21 March 2025 is the first-ever World Day for Glaciers, dedicated to raising...

EU Environment and Planet 1 year ago

21 March 2025 is the first-ever World Day for Glaciers, dedicated to raising awareness about the crucial role glaciers play in sustaining life on Earth. 🧊⁣ ⁣ Glaciers act as essential reservoirs of freshwater, providing water to millions of people, and support biodiversity around the world. ⁣ ⁣ However, rising global temperatures are causing glaciers to retreat, the consequences of which include water scarcity, rising sea levels, and increased frequency of disasters such as floods or landslides.⁣ ⁣ This image, acquired by one of the #Sentinel-2 satellites on 26 January 2025, shows the Dawson-Lambton Glacier in Antarctica. ⁣ ⁣ This glacier is home to a colony of emperor penguins (in the image, penguin guano is visible in the top right). 🐧⁣ ⁣ The Dawson-Lambton Glacier, like many others in the area, is vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, raising concerns about the potential impacts this vulnerability may have on the penguin colony.⁣ ⁣ The effects of climate change on glaciers and on the wildlife dependent on these ecosystems can be monitored with the free and open data delivered by the Copernicus Sentinel satellites.⁣ ⁣ #ImageOfTheDay⁣ #CopernicusEU

layersDaily Sustainability Digest

Published about 9 hours ago



Sustainable construction is accelerating towards measurable decarbonisation as innovation, policy, and supply chain governance begin to align. In London, bio‑based wallboards such as Adaptavate’s Breathaboard—used in Legal & General’s new headquarters—demonstrate how low embodied carbon materials with environmental product declarations (EPDs) are entering large‑scale deployment. This marks a shift from theory to delivery in eco‑friendly construction and underscores the importance of Whole Life Carbon Assessment across sustainable building design.

UK policy now links agriculture and the built environment through a £240 million expansion of the Sustainable Farming Incentive, improving soil health and cutting reliance on high‑carbon fertilisers. These measures support decarbonising the built environment and address the embodied carbon in materials central to net zero Whole Life Carbon targets. As scrutiny of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol exposes inconsistencies in corporate carbon reporting, reliable lifecycle assessment frameworks are becoming critical to verifying low carbon building outcomes and aligning procurement with sustainable material specification.

Growth in renewables, driven by projections of a fourfold expansion in offshore wind capacity by 2035, is reshaping operational emissions and strengthening the foundation for carbon neutral construction and energy‑efficient buildings designed under BREEAM V7 guidelines. This integration of renewable building materials and design principles reflects a more mature phase in the industry’s evolution towards net zero carbon buildings and a functioning Circular Economy in construction.

The sector’s trajectory points towards verified performance, where Whole Life Carbon, Life Cycle Cost, and transparent building lifecycle performance replace aspirations with measurable delivery. The transition from demonstration to large‑scale adaptation defines modern environmental sustainability in construction, confirming that the next decade will test implementation rather than intent across every level of sustainable building practices and green construction worldwide.

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