Sustainable plasterboard wins national award

Published by

Nicky Godding

A Stonehouse-based company set up by a builder seeking to drastically reduce the amount of gypsum plasterboard being thrown into a skip, was a winner at the Home of 2030 design competition.

The competition, backed by BRE, Design Council, RIBA and George Clarke's MOBIE, saw Adaptavate win first place for its Breathaboard in the “Building Performance” category.

Adaptavate is an award-winning company rethinking and redesigning the way building materials are produced, used and disposed of. It is developing and commercialising low-carbon construction products for healthy buildings and inhabitants which help ensure the longevity of the world's fragile ecosystem while aiming to surpass the performance of market leading products.

Home of 2030 is a design competition which aims to drive innovation in the provision of affordable, efficient and healthy green homes for all. A cross-government initiative, it aims to feed into the development of government policy and break down barriers that impede innovation and delivery.

Breathaboard, designed and manufactured by Adaptavate Ltd, won £5,000 to support its further development.

The company founder Tom Robinson studied for a Masters degree in sustainable architecture and part of his final thesis focussed on breathability in buildings, a topic he now feels passionately about.

He said: “We are designing low-carbon construction products for healthy buildings and inhabitants which help ensure the longevity of our fragile ecosystem while performing better than market leading products.”

Adaptavate's Breathaboard is a more renewable, lower carbon alternative to plasterboard.

Adaptavate then collaborated with the University of Bath to launch Breathaplasta in 2016. Breathaplasta is an internal wall plaster that is highly breathable, reduces condensation and mould growth and absorbs indoor air pollutants. Breathaplasta is now supplied throughout the UK and Europe to a market with a surging demand for products that support health and wellbeing in the home and workplace.

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.