21 Nov 2007

Eco Bollocks Award: Terminal 5

News has reached me of the fantastic efforts BAA have been making to help preserve the environment at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, due to open in March 2008. It’s taken the sustainable approach to building very seriously.

Terminal 5, which is so big that it is actually three terminals, designated 5A, 5B and 5C, will use two separate water systems, one for drinking and the other for toilet flushing and irrigation. Water for the second system will be sourced from an in-house rainwater harvesting system, topped up with a borehole supply. They hope to be able to collect and re-use 85% of the rain falling on the terminal catchment area.

In addition, all the bathrooms will have dual flush toilets, and the taps will have on-off sensors combined with aerated flow. BAA trills that it aims to reduce the demand from the public water supply by up to 70%.

Come on guys, stop trilling. It’s an airport.

5 comments:

  1. True it is an airport. Should the designers working on the job just not bother trying to design a sustainable building then?

    Air travel in the not too distant future will hopefully be less harmful - should the buildings that serve this future not be as sustainable as possible?

    'Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.' ~Edmund Burke

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  2. It's not the scope of works that irks me. It's the trilling about it.

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  3. I agree. My partner was recently asked to get BREEAM excellent for a petrol station. To add insult to injury, it included cycle racks even though it's on a motorway. Tosh!

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  4. Yes with the use of the two options of Dual Flash Toilet, one for shit and the other one for urine., These two has two different amount of water, ofcourse, lesser on the urine.

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