The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) is planning to introduce a new version of their Green Star – Interiors rating tool, with the updated tool to focus on creating healthy, resilient and positive fitouts, as well as driving sustainability through circular design.

Green Star Fitouts, the proposed new rating tool, will be a refining of its predecessor, offering a simplified framework to help applicants navigate how to create a sustainable fitout and achieve GBCA certification.

Green Star Fitouts will exemplify a new approach to designing, building, deconstructing and reusing fitouts. According to GBCA, the introduction of the ‘Circular’ category seeks to ensure that Green Star Fitouts will lead the industry towards a circular economy by demonstrating how great planning, design and construction can enable the creation of fitouts that can be reused after the end of life, to reduce waste and allow nature to regenerate.

Key goals of Green Star Fitouts include driving supply chain transformation towards circularity; and exceeding Paris climate agreement carbon targets.

"We envision a future where circular fitouts are not the exception, but the norm, fundamentally altering the DNA of our built environment," says Davina Rooney, GBCA CEO.

"Green Star Fitouts aims to expand the reach and adoption of sustainable practices across interiors everywhere. Our aim is to create a ripple effect of positive change, ensuring that each Green Star-certified space serves as a model for others to follow, thereby amplifying our collective efforts to combat climate change, deliver better places for people to live, work, and play in, and that are part of a circular economy.”

GBCA's Senior Manager – Strategy & Development, Taryn Cornell, believes the new model is tailored to the realm of interior design.

"As part of our Future Focus program, we’ve set out to create a fit-for-purpose solution to address the biggest challenge in the sector: we aim to shift from a linear to a circular model," she says.

“World-leading Green Star Fitouts certification will be a commitment to ongoing circularity. The goal is to set new industry standards that prioritise circularity, and to encourage widespread adoption of these practices. As Green Star ratings become more prevalent, we are moving closer to a sustainable future for our built environment.”

While the scoping and consultation phase is complete, the development phase of Green Star Fitouts will run until late 2024, with the technical release of the rating tool expected in early 2025. Read the consultation paper here, which describes the proposal for the new Green Star Fitouts tool in full.

Image: Aurecon Office Fitout, VIC, 5 Star Green Star Office Interiors v1.1 (Source: GBCA)

Architecture & Design Team

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