So we decided to walk our own talk. We replaced two of our office toilets with the Arumloo, a low-flush toilet designed and manufactured right here in South Africa.

Why Arumloo

Part of what drew us to Arumloo is that it is proudly local. In an industry where so many “sustainable” products are shipped in from overseas, it was refreshing to find a genuinely local-is-lekker solution: designed in South Africa, manufactured in South Africa, and built specifically with South African water realities in mind.

• The plastic Arumloo is 100% manufactured in SA
• The ceramic components are manufactured in Egypt, ensuring that although the components are imported, supporting the African manufacturing sector is a priority
• The final assembly is also completed in SA.

For a consultancy that spends its days helping clients source responsibly and think about supply chains, that mattered to us.

Biophilic Design

The Arumloo’s form is modelled on the arum lily, translating the plant’s curved petal and gentle taper into the shape of the bowl and cistern. It’s a reminder that biophilic design isn’t only about bringing plants indoors, it’s about letting nature’s forms genuinely inform the products we use every day. In a fitting most of us never think twice about, that’s a small but meaningful shift, and it’s the kind of detail that makes you smile every time you notice it.

The Installation

We’re the first to admit that when a bit of plumbing is involved, we brace ourselves for disruption. So it was a pleasant surprise that swapping out our old units for the new Arumloos was genuinely simple. Both toilets were installed within an hour, with no drama, no extended downtime, and no need to rethink our existing plumbing. If you’re a facilities manager weighing up whether a retrofit like this is worth the hassle: it isn’t a hassle.

Does It Actually Work?

This is really the question that matters. Anyone can promise water savings; the test is whether the toilet performs once it’s bolted to the floor and in daily use by an entire office.

The headline number is 2 litres per flush, a fraction of what a standard toilet uses, and even less than most “efficient” dual-flush units manage in practice. But the number on the spec sheet is only half the story. What actually convinced us was the flush itself. Arumloo’s flush mechanism uses a vortex action that clears the bowl properly, first time, every time. No second flush. No third flush. No standing around waiting for the cistern to refill before you can try again. It simply works: quietly, efficiently, and without any of the compromises we’d grudgingly accepted from our previous dual-flush units.

In other words, the Arumloo doesn’t ask you to sacrifice performance in exchange for water savings. It gives you both, which, if you’ve ever sat in a meeting about “water-wise” fittings that don’t quite deliver, you’ll know is rarer than it should be.

Why This Matters to Us

At Solid Green, we spend our days helping clients chase down every litre and every kilowatt-hour across major developments – office towers, hotels, precincts. It’s easy, in that context, to think of water efficiency as something that happens at scale, in big systems, in complicated certification credits. The Arumloo swap was a useful reminder that meaningful water savings can also start with something as ordinary and overlooked as the humble office toilet.

Toilets are, after all, one of the biggest consumers of water in any building, and one of the easiest places to make an immediate dent in consumption without asking anyone to change their behaviour. Two litres per flush, multiplied across a full working day and a full team, adds up to a genuinely significant reduction over time: water that isn’t drawn from an already strained system.

It’s a small, practical step, but it’s exactly the kind of step we encourage our clients to take: treating water not as an inexhaustible utility, but as the precious resource it is. In a country where water security is never far from the headlines, every fitting that genuinely performs as advertised is worth celebrating and worth specifying. Installing the Arumloos in our own office is one more way of making sure we practice what we preach, one flush at a time.

If you’d like to see the Arumloo range for yourself, have a look at arumloo.com or reach out to Jonny Harris. And, next time you’re in our office, feel free to put the vortex flush to the test.

The post Nature-Inspired, Water-Wise: Meet the Arumloo appeared first on Solid Green Consulting.

Portfolio Results Overview:

• 11 Buildings Assessed: 8 standard recertifications and 3 new certifications including 1 first-ever certification.
• Key Achievements: 4 buildings reached 5-Star status, 10 increased their score, 1 held steady, and none regressed – yielding a combined portfolio gain of +59 points.

Figure 1: Portfolio results

A Three-Year Report Card

As EBP requires recertification every three years, it creates a comparable performance trendline over time. For the eight standard recertifications with established core policies and management systems, the EBP process focused mainly on updated performance data and current indoor environmental quality audits.

Figure 2: Every project’s previous certified rating moving to its newly achieved rating, plotted against the 4-Star and 5-Star thresholds

Read left to right, the pattern is striking. Every single project in the portfolio either improved or held its ground. None went backwards. And four didn’t just improve – they crossed an entire rating band.

