank you for making the time to join us today on the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here. Yeah, pleasure to be here. Nice to meet you. Why don't we talk a little bit about the genesis of the business? So how did 2050 materials start as an idea?
Supply Chain Emissions and Data Gaps
00:02:11
Speaker
And what's that journey been like from the initial concept through to where you're at today, sort of a year or a year and a half into starting this new business?
00:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, great. So I guess that goes back a little bit to my background. So I'm an engineer by training. And I would say I'm pretty much a data person in my brain. My brain works thinking about data. And I've been, I was working basically in the financial sector, helping investors align their portfolios with different climate strategies, and essentially giving them different kinds of risk data that was focusing on climate change focused risk.
00:02:48
Speaker
And the whole idea behind 2050 materials started when I was working with a few very large real estate investors who started talking about supply chains and supply chain emissions and embodied carbon in the portfolios and in the buildings they own. And I come from a family of architects and people working in materials
Opportunities in Sustainable Practices
00:03:08
Speaker
distribution. So that kind of sparked my interest because kind of my background and my professional background were meeting.
00:03:15
Speaker
And basically what I figured out very quickly is that what investors were starting to ask for and talk about, which is everything related to supply chain and material impact, is something that the people actually on the ground, so the designers, the contractors, the building material suppliers simply did not have the right data to actually deliver
Innovative Materials and Impact Stories
00:03:36
Speaker
on. So I thought that's a...
00:03:39
Speaker
First of all, a big problem because it's an issue that needs to be fixed. But secondly, of course, a big opportunity to actually try to fill that gap with a solution. So that's what sparked the interest behind 2050 materials. And I guess the last part is I generally have an affinity for innovation within the material sector.
Beyond a Database: Detailed Insights
00:04:00
Speaker
I just think it's very cool when you see a new material that you can actually touch and feel and there's a story behind where it comes from and what what it's been made of and also if you can add the impact data to it and that for me makes it very interesting. So let's look at that because obviously on one level where you've developed and are developing
00:04:21
Speaker
is if you like a database of materials that for someone like me who's involved in real estate primarily interiors less in the construction side but let's say in the sort of interior fit out.
Evaluating Sustainability Complexity
00:04:33
Speaker
Now as a constant search for new innovative materials that not only look good and fit into a particular space that maybe we're trying to create or propose to a
00:04:43
Speaker
developer, but also that are doing some good or and certainly doing less harm to the environment. But there's another level to all of this is from what I can see, it's a bit more than just becoming an online collection of materials, right? There's a there's an extra depth to it that I think is really where it starts getting
Climate-Neutral Economy Transition
00:05:00
Speaker
interesting. So can you talk to us about about those calculations and about that sort of extra level of detail that you're able to get into around the embodied carbon and the impact of the materials? Yeah, sure. Well,
00:05:13
Speaker
Everything, let's start from the assumption that we need to transition to a low carbon economy and to a climate neutral economy. And the construction sector, whether you're an interior designer or an architect or just work in the built environment, the impact your work has is actually massive.
Democratizing Data Access
00:05:32
Speaker
And our thesis at 2050, and my personal thesis, if you like, is that data is the key to actually getting to a stage where we are
00:05:41
Speaker
designing and eventually building buildings in line with the climate emergency. Now, the very interesting thing about this space is that there's an abundance of data that shows impacts of specific products and materials in the sector. The problem is that that kind of data is
00:06:00
Speaker
all around the internet, usually in PDFs and usually in a format that's very, very technical. So it's usually what's called a lifecycle
Targeting Non-Specialists
00:06:08
Speaker
assessment or an environmental product declaration that states these kinds of values. And unfortunately, the assessment and the output of these kinds of reports are meant to be read by a specialist in the sector.
00:06:23
Speaker
And what the reality is, is you need designers and architects who are not specialists in the sectors to still be able to access and understand that data. So something that's often, let's say, misconception of a lot of people when they land on our platform is that we do a lot of assessment of existing products. In fact,
00:06:45
Speaker
All that we do at this point, at least, is we gather existing data from different sources. We digitize it so that it's actually accessible on the platform and you don't have to look through thousands of PDF files to extract information you need. And then finally, we, and probably most importantly, we actually simplify it to the extent that it keeps its accuracy, but it's actually understandable by a non-specialist. So what that means is that we filter out the
00:07:14
Speaker
the detail that is probably unnecessary to most designers and architects so that we quickly give them the one, two or three numbers they need in order to make an assessment and we put that at the forefront of the platform.
