Twilight Talks

The Green Register's early evening talks supported by Ecomerchant: together promoting ethical, healthy sustainable building materials

On the second Monday of each month The Green Register brings you our Twilight Talks - a relaxed and informal string of events on sustainable building matters to complement our regular training topics.

Each one-hour event is FREE of charge and features short talks from one or more speakers. With Q&A and discussion sessions throughout, everyone is invited to be part of the conversation. We hold Twilight talks at 5-6pm, in the sweet spot between work and dinner – so join us to nourish the mind before replenishing the body!

Cutting Through the Greenwash – how to identify a truly sustainable building product

It is difficult to find a building product or material that doesn’t claim to be sustainable these days. Construction professionals need to be able to feel confident when they specify building materials but how do we tell which ones are the least harmful to our environment? Not all products have deep green credentials and it can sometimes be a time-consuming challenge to sift through the greenwash to get to the facts. This interactive online session is sure to be lively as we have selected three manufacturers to tell us why their building products are sustainable.

The session opens with a short presentation from Alex Watson, founder of Cleantrade, entitled ‘Prospects for government regulation of high-embodied-carbon imports’. Alex will explain that in March 2023 the UK government announced a consultation on measures to prevent carbon leakage: the prospect of high-carbon industries shifting to countries with lower environmental regulations as the UK ramps up the decarbonisation. In his talk, Alex will present research by CleanTrade into how such regulations could affect the UK construction industry. CleanTrade's work has been covered in the Financial Times and Sustainable Views. 

Three manufacturers follow to ‘pitch’ their products:

1. Sam Chapman, co-founder and MD of Kenoteq Bricks
The UK is the largest single brick market in Europe with millions of bricks being imported due to a shortage in domestic supply. Added to this, EU legislation now requires that 70% of all construction and demolition waste to be recycled with 0% going to landfill so vast quantities of recycled material are needing new avenues. Sam will explain how Kenoteq – a Scottish clean tech spin out from Herriot Watt University - have used the circular economy model to produce KBRIQ bricks with 90% of their content being recycled construction waste.

2. ‘Billion dollar crop’: Eunsun Nightingale, MD of Margent Farm/COO Hemspan
Eunsun will talk about a new venture to create corrugated hemp cladding (currently in the R&D phase) and will address the following questions:

• Why hemp?
• Our materials and why are we different?
• Challenges in disrupting traditional methods and how we are overcoming them
• What’s next? Inside our R&D workshop

3. ‘Specifying wood-based panels with confidence’: Roly Ward, Head of Business Development at MEDITE SMARTPLY
Roly will discuss a range of timber board products with good sustainable credentials and will cover:

• Raw material sourcing and the manufacturing process
• Certification
• Specialist and technical performance
• Application

There will then be a short Q&A so delegates can ask the speakers questions before closing at 18.00.

Twilight Talks are supported by Ecomerchant.