Culture of Sustainability
VERiS envisions a future where green building design features and building and organizational management practices intersect to foster social and environmental consciousness. This future consists of a ‘green’ workplace environment where sustainable practices are the default and easy to perform. This is what we call a culture of sustainability (COS). A COS is defined as shared values, norms, language, and practices focused on making individual and societal choices that foster social, economic and environmental sustainability. Our research on COS aims to address the ‘performance gap’ in green buildings. While green buildings are designed to reduce the energy used and green-house gases emitted by the building sector, green buildings do not always meet their performance targets. This occurs when the bidirectionality of the human interaction with the building is not sufficiently considered in the building design and development of targets (Fedoruk et al., 2015). Our work aims to close the performance gap by exploring factors related to how a COS may develop and be maintained over time, and how it may influence building performance, and occupant health, wellbeing and productivity.
What are we doing?
VERiS currently leads 5 projects related to Culture of Sustainability. These projects particularly centre green office buildings as the built environment of focus.
- An intersectoral partnership led by VERiS exploring human the development and impact of a culture of sustainability over time and how to close the performance gap of commercial green buildings.
- Telling the story of how evolv1, a state of the art, green building was born out of an intersectoral partnership across NGOs, industry, universities, and regional government in Ontario, Canada.
- Are green buildings better? A longitudinal multiple case-study exploring how working in a green-certified government office building may promote employee health, wellbeing and productivity and how a COS may impact this.
- A culture of sustainability initiative in evolv1 exploring a peer support group for reducing meat consumption.
- Exploring young job seekers attraction to working in green building.
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Co-Leads: Manuel Riemer, Joel Marcus, Simon Coulombe, Paul Parker, Noam Miller, Sean Geobey
Project Manager: Brittany Spadafore
Stream: VERiS General
Rationale and Objectives
This project leverages the newly constructed evolv1, a multi-tenant green office building in Waterloo, Ontario, owned and operated by the Cora Group, to explore how a COS develops and is fostered over time. The goal of this project is to develop, test, and commercialize a transferable evidence-based engagement strategy for the development of a culture of sustainability in green office buildings that can close the performance gap and help realize the full potential of green buildings, contribute to organizational success and support occupant wellbeing.
What are we doing?
Using evolv1 as a living lab, our team at VERiS is using a longitudinal mixed-method case study design to study the development of a COS and its impacts on evolv1. Yearly surveys, a national comparison survey, focus groups, interviews with key informants, photovoice, workshops, behavioural observations, participant observations, as well as physical elements, such as sensor data, building data and waste audits are being collected to measure COS and building performance over time.
Current and Past Partners
Private Sector Partners:
Blackwell
BOMA
BorealisAI
City of Waterloo
Cora Group
Eleven-X
EY Canada
Integral Group
McKenzie-Mohr Consulting
National Research Council
Recollective
Red Cedar PM Services Inc.
REFOCUS
Scius Innovations Inc.
Stuart Olson Inc.
St. Paul’s Greenhouse
Sustainable Societies Consulting Group
Sustainable Waterloo Region
TextNow
The Accelerator Centre
Institutional Partners:
Wilfrid Laurier University
University of Waterloo
York University
Co-Leads: Manuel Riemer, Simon Coulombe, Bianca Dreyer
Research Stream: VERiS General
Rationale and Objectives:
Research exploring employee mental health, wellbeing and productivity is growing and finding that greater indoor environments in office buildings are associated with greater wellbeing outcomes. While it is assumed that green buildings provide greater wellbeing and productivity outcomes, previous research has yielded inconsistent findings. This study aimed to explain this variance and explore the key differences in wellbeing/health and work outcomes of employees in green-certified buildings. This study also aimed to explore to what degree and through what processes does a green-certified building contribute to a positive culture of sustainability within the building and how engagement in a COS impacts wellbeing and health outcomes of employees.
What are we doing?