00:07:32
Speaker
Just as a note, I would say I'm totally on board with that approach. I think there's no issues in relying on established third party certification systems, whether it's like an environmental product declaration or a healthy product declaration or something like the declare red list or the
00:07:50
Speaker
Cradle to Cradle, for example. Those are the gold standards. And when you have a little bit of knowledge about this space, then you're really respectful of those certifications. And I think you can just sort of leverage that. You're standing on their shoulders. And that's a very comfortable position in the sense. I think it makes total sense what you're describing. So as I understand it, then, your users are not necessarily sustainability
00:08:18
Speaker
consultants or people that are really well informed
Bridging Expert and Mainstream Users
00:08:21
Speaker
on this space. They might be trying to make it accessible to people who perhaps recognize that they need to align with those values or perhaps are involved in a project that has certain guidelines or targets around the types of materials and sustainability certifications, right? So in a sense kind of bridging the gap between the specialists and the mainstream.
00:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we what we always say is that we are trying to democratize these kinds of sustainability assessments.
Mission to Democratize Data
00:08:53
Speaker
And that's, that's exactly pointing to the fact that yes, we do have sustainability consultants and specialists using the platform. But what we are building the platform for or the person who or the stakeholder we're building the platform for is actually
00:09:07
Speaker
The average designer architect contractor was having conversations with a customer or with a colleague around sustainability and they need to start understanding this kind of data without going back to university and getting a degree in this.
Timing for Sustainable Platform
00:09:22
Speaker
It's interesting, you know, if you tried to do this five years ago, 10 years ago, you probably wouldn't have had quite so many materials, right? So it's a sign of where the industry is at now that you're able to have such a wide collection. I think it's the right time because it is now becoming, you know, the choice is quite expansive and it's becoming actually sometimes harder to filter through that. But why don't we take a step back because I understand that perhaps not everyone would quite understand
00:09:52
Speaker
the context, which is that there are unhealthy versions of unsustainable materials going into our built environment, both in the construction and in the interior fit-out.
Health and Climate Impacts of Materials
00:10:04
Speaker
So from your perspective on the inside of this industry, what are the main dangers there and what are you battling against by presenting these more sustainable and healthy materials? What's the problem here with the unhealthy buildings?
00:10:19
Speaker
That's an interesting question. So I would say let's look at human health first. When it comes to coming into contact with harmful substances and pollutants, we actually come into contact with those in our daily lives more frequently than we realize. So that might be from building insulation that's packed with flame retardants,
00:10:42
Speaker
to chemicals in our food packaging, it might be wet paint that's emitting what's called VOC, so volatile organic compounds. So all of these things actually contribute or can contribute negatively to human health and can cause things like asthma and a bunch of other health issues. So there's definitely let's say a very imminent health issue that is fixed when you start looking at more sustainable products. But I would say that
00:11:11
Speaker
A big driver of health is also just global health and looking at climate issues. So I would say that, yes, in the short term, we want to avoid, for example, VOC emissions in our buildings because we don't want to have respiratory diseases in the long term. And it's not even that long term if we don't stop emitting
00:11:33
Speaker
as much carbon from the construction industry, then all of our lives, I believe, will be impacted from climate impact.
Environmentally Friendly Building Practices
00:11:42
Speaker
So I would split the two things into, let's say, direct human health today, and then long-term health for us, for our kids, for basically everyone who is living.
00:11:56
Speaker
on the Earth. It's a very fair point. You know, Green and Healthy Places, it's named the podcast. And I think that connection between green, as in good for the planet, and healthy, good for us, or in this case, good for people spending time in a space, you know, that that connection and how those two, the Yin and the Yang interact, I think is, is fundamental to understanding this
Emissions from Fit-out Changes
00:12:20
Speaker
whole space. Do you think there's, is there an element of perhaps
00:12:24
Speaker
Sustainability being more applicable to the building materials themselves just in terms of the the quantities involved for concrete and steel for example versus say the interior fit out where perhaps it's more to do with health or is that is that dichotomy to generalist.
