In the interests of taking green building in South Africa forward, the Cape Institute for Architecture will be hosting a Green City seminar and Eco exhibit in Cape Town on April 21, where Ecospecifier South Africa will be launched.

Ecospecifier is a green building product-verification system, which reportedly offers a best-practices framework for the manufacture of green-building accredited materials, products and services.

The appetite for ‘green’ building materials is reportedly growing, as sustainable building in South Africa becomes increasingly popular. However, there is also a need to eliminate ‘greenwashing’, where product manufacturers make untrue claims about the environmental efficacy of a product.

Ecospecifier South Africa, which is part of a larger international organisation, will work alongside the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) to ensure that architects, designers, builders, specifiers, and homeowners or companies, can shortcut the eco and healthy materials sourcing process.

The organisation will be headed by Lizette Swanevelder, who will be opening the seminar in Cape Town.

It will provide knowledge about products that represent high value over their life - not only in the traditional sense, but also in the expanded sense of health, wellbeing and productivity of their total life, in the context of the people, buildings and systems they serve.

The core business of Ecospecifier is to check products in detail so that professionals need not doubt a product, and this can save the professional up to 90% in research time. It also verifies product relevance and compliance to the technical manual requirements of the Green Star rating tool, and Green Building Guidelines.

The seminar in Cape Town will also seek to highlight the latest methodologies, guidelines and principles. These include the City of Cape Town’s (CCT’s)  ‘Green Building Guidelines’, and the GBCSA’s Green Star SA Rating Tool.

There will also be a small exhibition by Eco Exhibit of some of the regions top green building products.

Other speakers at the event include GBCSA CEO Nicola Douglas; the Cape Town Partnership Green City programme manager Sarah de Villiers Leach; CCT head of planning and development management Jaco van der Westhuizen; CCT metropolitan spatial planning manager Norah Walker; CCT head of sustainable livelihoods and greening programmes Jaques du Toit; CCT head of building development management Peter Henshall Howard; CCT head of energy and climate change Sarah Ward; Council for Scientific and Industrial Research senior researcher Llewlyn van Wyk; architect and urbanist Anna Cowen; architect Andy Horn; and, insulation specialist Thomas Datel.

The seminar will count for one Continuing Professional Development credit, for built environment professionals.

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