Ideally, all modern infrastructure should work towards reducing emissions by around 6% annually from 2020 to 2030. A lot of this change will be propelled by shifting to renewable energy sources and increasing resource efficiency (meaning doing more with one unit whether it is kilowatt-hour or cubic meter).
For Menarco Development Corporation’s Carmen Jimenez-Ong and Nova Group’s Chut Cuerva, this means making a single drop of water go through their buildings multiple times before it is discharged.
Nova’s Nex Tower in Ayala Avenue (Shown in photo) is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certified and is the sole Philippine project to ever bag Urban Land Institute’s Asia Pacific Award for Excellence. Meanwhile, Menarco Tower in Bonifacio Global City is the first to pursue WELL certification in the country, and the only building in Asia to be both LEED Gold and WELL Gold certified.
Menarco Tower reduced potable water use by 47.49%. Potable water for sewage conveyance is reduced by 100%.
Landscaping and irrigation systems in Menarco have been designed to use only recycled water. Instead of using clean, potable water to do things that do not require potable water that people should be drinking, a gray water system filters water from the condensate drains and water used for washing, plows it back into the system to water the plants.
Nex Tower uses the same principles. Instead of water from the mains, a rainwater harvesting system collects rain that falls on the roof and filters it to irrigate the plants.
Committed to the cause
Water products manufacturer LIXIL, whose portfolio includes INAX, GROHE and American Standard, has been rallying its R&D around environmental sustainability and recently met some milestones.
“I think that’s the biggest investment LIXIL has made to get people fully committed to the cause,” LIXIL’s corporate responsibility lead Priyanka Tanwar.
GROHE’s sense and sense guard water monitoring systems alert homeowners of pipe leaks so they can be addressed immediately. The app monitors and reports consumption so people can adjust their water use.
“It comes from a philosophy of treating water like gold, saving it when and where you can,” ex-plained Jimenez-Ong.
“You wouldn’t think there’d be water shortages when it rains like crazy here,” said Cuerva. “ But what we are trying to do is store the water.
When there is plenty of water, you can store that so when there is no water, you use that. It’s a similar predicament to solar panels. When it is sunny, you want to store that energy in a battery and then use it when the rates are expensive.”
The other benefit of storing water is that during huge downpours, it helps the sewerage systems. If more buildings like Nex and Menarco capture rain during these downpours, then slowly releasing the excess into the sewerage systems instead of dumping it all at one time, they would help ease flooding in our cities.