Why change?
For over a century we have designed buildings to consume energy and discard resources.
Today’s buildings have the opportunity to do both differently.
A system built for a different era
Historically, buildings have relied on increasingly centralised collection and disposal systems. Those systems were a rational answer to the conditions of the time, and they have served us for decades.
Since then, almost everything else about a building has evolved. Heating, lighting, insulation and energy generation have each been rethought. Engineering has moved on. Energy systems have moved on.
Resource management must evolve too.
How it has evolved
Yesterday, today, and what comes next.
Yesterday
- Collect
- Transport
- Dispose
Today
- Collect
- Recycle
- Dispose
Tomorrow
- Retain
- Recover value
- Use recovered heat
Only collect what genuinely needs collecting.
Imagine a building designed today
Would we really design it so that valuable resources are transported away, while importing more energy from elsewhere?
A different way of thinking
Not simply a different technology. HERU is the practical expression of a broader idea: value should be recovered where authorised materials arise, rather than only after they have been transported elsewhere.
This is distributed resource management. HERU has been developed as a complementary approach to centralised systems, undertaking appropriate resource recovery within the building itself.
One component, not a replacement
HERU is not intended to replace recycling, energy recovery facilities or collection services. Each has a role, and each will continue to.
HERU sits alongside them as one component within a broader resource management system—recovering value from authorised materials on-site, so that collection is reserved for what genuinely needs collecting.
The buildings of tomorrow will not simply consume energy and discard valuable resources. They will become intelligent resource systems.