The 4 Buildings that reached 5-Star

Four projects successfully crossed the threshold into 5-Star territory (“South African Excellence”):

• 1 Holwood Park (single-tenant call centre and office): Jumped from 46 to 62 points (+16 pts), achieving the portfolio’s largest single increase through improved energy and water performance.
• Pharos House: Climbed from 45 to 60 points (+15 pts). Assessed as a new certification due to its lapsed EBP status, it achieved 5-Star status driven by a leap in water efficiency and stronger energy management.
• Mayfair on the Lake (multi-tenanted office): Rose from 54 to 62 points (+8 pts), bringing its ongoing operational performance into alignment with its original 5-Star New Build design rating.
• Ridgeview Umhlanga (multi-tenanted office): Moved from 58 to 61 points (+3 pts), crossing the threshold after sitting near the top of the 4-Star band.

Figure 3: Four buildings crossed into 5-Star territory

What Drove the Improvement

Portfolio gains were driven by operational monitoring across five core categories:

• Indoor Environmental Quality (+27.5 pts total gain): Delivered the largest total point increase across the portfolio, driven by improvements in air quality, thermal comfort, acoustic comfort, and occupant satisfaction surveys.
•  Energy (+18 pts total gain): The single biggest contributor to individual building score increases, achieved through continuous monitoring and management rather than major capital expenditures.
• Water (+5 pts total gain): Better monitoring of potable water use reduced demand on municipal infrastructure, notably at 1 Holwood Park, Mayfair on the Lake, Pharos House, and Peter Place Office Park.
• Emissions (+7 pts total gain) & Transport (+4 pts total gain): Driven by commuter surveys, refined refrigerant management, and stormwater best practices.

Figure 4: What drove the improvement

The Practical Importance of Timely Recertification

Recertifying within the required three-year window allows properties to use a streamlined recertification path. The main focus is on updated measurements and audits (energy, water, indoor air quality) when existing management frameworks like the Green Cleaning Policy, Building Operations Manual, and Green Travel Plan are maintained.

Missing the window forces a full, ground-up assessment as a new certification. The takeaway for managers? Recertifying on time confirms existing systems; recertifying late requires rebuilding them from scratch.

Portfolio Scoreboard

Why this matters beyond the Plaque

A Green Star EBP rating acts as an operational diagnostic providing independently verified proof of environmental and comfort improvements for tenants, financiers, and consultants. Achieving these results required close collaboration between facilities management teams, sustainability specialists and building owners, together with independent assessment by the Green Building Council South Africa (GBCSA).

The post What it takes to elevate an Existing Building Portfolio appeared first on Solid Green Consulting.

Designed with intent

From the outset, the design brief asked a fundamental question: how do we express the core values and vision of EIB while honouring our Southern African context? The solution was to design around user experience, ergonomics, and seamless workflow. In order to overcome the challenge of limited direct window exposure, the layout intentionality maximises available natural light across flexible workstations, plug-and-play tech spaces, and collaborative meeting hubs. This offers a space that is flexible and adaptive, based on the needs of the occupants.

Integrated efficiency

Rather than treating sustainability as an additive checklist, the fit-out is fully integrated with the base building’s high-efficiency energy and water systems. Energy and water sub-metering systems monitor major loads, while low-flow, water-efficient fittings actively limit daily operational usage.

Green Star elements that improve the everyday experiences for occupants and lower impacts on the ecosystem:

• Indoor Environmental Quality:

  By specifying 3rd-party eco-certified, low-VOC materials and high-spec acoustic finishes, the interior actively protects indoor air purity and sensory comfort. Active furnishings and a complimentary fresh fruit and vegetable initiative support physical movement and daily employee wellness.

• Materials & Waste Diversion:

  Construction management achieved an outstanding waste diversion rate of over 82% by mass, which far surpasses baseline benchmarks. Demolition debris, drywall, tiles, and carpets were systematically collected and diverted to recovery facilities, preventing thousands of kilograms of waste from entering Gauteng landfills.

• Energy & Water Efficiency:

  Fully integrated into its base building, the space leverages sub-metering systems to track major loads while low-flow fittings drastically cut operational water usage.

A benchmark for sustainability

The project achieved its Green Star Interiors v1 certification in December 2025. Driven by an expert collaborative team which includes Trend Group, HK Studio, and Solid Green Consulting, the project highlights how thoughtful interior interventions can achieve meaningful sustainability targets on a compact footprint.

The EIB Pretoria fit-out shows that true sustainability lies in harmony and intent. It can be used as a design driver where the vision of a global investment can comfortably meet local context and high-performance building strategies that elevate the human experience.

The post EIB Interiors: Sustainability meets the Human Experience appeared first on Solid Green Consulting.

What the project is about

The Jozi Bee Hotel Project is a collaborative citizen science initiative between the University of the Witwatersrand and Tutus Loco, led by Dr Chevonne Reynolds of Wits’ School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences. Its premise is simple but ambitious: distribute bee hotels to residents across the rapidly developing city, then use them to measure and compare biodiversity and the pollination services that flow from it from one neighbourhood to the next.

