Building Responsibility: Product Stewardship & Waste Reduction Solutions in the Built Environment

Webinar Recording

Three leading voices in sustainability, design, and policy tackle one of the most urgent challenges in the building sector—how to manage product and producer responsibility and reduce waste across the lifecycle of the built environment.

This CPD-certified webinar explored the future of product stewardship, design for circularity, and certification tools that support a more responsible future, amongst building and design professionals, and product manufacturers.

SPEAKERS:

John Gertsakis
Director, Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence

John is a sustainability practitioner and advocate across several industries with a focus on product stewardship, communications and real-world circularity. His projects and engagements cover appliances, automotive, consumer electronics, office furniture, floor coverings, and plastic products used in healthcare. John is also an Adjunct Professor with the Institute for Sustainable Futures. He regularly advises designers, manufacturers and brands on stewardship and sustainability solutions, and is a Good Design Ambassador with Good Design Australia. John holds degrees in social-environmental assessment and policy, media and ecodesign policy.

David Baggs
CEO, Technical Director and Cofounder, Global GreenTag International

David is an award winning, sustainability and materials expert and a Life Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects who with Global GreenTag International is pioneering a new NaturePositive+ Products Standard to benefit green building projects that are extending the boundaries of circularity design. David served as Program Director of the Global GreenTagCertTM Product Certification Program, developing it to become a leading 'Beyond LCA' based product ecolabel and Certification Mark that has since championed the work of progressive manufacturers and the advancement of more than 20,000 healthy, ethical and environmentally conscious products, worldwide.

Louise Dobson Trease
CEO and Founder, The LOUD Library

Louise is a materials specialist who has dedicated the last 25 years to designing new products and services, specialising in Ceramics; creating homewares and commercialising new building materials. In 2020, she founded the LOUD Library and conceptualised a creative solution and quest to reduce the wasteful cycle of product samples generated by the specification process. Giving building manufacturers an avenue to prevent their resources from ending up in landfills. Leveraging her global connections, she has built a circular economy enterprise that provides a solution to product sample waste. The LOUD Library is now growing a virtual repository containing high-quality digitalised product sample images. This resource makes selecting materials easier for architectural and design professionals, as it provides a comprehensive and easily accessible database of product samples. The library documents and stores historical data and product samples to museum archive standards from the beginning and into their retirement, ultimately, keeping them out of landfill.

By attending this webinar, participants were able to:

• 1. Understand the key principles and drivers of product stewardship and producer responsibility in the built environment
• 2. Identify how certifications like Global GreenTag contribute to circular economy outcomes.
• 3. Explore how platforms like The LOUD Library reduce waste through both reuse and digital access to material data.
• 4. Examine case studies of innovation in waste management
• 5. Understand how product stewardship can operationalise circularity objectives and be applied across the product lifecycle.
• 6. Evaluate how to integrate strategies into design as well as product and material selection.
• 7. Engage more effectively with suppliers and policy developments in sustainability.

Related links:

• vimeo.com/1095512126?fl=pl&fe=cm