00:12:45
Speaker
I think traditionally, I think concrete and steel is obviously the two materials that kind of get the spotlight, especially when we're talking about carbon emissions. And that's because the industry as a whole is producing a lot of carbon emissions. So if you look at a building, it's an interesting case study actually, because
00:13:04
Speaker
If you look at the building's materials, you would see that, yes, most of the carbon emissions of a new building is in the foundation, in the frame, so things that contain usually carbon, usually concrete and steel and aluminum.
00:13:19
Speaker
Unfortunately, I can't quite say that the fit out aspect doesn't contribute to emissions. So if you actually look at a specific time span, let's say 50 years of a commercial building that hosts offices, say in central London, the reality is that the fit out, the change of fit outs and the frequency of change of fit outs actually can cause up to four times the emissions of the envelope of
Values in Design Decisions
00:13:45
Speaker
the building.
00:13:45
Speaker
So if you take for example an office in central london that has new desks new chairs new cabinets new flooring every let's say. Two to six years which is the average time of a fit out change then all of those emissions related to the products and the materials that go into the.
00:14:05
Speaker
the interiors are actually much larger than the building itself. And of course, all of this has a certain assumption. So if we were to reuse a lot of those products, then of course we would reduce the impact. But as it stands today, where most of those things are either thrown in the landfill or let's say down cycle to a very big extent, fit-outs are massively important. So I know it's not an extremely helpful answer because it would be nicer if we could focus on a couple of
00:14:35
Speaker
a couple of sectors, but I think what this kind of research is starting to show is truly if you work in the built environment, whether you are doing fit-outs or interior design or residential projects or you're a structural engineer or anything else, your work really matters. It really matters to be able to have access to this kind of information and to do your part in reducing emissions.
Assessing Material Impacts
00:15:01
Speaker
I find at some point it becomes more about your values or the values of your business and what you're trying to do with your work that pushes one designer or someone working in this space to consider both equally. And sometimes there are decisions to be made, maybe one material is a bit
00:15:20
Speaker
bit better for the planet and not quite so good for their human health or vice versa. It can often be quite complicated and I think that's why platforms and software such as what you've developed is important. So at the next level of detail then when we're actually on the website looking into some of these materials, doing our research,
00:15:39
Speaker
How are you helping users to kind of make some calculations beyond just, oh, that's a green certified material, but then in terms of its actual impact once it's applied, in terms of the quantities and the scale and the timelines, where it's coming from, deliveries from, you know, if it's coming from China, it's very different to if it's coming from London, the projects in London, right? So in terms of those details, is there a way you're able to help your users to factor those into the equation?
Carbon Footprint and Circularity Tool
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And your question comes at a good timing because we've launched the tool to do a lot of the things you just mentioned very recently and users, you know, they can trial it and try it out for free to start with.
00:16:22
Speaker
Essentially what this kind of tool allows you to do is get anything that you would find on the library and make a list of it. And this can be done at any stage of the design process. So it can be done really early stage where you're not really thinking yet about designs and quantities. And you just want to understand more or less what a forecasted footprint of my building would mean. It can also be done once you have a bill of quantities and you really have a detailed list of everything you're about to procure.
00:16:52
Speaker
What we are doing is we collect the data of the products that are on the library within this tool once you've selected it as a user and we show of course the total carbon footprint as well as some numbers like the embodied carbon per meter squared of cross internal area and do some comparisons of that number to industry benchmark as well as some of the recommended numbers in the industry.
00:17:21
Speaker
We actually go a step beyond just focusing on carbon. We calculate currently a couple of circularity metrics like the weighted recycled content in the products that you're selecting and the recyclable content, so kind of how much of the products and the materials that you're specifying may actually be possible to recycle or reuse at the end of life.
00:17:43
Speaker
And I guess one thing that became important when we were developing this tool with a few large offices is we initially were thinking that designers will use this tool solely based on actual products that are available in the market. So meaning, you know, x-brick by this kind of supplier or this kind of manufacturer.
00:18:08
Speaker
What we've developed now is we've developed an extra layer where it's generic data for a specific type of product or type of material. So something that says, for example, a clay brick from the UK without necessarily specifying who the manufacturer is. So that kind of gives a workflow that allows you to
00:18:28
Speaker
If you're starting by just considering materials in the beginning, you can choose your materials. And then once you get into the specification process, or if you want to see whether there is an applicable product in your area to actually go into the product selection process.
00:18:44
Speaker
Um, yeah.