The project speaks directly to Goal 11 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which challenges us to build inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities. Central to that goal is a question of fairness: do all city residents have access to urban biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides? By testing how biodiversity shifts across Jozi’s very different landscapes, the research team hopes to understand what drives those differences and, ultimately, how to close the gap.

Solitary bees are the ideal messengers for this work. Unlike honeybees, they are harmless, they nest happily inside a bee hotel, and they are diverse and abundant enough to reveal meaningful patterns. They are also essential pollinators. Pollination is a genuine ecosystem service that keeps urban trees, residential gardens, parks, and city agriculture productive, which in turn supports the birds and animals that depend on that greenery. If you can measure how solitary bees change across the city, then you begin to see which areas most need support to secure biodiversity for everyone.

What began as a local pilot has since grown into a larger, internationally connected effort now running under the banner of UrbanBEE (myurbanbee.com), and this is the phase Solid Green took part in. Enthusiasm for the idea has been high and what started with a target of 200 bee hotels has grown to more than 370 finding homes across the city.

Solid Green’s season

Solid Green hosted a bee hotel at our Parkhurst office and joined the ranks of the project’s citizen scientists. The commitment is refreshingly hands-on: set up your hotel, then submit a photograph and a short observation every week so the researchers can track exactly how, and how fast, it fills up; if at all. Over the 2025–2026 season, that rhythm ran for roughly four months of weekly data collection, wrapping up at the start of February 2026, with six-month and one-year check-ins to follow as the science team analyses what was gathered.

Our colleague Adrie shared her personal reflections on taking part in the project for a second year:

This was my second year taking part in the bee hotel project, and I loved it just as much as the first time round – though oddly, it felt more stressful this time, even with a year’s experience under my belt. The bees seemed slower to move in, and my nerves got the better of me – I ended up relocating the hotel twice, second-guessing whether I’d picked the right spot.

But once occupancy picked up, it was genuinely rewarding to watch. Different bees took up different rooms, and it was fascinating to see how some nests were reused multiple times over the season. The whole process made me far more aware of the insects and bees around my own home and garden – I find myself noticing them now in a way I never did before.

The weekly progress reports we had to submit along with photos of our hotels were a nice rhythm to the project, and the WhatsApp group with the organisers and other participants added a lovely sense of community – seeing how everyone else’s hotels were filling up created a real sense of community, making it feel like a shared journey rather than a solo project.

One moment that stayed with me: the day I went to collect my hotel, the volunteers pointed out an owl in a nearby tree. I’d always pictured owls as roughly cat-sized – but this one had proper big-dog energy. Seeing one up close for the first time, I realised just how genuinely massive they actually are. A small but memorable bonus to the day.

Why it matters to us

For a sustainability consultancy, hosting a bee hotel is more than a feel-good gesture. It is a small, tangible contribution to a large-scale dataset that could shape how Johannesburg thinks about socio-environmental justice, urban greening, and biodiversity access. It connects the abstract language of ecosystem services to something you can watch fill up, week by week, right outside the door. And it is a reminder that building better cities isn’t only about the structures we design, it is also about the pollinators and the people we make room for.

To learn more about the research, visit the Jozi Bee Hotel Project at jozibeehotelproject.com or UrbanBEE at myurbanbee.com.

The post Small Guests, Big Data: the Bee Hotel Project appeared first on Solid Green Consulting.

At Solid Green, our next frontier is moving from Net Zero to Net Positive. We are no longer just looking to do less harm; we are aiming to create ecosystems, buildings, and operational practices that are actively regenerative and restorative.

Nowhere is this shift more tangible, and more challenging, than in the space of Carbon-Free Mobility.

The SDG Blueprint for E-Mobility

Decarbonising how we move is a cornerstone of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Transport electrification isn’t just an isolated technological upgrade; it is a critical lever that intersects with multiple global targets:

• SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy): True carbon-free mobility relies on an energy grid anchored in scalable, renewable energy sources. Driving an EV is only as clean as the power charging it.
• SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure): Transitioning away from fossil fuels requires an unprecedented infrastructure rollout, expanding resilient smart grids and localised technical innovation.
• SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities): Decarbonising urban transit hubs and corporate travel pathways reduces localised pollution, creating healthier, low-carbon value chains where people live and work.
• SDG 13 (Climate Action): With the transport and energy sectors driving the vast majority of global greenhouse gas emissions, immediate transition strategies are non-negotiable to limit global warming.

The Reality of the Transition: A Case Study on the Road

To communicate sustainability authentically, you have to live it. I recently took our company’s fully electric BYD Atto 3 on a 367 km journey from Johannesburg to Nelspruit for the DAS Conference.

