Walking around the urban oasis that is Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, one wouldn't expect to find pawpaws – the largest edible fruit native to North America – growing alongside tombstones. Stroll farther into the cemetery and American persimmons dangle above graves.
Pawpaws and American persimmons are among the rare, native fruits that some farmers and gardeners are exploring as extreme weather becomes more common. Warmer winters followed by sudden cold snaps, have devastated many of the conventional fruit crops people are used to eating like apples, pears and peaches.
Native fruits often exhibit greater resilience to extreme weather and require less water and pesticides than non-native varieties, "especially if being grown commercially," Ben Flanner, co-founder and CEO of Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm, told CNN.
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📸 : Jeff Faughender/Courier Journal /USA Today Network/Imagn Images
Digitalisation and decarbonisation are integrating at pace across sustainable construction. At Scotland’s Monklands project, digital workflows enable whole life carbon assessment and precision tracking of embodied carbon, cutting life cycle cost through predictive design and optimised offsite fabrication. The Durham initiative applying automated site assessment tools has accelerated approvals while reducing the carbon footprint of construction, aligning data efficiency with environmental sustainability in construction.
In Liverpool, biophilic eco-design for buildings demonstrates how sustainable building design is contributing to low carbon design and improved occupant wellbeing through living architecture that enhances green infrastructure. Government policy now links affordability with sustainability. Early measures from the Burnham administration suggest a commitment to decarbonising the built environment and net zero carbon buildings through incentives rooted in life cycle thinking in construction.
Regulatory pressure is mounting as agencies introduce more robust frameworks for carbon footprint reduction, reinforcing accountability across the industry. Material innovation remains central to progress. Enzyme‑based recycling and a £125 million facility for chemical reuse in Darlington indicate that circular economy in construction and circular construction strategies are moving into mainstream infrastructure.
These advances in low embodied carbon materials, renewable building materials, and green building products signal a shift towards carbon neutral construction supported by verifiable environmental product declarations (EPDs). Across digital tools, biomimetic systems, and progressive material science, sustainable building practices are redefining building lifecycle performance, embedding whole life carbon accountability into every stage. Efficiency, resilience, and ecology are converging to deliver net zero whole life carbon outcomes consistent with BREEAM v7 principles, confirming that sustainable design is now integral to construction’s economic and environmental logic.
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