Transport Emissions Calculation
00:18:45
Speaker
And one thing I did not mention, uh, but you did actually in your question is of course the impacts that we show, uh, you know, they show the manufacturing emissions of the product. So what's in life cycle assessment terms is called the A1 to A3 life cycle stages. But the interesting thing about setting a platform like the one we have is we have the project location and we have the manufacturing location of each of those products in the library, which means that we can
00:19:12
Speaker
quite accurately calculate what the estimated carbon emissions are of transporting those materials. So one of the things that you can do in the tool is you can pick a bunch of products from the platform that are, let's say, from China.
00:19:26
Speaker
for a London project, and you'll see in the breakdown of emissions per category that the transportation emissions exceed everything else versus selecting local materials.
Lifecycle Impact Evaluations
00:19:36
Speaker
And I think there's an interesting opportunity there to see what kind of products maybe does make sense to ship from a little bit further away, even though they might not be available locally versus other ones which, of course, would outweigh the benefits.
00:19:54
Speaker
For anyone who's done a project before with a sustainability or a healthy materials component to it, the reality is
Easing Decision-Making in Sustainability
00:20:03
Speaker
this. There's this type of detailed conversation almost about every material and it becomes a major headache pretty quickly because you're constantly evaluating or trying to get to this type of information about not just
00:20:15
Speaker
where materials from, how it was produced, the impact of extracting it in its raw format, then in terms of the manufacturing and production, then the transport and its end of life, as well as its in use phase. And combining all of that is really complicated because it's just you're trying to move fast, you've got client pressure,
00:20:34
Speaker
And so I think for anyone who's perhaps feeling frustrated or overwhelmed by this amount of information, it's platforms like this, like your library, that help ease that pain. And I think that's what I see here, which is it's very easy to be drowned in the information and
00:20:54
Speaker
We need to make decisions as quickly as possible once the project starts.
Focus on Transparency, Not Policing
00:20:58
Speaker
There's no time to lose and I think you're helping to smooth that process and that's really where I see the main benefit in terms of using this.
00:21:11
Speaker
Once you're building the library, what process are you using to screen or to filter materials? What are you looking for? Is that suitable or that's not suitable? Have you got your own internal benchmarks in terms of where you do or don't accept the material? That's a really interesting question. First of all, I guess we live in a constant state of research within 2050, so we are always on the lookout for new products, new materials, especially when
00:21:41
Speaker
when they come from smaller companies that are just popping up, whether it's a startup or a company that's been operating for a few years and we just have not seen it before. But having said that, there's a very important point to be made about how we work. So we do not police what kind of product or manufacturer makes it on the platform. We actually want to have as many products as possible appearing there and we don't have a specific
00:22:09
Speaker
requirement for products to get on the platform. What we enforce as a library, as a platform, is that there needs to be some level of documentation that provides transparency on the impact of the product. So if you go to a library, you can look up concrete and you'll find very heavily emitting concrete
00:22:31
Speaker
products and concrete manufacturers. We want to have these products. We understand the sector, at least for now, still needs a lot of these products. What we ensure is we essentially put transparency over some
00:22:47
Speaker
some abstract assessment of what is a sustainable material or not because there are no sustainable materials in my opinion. There are materials that are suitable and can generate the sustainable design and there's materials that are non-suitable and the specific data
00:23:05
Speaker
related to each material does not necessarily give the answer to that. So in short, anything can land on the platform. What we ensure when we onboard the product is that there is some level of transparency related to the impact of the material or the product is causing.
Supporting Designers with Simplified Processes
00:23:21
Speaker
That sounds like a very pragmatic and practical approach. So some degree of
00:23:30
Speaker
thinking on the part of the user is still recommended. We're still going through that mental process of evaluating and arbitrage, trying to decide which one is the best in this case, and it may not be the most sustainable, as you say. Yeah, I guess that's one of the things that initially
00:23:52
Speaker
you start and you are very ambitious that you'll give the perfect answer to everyone and point them to exactly the one thing and they don't have to spend any time thinking. Quite honestly, very early on we decided the specialists are the designers, they are the architects, they know how to do the research to find the right kind of product or material.
Monetization and Future Plans
00:24:15
Speaker
So we are not trying to replace their
00:24:19
Speaker
their specialization and the work they know how to do. What we're trying to do is replace a process that would currently take something close to three or four or five hours to compare a few products to something they can do with essentially 10 clicks within two minutes.