On paper, the “Extended Range EV Trip Plan” was seamless. In reality, it was a sharp lesson in the vulnerabilities of our current transitional infrastructure. A leisurely charging stop to view wildlife left us with no buffer upon arrival, and a return-leg charging station abruptly went offline mid-charge, resulting in a tech-support saga that added an extra hour and a half to the drive. Standing at a dark, unresponsive charging bollard in the late afternoon, the gap between intent and infrastructure became glaringly obvious. It highlighted a core truth of the sustainability transition: zero-emissions technology is commercially viable right now, but its long-term reliability hinges entirely on systemic resilience.

South Africa’s electric vehicle landscape currently exists in a delicate balance between rapid, innovative “wins” and severe systemic “setbacks.” On the winning side, market momentum is accelerating, with new energy vehicle (NEV) sales climbing to over 16,700 units in 2025 which is nearly 19 times the volume recorded in 2021.

Additionally, the International Energy Agency previously ranked South Africa fifth globally in terms of the ratio of public EV chargers to vehicles, highlighting an incredibly proactive rollout of public charging points relative to early adoption. However, the critical vulnerability lies in the structural framework supporting this network. The traditional grid, constrained by aging infrastructure and transmission bottlenecks, was never designed to handle the heavy demands of large-scale EV fast-charging. Consequently, traditional grid-tied stations are heavily exposed to energy insecurity and regional power cuts. This creates friction between a booming vehicle market and an unstable grid.

The Net Positive Frontier: Regenerative Mobility

This is where the shift from Net Zero to Net Positive becomes crucial.

A Net Zero approach to mobility simply means swapping an internal combustion engine for an electric one and offsetting the remaining operational footprint. It keeps us at a baseline of zero impact.

A Net Positive approach, however, looks at the holistic management of the entire lifecycle and system. It means moving toward circular shared value:

1. Grid-positive charging: Moving beyond standard grid-tied EV chargers to localised, solar-powered corporate microgrids that feed clean energy back into the national system when vehicles aren’t charging.
2. Infrastructure resilience: Building charging networks equipped with decentralised battery storage and generator backups so that localised outages don’t stall the macro-economy.
3. Circular life cycles: Taking into account the choice of materials, battery supply chains, and future use cycles of the vehicles themselves, preventing resource depletion from the outset.

Walking the Walk

We can design and certify the greenest, highest performing buildings in Africa, but those buildings do not exist in a vacuum. They are connected by human beings who need to move between them.

True carbon-free mobility requires us to push past the comfort zone of simple compliance. As we navigate this structural global transition, the hiccups on the road are inevitable – but they are indicators of where we must build stronger, smarter, and more resilient systems. The goal is no longer just to reach the destination with a neutral footprint. It’s to leave the road better than we found it.

The post Carbon-Free Mobility: from Net Zero to Net Positive appeared first on Solid Green Consulting.

• three office buildings – 144 Oxford, Exxaro Lakeside 2, and Inanda Greens Business Park
• four industrial buildings – Ebony, GIE 1 Portions 1 & 2 of Erf 308, Growthpoint Industrial Estate, and Monteer

Decoding Net Zero Carbon Level 2

To achieve a Level 2 Certification, a building must prove that its actual net carbon emissions equal 0 kg CO₂/m²/year. The Green Building Council South Africa (GBCSA) enforces a strict hierarchy of pathways to ensure buildings are inherently sustainable before looking outside their borders:

• Pathways 1 & 2: On-site energy efficiency and on-site renewables must be the first priority.
• Pathways 3 & 4: Off-site mechanisms like renewable energy procurement and carbon offsets are only permitted once stringent efficiency thresholds are met.

To unlock off-site options, buildings have to demonstrate a serious commitment to energy efficiency, achieving either a 20% improvement from the baseline without onsite renewables, or a 40% improvement if on-site renewables are included. This ensures that the buildings themselves are highly efficient before neutralising the remaining energy use.

peter@hassall.co.za

The Roadmap to Zero: Offsetting Unavoidable Emissions

For emissions that could not be designed away or eliminated on-site, Growthpoint strategically tackled both Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions using high-quality, verified market mechanisms:

1. Scope 1 Emissions (Direct Emissions)

• Carbon Credits, retired from the Tswalu Kalahari Carbon Project, were issued by Credible Carbon, supporting overall national emissions reduction and local biodiversity conservation.

2. Scope 2 Emissions (Indirect Grid Emissions)

• Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) were redeemed from multiple verified renewable energy projects in South Africa, through the FuelSwitch platform.

A Blueprint for the Future

By combining rigorous on-site efficiency with pioneering technologies like blockchain-backed RECs and verified local carbon projects, Growthpoint has set a benchmark for the South African property sector. Here’s to turning more portfolios green, one building at a time!

The post Growthpoint’s Net Zero Carbon Measured Certifications appeared first on Solid Green Consulting.