Healthy Buildings Conference 2020: Acceleration for Climate Emergency

Claire attended the annual ASBP Conference on February 27th hosted at Amnesty International’s headquarters in East London.

The Alliance for Sustainable Building Products (ASBP) organised this year’s event to share ideas on how to accelerate the impact of what delegates have been working to advocate for decades: to create demand for sustainable construction products; to promote health and wellbeing in buildings; to use resources efficiently.

Keynote Speaker Mary Creagh, former Labour MP for Wakefield (2005-19), former Chair of the Environmental Audit Select Committee, set the scene and reminded the audience of the challenges to face.

The second Keynote was Sam Conniff, award winning social entrepreneur and author of ‘Be More Pirate’. Sam’s speech set the tone, ‘The biggest mistake we can make is to believe the way things are, is the way things have to be: The opposite must be our mission’. Sam seemed to cram into 45 minutes a full day’s inspiration, hurtling through with energy and dramatic pauses. 

Inspiration from a ‘do-er’, a ‘rule-breaker’ and genuine force-for-good was infectious. Sam urged us to ‘be more pirate’ and wanted us to question, ‘Are you here to sell something or start something’ (all full capitals – he really was shouting us on!).

The day was packed with networking, knowledge sharing, industry updates and concluded with the annual ASBP Award for a new build and refurbished property. 

Claire is now trying to be more pirate to take on the climate emergency…