Future Trends in Sustainability and AI
00:24:37
Speaker
And is the business model going forward then, is it going to eventually be some kind of a paywall so that you'd pay for access to the materials or the material suppliers manufacturers paying to be listed? How do you set things up from a commercial perspective?
00:24:54
Speaker
Yes. So from a commercial perspective, we essentially list the way that we list products is an important point as well. So we partner with essentially every certification body that is out there that certifies building material products and furniture and all of that. And we onboard the basic data that these certification bodies have. So out of
00:25:18
Speaker
So we populate the platform even without charging anyone really, so it's free for designers, it's free for suppliers. We currently do charge and work with suppliers when they want to have access to those pages to enhance them, to add data sheets, to add better pictures, to add more technical information that would help a designer actually finalize a specification or a procurement decision. So that's currently how we work. On the project side of things, as I mentioned in the beginning,
00:25:47
Speaker
There's a couple of projects that you can create as a user for free now, but that's going forward, something that we would like to charge on a per project basis, obviously as clients and regulators demand these kind of reports.
00:26:00
Speaker
That makes sense. Okay. And looking forward then to the next, say five to 10 years, where are you seeing this industry around healthy and sustainable materials evolving? Like what are the main sort of trends that you can see taking place that you expect to continue over the next five years or so? Um, yeah, so.
00:26:22
Speaker
I've said this a couple of times. I think for us, you know, the key to doing, to moving towards a direction of a climate neutral construction sector and design sector is the data. And that's why we've had so much focus on the data. I mean, moving forward, I think what's really interesting about data is we are starting to have some pretty amazing stuff that's happening on the AI front and on the generative design front. So I think that.
00:26:52
Speaker
more and more we're starting to see solutions that can make suggestions and generate designs for architects and for computer designers that would allow them to meet certain goals.
00:27:03
Speaker
And again, I don't think we, I don't see a scenario where architects are no longer needed or anything like that. I think this kind of doomsday thinking is really not something I agree with. What I see is similar to all of the hype that's happening right now with chat GPT, where you ask it questions and you can have it give you a lot of suggestions. An architect can have very specific tools where they say, I'm trying to achieve
00:27:32
Speaker
and that's zero building in central London for this kind of client and it needs these XYZ specifications and then a tool would be able to give you five different scenarios of designs, material, products that would actually allow you to get there and then again it's up to you as a designer, as a specialist to kind of do the next step and move from there. So I personally think that
00:27:57
Speaker
data alongside the whole AI revolution that's happening right now is going to open amazing doors and something that to the mission that we have as 2050 of democratizing these kind of assessments and understanding very much contributes to.
Global Expansion and Design Tool Enhancement
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's a big idea. I like that one. And in terms of how the business evolves over the next 12 months, 24 months, like what's the, is it additional functionality expanding the, the, the depth and breadth of the library materials and what are you working on this next year? Yeah. So we have, um, we are constantly working on onboarding more products. So currently we are testing a very big push, which will expand the database to include
00:28:43
Speaker
almost every product that has an EPD globally. So that kind of does a big jump from around 4,000 products to something like 50,000 products. So from a library perspective, we expect to have something in the next couple of months that is much more complete and can cover actually a lot more markets than the UK, which we've been focusing on. And then on the product development side, we have some really exciting
00:29:09
Speaker
features and product pipeline around the projects tool. So currently you are able to select individual materials and make a list of your materials that make up your projects. We're very much moving towards the direction of allowing people to create assemblies and see within a specific assembly what is best and then allow them also to have some functionality of
00:29:35
Speaker
of saving their own assemblies because a lot of designers, architects, they reuse a lot of the designs they've done. So our goal is to move towards direction where you can actually start building your internal library of systems and assemblies that you are able to very quickly build projects with and also get quick assessments.
Engagement and Platform Access
00:29:56
Speaker
Fascinating.
00:29:57
Speaker
That sounds really interesting. I'll be very happy to watch as you evolve over the next year and hopefully five or ten years growing the business. So listen, thanks so much for your time. Where can people find out more about the business? What social media are you engaging with at the moment? Yeah, thanks a lot also for the time. People can just search for 25k materials on Google, on LinkedIn. We're very active on LinkedIn with content and educational
00:30:24
Speaker
articles and all of that stuff. And then the platform is easily accessible and free on app.2050-material.com. I'll include the links in the show notes. Thanks again. Cool. Thanks a lot.