Footprint

From guest blogger Paul Hinkin, managing director of Black Architecture

I realise that I am in danger of becoming a ‘toilet bore’ following my previous blog on female urinals but I have found another technology that offers the potential for substantial water savings, so here I go again. Otter Vacuum Systems exhibiting on stand 1582 has a range of vacuum toilet systems on offer, suitable for use in buildings with varying numbers of WCs.

The advantages of vacuum systems over traditional gravity drainage is that they require dramatically less water for each flush, using only 0.5 litres compared with between 2 to 4 litres used by even low flush WC’s. The majority of the flushing effort is provided by air instead of water, which reduces the amount of effluent entering the sewage treatment system.

These systems offer a number of benefits to architects and building operators since the pipework is only 50mm in diameter and does not need to be laid to falls and can even be routed vertically. Their flexibility and low impact installation mean that they are particularly suitable for retrofit applications.

Finally, because the effluent is concentrated, waste from these systems can be directly transferred to a biogas plant, turning human waste into a valuable source of energy.

Richlite

When Hattie asked me to write a blog about interesting products or services on offer at Ecobuild, I decided that I would concentrate on trying to find smaller companies with more unusual or innovative things on offer. This proved to be quite difficult as the number of these stands is less than in previous years. After much search I did manage to find a few, including Richlite Surface Material on stand 415.

This American company has been producing a robust resin bounded paperboard since 1943 that has traditionally been used for industrial applications including boatbuilding. More recently their product has become the surface of choice for skate parks and industrial kitchen worksurfaces and is now available for the first time throughout the UK from C.F. Anderson.

What interests me about this product is that it is manufactured from either FSC certified or post consumer recycled waste paper and yet it has the physical properties of other solid surfacing material. It can be used for a wide range of applications including flooring, stair treads and wall cladding and comes in a range of colours all with a matt finish. The material is available in a variety of board depths up to 75mm and sheet sizes of up to 3600mm by 1500mm. On the stand they even have a prototype of Sting’s next guitar that uses the material for the fret board and bridge, which they claim sounds better than the traditional hardwood that it replaces!

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Filed under: Sustainable products