The first in our new research series looks at the Life Sciences sector’s challenge to marry environmental impact with unprecedented demand for specialist buildings.
Historically the Life Sciences sector has not placed sustainability as a particularly high priority, in part due to the significant challenges it faces in achieving a balance in resource usage and waste disposal.
However, with Life Sciences real estate using up to 10 times the energy and four times the water of commercial office real estate, and enough plastic waste to cover 138,000 hectares each year, sustainability solutions need to be incorporated to ensure that assets remain viable for both occupiers and investors.
Our new report looks to create a roadmap towards solutions, outlining the challenges the Life Science sector currently faces to achieve greater sustainability and the importance to the real estate sector of addressing these. It identifies a number of areas within the real estate industry that need to be taken into consideration, for both occupiers and investors, which include the balance in emission and retention of carbon; energy consumption and generation; water usage; and waste disposal and recycling.