By Daniel Gannon, Executive Director, Retirement Living Council
One of the privileges associated with my job is seeing the best of the best in the retirement living industry and then finding out there’s something, or someone, even better, setting new and higher benchmarks.
Sustainability and the way we are designing and developing age-friendly communities is the perfect case in point.
Last month, two seemingly unrelated headlines generated anxiety and applause in equal measure, but when brought together spell ‘opportunity’.
The first of these matters relates to climate change, as another United Nations expert warned “human-induced climate change is the largest, most pervasive threat to the natural environment and societies the world has ever experienced.”
The second relates to Australian companies topping the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark, with our property and construction industry leading these rankings for 12 consecutive years now.
Among the biggest GRESB winners in the residential category is RLC member and industry leader, the Lendlease Retirement Living Trust.
So, what’s the point in connecting these two disparate dots?
Well, according to Deloitte, the building and construction sector’s greenhouse gas emissions account for about 40% of global GHG emissions, most coming from heating, cooling and lighting of buildings and infrastructure.
This means we’re a big part of the problem – but equally, we’re a big part of the solution.
The retirement living and broader property industries are leading the world in climate action in the most innovative, pragmatic and meaningful ways, which is frankly outstanding – look no further than Lendlease for recent evidence.
And when you consider the timeless argument in a 2016 report from the UK ‘All Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People’ – that it’s difficult to contemplate a form of development that could be any more sustainable than retirement housing – the industry story gets better.
However, we shouldn’t be content. We should be constantly challenging ourselves to provide meaningful solutions to serious problems like climate change, injecting important age-friendly housing supply into a market currently under duress, and keep raising industry benchmarks.
It’s why the RLC is so excited and energised by industry opportunities on the horizon and this proud sustainability story that we need to keep telling.
We’re also heartened and overwhelmed by the early response to the 2023 National Retirement Living Summit, especially the record-breaking number of applications for next year’s National Retirement Living Awards program.
Aristotle puts it best.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”