This month Build Dubai had a full house again!
Guest presentation: Sustainability and the Built Environment
Our guest speaker Karim El-Jisr, chief sustainability officer at Diamond Developers, combines resource management, climate change, and urban development. After 20 years in conservation management, he shifted his attention to making cities and communities more livable and climate-proof. Based in The Sustainable City in Dubai, Karim manages a global platform for advancing knowledge in sustainability and the built environment.
Karim shared his thoughts on sustainability and the built environment. How can cities and communities adapt to a changing world, from food security to low carbon, and from smarter mobility to zero waste. Markets are ripe with innovations and technologies, but what exactly do we need to become more sustainable? Less resource-intensive? More resourceful? More energy independent? Happier?
“Our collective failure to act strongly and early means that we must now implement deep and urgent cuts. […] emissions must drop 7.6 per cent per year from 2020 to 2030 for the 1.5°C goal. If we want to hold the line to 1.5 degrees, we have to slash emissions by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030. Then we have to reach net-zero around 2050 (takeaway from IPCC 1.5 Special Report),” explained Karim during his presentation.
Build Dubai member’s presentation: The New Green Stone Age
Our member, Ali Maarrawi, who recently joined NEOLITH as its managing director for the Middle East, gave us an insightful overview about the largest Sintered Stone in the market, that comes with different thicknesses and excellent mechanical properties.
What is a sintered stone? How come it is 100% natural and yet an engineered man-made stone? How come it is a “green” stone and how is it helping the environment and the communities? A stone made by humans to give back to the planet and its people.
In 2011, the Neolith brand was launched as high-end sintered compact surface with revolutionary physical and technical features. A term meaning “new stone,” Neolith combines the best natural raw materials with state-of-the-art technology to create a high-tech slab.
Neolith’s product is created through the company’s proprietary sinterization technology, exposing minerals and other raw materials to extremely high pressure and temperature (over 1200 degrees Celsius/2200 degrees Fahrenheit), resembling the way natural stone forms over thousands of years, in just hours. The process gives the product outstanding physical and mechanical properties in terms of compaction, resistance and durability.
Interested in attending one of the upcoming Build Dubai meetings? Be our guest and kindly fill out the form here and we’ll get back to you.
