Studio Abitare : Ethical & Sustainable Living Solutions

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land where we work and live, the Yuggera people of Australia and pay our respects to Elders past and present. We celebrate the stories, culture and traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders of all communities who also work and live on this land.

We knew we wanted Studio Abitare to align with our personal values with regards to sustainability, we felt we had a responsibility and opportunity to start things off on the right foot, being that we are a relatively new company.

Since our founding, we have taken several measures to ensure that we conduct business in a manner that reflects our ethos.

We started off as a paperless office and will continue to work in this manner, all single use materials are re-purposed as much as they can be to reduce waste. Alongside this, all cardboard and tape that the office receives from interstate or overseas packages are stored and re-sued when possible for our own errands. All waste we produce is separated and recycled, to limit our carbon footprint. We have committed to purchasing and building ethical office furniture from recycled materials to reduce production and transport pollution. As of recently we decided to invest further in green energy options, we now are a solar energy powered office. As important as it is for us to work in a sustainable manner, we know that this commitment needed to carry through to the companies we decided to partner/work with. Our closest contacts are companies we have worked with for more than a decade and adhere to the strictest international guidelines to maintain their green certifications.

Casalgrande

EMAS Certification:

Used to monitor and improve the Company’s environmental performance, EMAS regulations are above all a voluntary tool of great value and social impact. To implement it, Casalgrande Padana set up an environmental management system within its site, which, based on a thorough analysis of its own environmental impacts and an objective assessment of their extent, establishes an improvement plan, with relevant targets and indicators to measure the success of such plan.

The LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design):

was developed and launched in the United States in 1999 by the US Green Building Council, the organisation that brings together the US building, research and governmental stakeholders to provide the building industry with a useful sustainability-certification system. Such certification assesses and certifies the environmental, social and economic sustainability of a building, from design to everyday management, through a flexible system in which different formulas apply to different types of buildings: LEED New Construction (NC), Existing Buildings (EB), Commercial Interiors (CI), Core & Shell (CS), Homes, Neighbourhood Development.

In particular, the LEED-NC applies to new constructions and major refurbishments. LEED is a voluntary certification that has just recently made its debut on the global scene and is now an accredited sustainability-certification system for the building industry. In the certification procedure, buildings are rated depending on who well they comply with a number of LEED prerequisites and credits, in 6 areas:

1. Sustainable site

2. Efficient water management

3. Energy consumption and impact on the atmosphere

4. Materials and resources

5. Interior environmental standards

6. Innovation in design.

Iris Group

LEED and BREEAM Certifications:

The LEED and BREEAM environmental protocols are among the most important voluntary scientific systems for the validation and certification of energy and environmenta performance, real guidelines supporting the design, construction and management of buildings by analyzing the various aspects of sustainability: energy, health and well-being, innovation, land use and ecology, materials, pollution, transport, waste, water. Our materials have been certified since 2008, although in reality they all complied with these standards well before that, as they are all designed and manufactured with a very high percentage o recycled material (> 40% by weight). In fact, by investing in cutting-edge technologies since the early 1990s, we have been able to exponentially reduce the consumption of all raw materials, starting with quarried ones, which have been largely replaced by pre- consumer and post-consumer recovery materials, also from other industrial processes, for the dual purpose of safeguarding the environment and transforming investments into an economic opportunity as well.

GreenGuard and GreenGuard Gold Equally the GREENGUARD

certification ensures that products intended for use in interior environments have almost zero harmful volatile substance (VOC) emissions, thereby contributing to the creation of more healthful environments. GreenGuard Gold, widely recognized and accepted by sustainable building programs all over the world, certifies the total absence of risks even i places normally frequented by particularly sensitive people such as children and the elderly.

EPD®

is in fact a voluntary certification scheme set up in Sweden and based on an organizational structure that includes different entities at selected levels in different countries; it is an international scheme which is part of EU environmental policies and is managed by a non-profit research institute owned by a joint foundation established by the Swedish government and industry. The proposed “from cradle to grave” scheme is the most complex, but also the most complete and therefore the most stimulating, as well as being a global program for environmental declarations based on ISO 14025 and EN 15804.

As part of this analysis, compliance with the MEC (Minimum Environmental Criteria) is also validated according to the test methods established by Decision 2009/607/EC of 9 July 2009, or other equivalent test methods established by the Competent Authority in the respective environmental permits – Consumption and use of Water, emissions into the air, emissions into water and waste recovery.

Coem & Fioranese

LEED® CERTIFICATION - LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design):

Certification which assesses and certifies the sustainability of a building as a whole, from the design phase to its final use, through a method that involves the attribution of a score for the building on the basis of its compliance with various requirements. Many of Coem’s products have characteristics that can contribute to the achievement of a building score in line with the LEED® parameters. In brief terms, the main requirements for obtaining LEED® credits and certificates from the external CERTIQUALITY body are:

• Content of recycled material varying between 20% and 40%;

• Practically zero emissions of VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds): volatile organic substances which are contaminating and irritating for the respiratory system;

• Excellent solar reflectance properties that reduce the “heat island” effect, diminishing to a minimum the impact in habitat and microclimate;

• Use of quality national materials with a considerable reduction of CO2 emissions in the transport phase;

• Optimisation of energy performances

• Innovation of product design.

Marazzi & Ragno

LEED®

Credit and Recycled Content

Voluntary LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification is the most widespread international protocol for green building and sustainable architecture promoted by the U.S Green Building Council. The LEED® rating system is structured into 9 categories, each of which is organized into mandatory prerequisites and credits determined by the characteristics of the project. Thanks to the environmental quality of the entire industrial production cycle, all Marazzi’s ceramic and porcelain stoneware products are eligible for LEED® credits for buildings, in particular for thematic areas related to Materials and Resources (MR), Sustainable Site (SS) and Indoor Environmental Quality (EQ). Several Marazzi product collections are made of 40% recycled material, certified by the ‘Certiquality’ International Certification Institute, and are eligible for LEED® credits in the Materials and Resources category.

Greenguard

GREENGUARD GOLD Certification ensures that a product has met some of the world's most rigorous and comprehensive standards for low emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into indoor air. For further information: https://spot.ulprospector.com