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The living wall at the Newcastle store
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The Ska rating for retail was made available in February. Developed in conjunction with cosmetics giant Lush, restaurant chain Wahaca and the RBS, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) attempted to make Ska as relevant to retail as possible. Trialling the standards via pilot projects and consultation was key.
RICS’ director of information products, Tim Robinson, says: “Retail property is a very heavy user of energy. For example, the use of lighting in shops, customers want it and retailers need it from a commercial point of view. So that means we need to work harder to reduce its impact. The industry was keen to have retail Ska. Retailers, consultants, designers and engineers were coming to us saying ‘can we have Ska?’”
Lush’s refit manager Jen Hilton emphasises retailers’ day-to-day environmental impact. She says: “[Shops are] constantly rebranding their image, opening and closing stores. There’s a lot going on and we want to start taking notice of what we’re doing.
“We want to be pioneering new things. During the past six months we’ve become more focused… it’s only recently with the Ska project that we’ve leant about how much we can do. It’s a natural extension of the origins of the company. Now we have these guidelines so we can adhere to the standards we all believe [in].”
Dalen Strategies worked with the RICS to communicate and implement the scheme to participating retailers to understand what does and does not work in a shop environment. Its sustainability consultant Nicola Ashurst highlights the crucial issue in retailers’ struggle with eco-credentials: the overwhelming majority of stores are tenants, not owners. She says: “Tenants don’t have power over the basebuild so it’s hard to achieve a BREEAM Excellent or Outstanding – Ska’s about attaining sustainability without being beholden to the basebuild.”
In other words, the assessment allows retailers to improve what they add to a building, rather than be punished for what they’ve had to take on.
Lush’s Hilton says of Ska’s potential: “In terms of what impact it could have on retail and the environment, it could be massive. We want to start spreading that to retailers.”
The two Lush stores to participate in pilot schemes were relocations based in Newcastle and Birmingham. Newcastle has been awarded silver by the RICS while Birmingham is still waiting for its rating but aiming for gold. Meanwhile, the Bristol-based Cribbs Causeway store has been a cause of celebration as the retailer’s one hundredth shop was rated gold in February.
Hilton says: “The Ska gold standard means staff have been talking about it a lot. Feedback’s been really good; customers have been touching the walls saying they can’t believe they’re straw.”
Cribbs Causeway walls are constructed from Envirowall Strawboard. Still in its first year, Envirowall Global has already worked with Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer, an Olympic training venue and a leading search engine’s London head offices. Despite the reduction in shop fit time, managing director Glen Williams cites the product’s environmental credentials as its chief appeal. He says: “Envirowall is 97% wheat straw – a natural waste product and 3% resin with zero formaldehyde. Beyond that, the recycle-ability of the end product – there’s no landfill. It [the lifecycle] offers complete recycling.”
Cribbs Causeway also featured flooring laid on a grid. Cutting installation time by eliminating the need for a wet fix tile, Versaflex flooring can be laid on top an existing floor and moved from shop to shop during re-fits.
Added extras
A prerequisite for green construction regulation is taking into consideration the building’s use after assembly. In retail, profit margins rather than personal comfort are at stake, making this all the more crucial.
Lush wanted to up the green credentials of its building stock while maintaining its customer care. Hilton says: “We have flow controllers on all our taps [in refurbished stores]. We use a lot of our water, we’re a cosmetics store and it’s a core part of our customer service, but if we can limit amount of water coming out of the taps per minute then we’ll do that.”
A living wall forms a key feature in the Newcastle store. Constructed by Biotecture, the wall reduces thermal loading to buildings, lowering heating and cooling emissions and costs. Other benefits include indoor air purification and re-hydration of the small water cycle, helping to increase humidity levels, which can be less than half of healthy levels in air conditioned environments.
Hilton adds: “The living wall emphasises the freshness of our products and leads onto other parts of the building that staff talk about to customers. We’re planning one in our Covent Garden store too.”
Robinson summarises the need for a retail standard. He says: “We wanted to make biggest impact in biggest sector. It’s a fantastic achievement for big businesses to take these things seriously and build around environmental concerns. Green issues are a growing concern for consumers. It may not be the most important issue but nevertheless it’s an important driver.”
For further information please visit lush.co.uk and rics.org
This article originally appeared in the April 2012 issue of Greenbuild. For a free subscription, click here.
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