A longitudinal multiple case study was employed across multiple governmental buildings with various levels of green building certification to allow for building-employee interaction comparisons between a) a new LEED-certified high-performance green building, b) a traditional building with retrofits and level 1 BOMA certification, and c) a traditional building with no retrofits and no green-building certification. This study utilized surveys, building environmental assessment, interviews and photovoice, and document/archival data review as its measures.
Co-Leads: Manuel Riemer
Stream: VERiS General
Rationale and Objectives
Our main research site for studying the longitudinal development of a COS, evolv1, is Canada’s first commercial green-building designed to be net-positive. Development of this cutting-edge building, from inception, to construction, to ongoing maintenance, calls for an intersectoral partnership across NGOs, industry, universities, and regional government, with a shared vision and drive toward a clean economy across national and international building industries. Documenting this partnership and industry breakthrough was essential in setting the standard for its replication and driving the clean economy forward by capturing the key players, successes, challenges, and lessons learned.
What are we doing?
To capture such processes, VERiS conducted interviews with key informants, such as stakeholders in the making of evolv1 and current tenants of the building, to develop a full picture of its conception and impacts in the community and industry thus far. Essential to capturing the creation story is disseminating the knowledge gathered in a compelling way to diverse audiences and key industry players. Thus, an engaging report describing best practices for the collaborative cross-disciplinary development of this state-of-the-art building and its impacts is in progress.
Lead: Brittany Spadafore
Stream: VERiS General
Rationale and Objectives
Increasing evidence suggests that reducing global meat consumption is imperative for alleviating the environmental pressures of the dominant industrial food system. Though, existing research has narrowly centred individual decision-making as the culprit and behaviour to change save the environment. Thus, this research aimed to understand efforts to reduce meat consumption from a social practice theory lens, where the practice of consuming meat became the focal point of analysis, illuminating the core elements of practicing a reduction in meat consumption that often lie outside of individual control. This occurred within the peer group setting at evolv1. This project, nested within the broader evolv1 project, was shaped with the vision of contributing to the development of a culture of sustainability at evolv1, by offering tenants of the green building to engage with a research project exploring sustainable food consumption.
Methods and key findings
This project was led by Brittany Spadafore, a student and research assistant with VERiS, for her master’s thesis project. Brittany employed an approach to participatory action research where seven tenants of evolv1 interested in reducing their meat consumption were recruited to participate in weekly peer group meetings and a follow-up focus group. Findings showed that through their engagement in the peer group, participants were able to reduce their meat consumption and that factors such as the participatory-style of the group, the sense of accountability, having the opportunity to learn, an increased consciousness regarding meat consumption and sustainable food consumption, as well as the sense of community and relationship-building contributed most to their engagement. However, the 6-week follow-up focus group revealed meat consumption generally resumed to pre-peer group levels after no longer engaging in the group.
Manuscript (Underdevelopment)
Lead: Devon Fernandes
Stream: VERiS General
Rationale and Objectives
While research suggests that green buildings provide a better working environment and benefit employees to a greater extent, little research has explored to what extent employees are actually attracted to working in green buildings. This research bridged this gap and explored the extent to which young job seekers are attracted to working in green buildings and what features were most attractive. Exploring the attractiveness of working in green buildings gains important insight regarding the COS of green buildings and its impacts on job seekers.
Methods and key findings
To explore this, VERiS research assistant, Devon Fernandes, employed a two-study exploratory sequential mixed methods design for his master’s thesis project. Study One conducted two semi-structured interviews with university students who identified as young job seekers. The results from this initial study informed Study Two, which utilized an online survey to assess attraction to working in green buildings from 273 young job seekers across Canada. Results from this study draw important conclusions regarding the culture of sustainability green buildings do or do not facilitate. Interestingly, this study found that green buildings alone were not the sole deciding factor for young job seekers. Instead, the study found that green buildings have the potential for creating a positive image of the organization using the green building space, and it is, rather, the organizations image and culture that are the primary deciding factors for young job seekers.
Manuscript (Underdevelopment)