It’s a privilege to support you

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Transform magazine. I hope you have had a good and productive couple of months. I’m delighted to say that the IEMA family is now 20,000 strong! Thank you so much for choosing us for your professional journey. We don’t take it for granted, and it’s a privilege to support you.

Sustainability and environment professionals know from their daily experience that there is no one solution to the question of how to get to net zero or true sustainability – would that it were so easy! However, buildings and infrastructure are two sectors where there could – and should – be many easy potential gains. In this edition, we consider two aspects of this fascinating topic. Ian Yenney, MIEMA, reports on the Building for 2050 research project and offers unique insights into low-carbon homes, and Huw Morris investigates the gains to be had from green infrastructure in urban landscapes.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – not easy to say, and even harder to remove from pretty much every ecosystem on Earth, despite significant concerns about their effects on human health and biodiversity. If you live in the US or Scandinavia, you may well have heard of them – if not, read Chris Seekings’ report on these ‘forever’ chemicals, and you will be Googling ‘PFAS-free cookware’ soon afterwards, like I was.

Chris also had the chance to speak with world-renowned urban designer and town planner Dr Wei Yang. She has some fascinating thoughts about ‘garden cities’, what we want from urban design post-Covid, and how we need to rethink urban spaces that are often designed for fit, healthy men in order to support everyone in a community.

That’s it from me – as always, we really welcome your comments, feedback and thoughts for articles. Please do get in touch and thanks so much, as ever, for being the inspiration for everything that we do.