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
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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