In 2018, then-Governor Phil Murphy signed New Jersey’s Prescribed Burning Act to promote it as a tool for wildfire mitigation, though the state has been using prescribed burns since 1928.
The snow from the nor’easter in February was the biggest challenge to prescribed burning this year. Due to the cold nights and limited rain keeping the snowpack in place for weeks, only 35 percent of the 25,000-acre goal was treated.
“This follows a prolonged drought in 2024 that constrained prescribed fire operations in 2025, when just 3,958 acres were treated, the lowest annual total in the last 25 years,” said Greg McLaughlin, an administrator for New Jersey Forests and Natural Lands.
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✍️ Anna Mattson
📸 Getty Images and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The UK concrete sector’s new circular economy in construction plan anchors a shift toward whole life carbon assessment as the benchmark for sustainable construction. By tracking both embodied carbon and operational performance, the industry aims to reduce the carbon footprint of construction and create low carbon building envelopes that support net zero carbon buildings. This initiative promotes circular construction strategies such as end-of-life reuse in construction, resource efficiency in construction, and the adoption of low embodied carbon materials to drive carbon footprint reduction across the supply chain. It signals the embedding of life cycle thinking in construction, where life cycle cost and building lifecycle performance become integral to design and procurement.
Revised BREEAM guidance, including updates anticipated in BREEAM V7, is intensifying scrutiny of climate resilience and environmental sustainability in construction. The integration of whole life carbon targets and eco-design for buildings aligns with the UK government’s commitment to adapt for 2°C of warming by 2050. Treating adaptation as a compliance requirement ensures that sustainable building practices are embedded within green construction codes rather than appended to them. Lifecycle assessment is now viewed as essential to ensuring net zero whole life carbon outcomes.
Urgency has also grown on the social side of sustainable building design. Rising heat mortality across vulnerable housing stock highlights the health imperative for energy-efficient buildings and equitable eco-friendly construction standards. Retrofit projects focused on insulation, passive cooling and low carbon design now contribute to both social resilience and decarbonising the built environment. At the same time, partnerships between public, private and philanthropic sectors are demonstrating how sustainable urban development can regenerate industrial zones into low carbon construction materials hubs and green infrastructure corridors that support carbon neutral construction.
Across all fronts, sustainable design has moved from concept to criterion: sustainability is now measured in tonnes of carbon, not words.
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