When Better Green Living was asked to build COVID testing pods for King’s College London in 2020, no one expected it would lead to a longer-term zero-waste student accommodation refurbishment project while students are still in residence. Yet five years later, Better Green Living has completed a major refurbishment of King’s accommodation at Stamford Street – achieving 78% recycling rates, zero construction noise complaints in the last 18 months, and a fresh approach to refurbishing occupied student accommodation.
GSL News sat down with Better Green Living’s Chief Operations Officer, Tom Dodson, to explore the company’s approach to zero-waste refurbishment, what they’ve learned about implementing circular economy principles at scale, and why Better Green Living’s unconventional approach to refurbishment is resonating with a generation of students who place a high priority on sustainability.
From event management to the refurbishment of student accommodation
Better Green Living (Better Green), part of the Better Green Group, has its roots in the events industry – its sister company, Better Green Productions, was founded by Ed and Dee Parsons in 2016 to combat waste in the notoriously wasteful events industry. Through their events work, Better Green was contracted to build COVID testing pods for King’s College London (King’s) during the pandemic. The head of operations at King’s was so impressed with their work, particularly their initiative to include accessible pods for people with a disability without being asked, that he posed an unexpected question: could they refurbish student flats?
“They gave us a trial flat,” explains Tom. “In their own words, they expected us to fail – we were a small company – much smaller than what they were used to. But actually, we gave them a headache because they were so impressed with our work and our focus on sustainability.” And so, the relationship between King’s and Better Green developed to the point where Better Green was awarded a contract to redesign and refurbish King’s Stamford Street halls of residence.
Taking a student-centred approach
Anyone familiar with the GSL Index knows that construction noise consistently ranks among students’ top complaints about their accommodation. However, on the King’s project, Better Green took the radical step of completely planning its work schedule around student lifestyles. Tom explains:
“Students are often out until 4 o’clock in the morning, so they don’t want to wake up at 10 o’clock. So, we don’t start noisy work until 12 o’clock. We do all noisy work between 12 and 5 every day.”
The approach requires careful planning – coordinating all the noisy tasks into a five-hour window – but this approach has paid off. Tom notes that they have only received three noise complaints, all of which occurred in the project’s first year, while they were still learning how to work with the students. However, over the last 18 months of the King’s project, they have not received any complaints.
Better Green also communicates with students about reading weeks and exam periods and plans accordingly. “We try not to be noisy for the whole week,” says Tom. “It’s difficult – sometimes you have to break that – but as long as you communicate with the students in advance, generally they understand.”
For the King’s project, Better Green has also provided a dedicated student liaison officer who’s always on site. “He works as well, but he’s always around, so students know they can talk to him. We budget for that as part of the project.”
Tom believes that the young age of their team has been instrumental in this success. “Our guys are quite young, the oldest on site other than me is 28, so they can all still relate to the students, and students find it easy to talk to them,” Tom explains. This accessibility turns what can often be an adversarial relationship between construction workers and residents into a collaborative one.
Circular economy in action
Better Green’s commitment to sustainability goes far beyond rhetoric. On the King’s project, they achieved a 78% recycling rate, with the remaining 22% diverted from landfill to energy generation, effectively achieving zero landfill waste.
Their approach involves thinking differently about every aspect of a refurbishment. For example, when the Better Green team found 25-year-old toilets in decent condition, they didn’t automatically replace them. “We took them out, deep cleaned them, refitted them, and put them back,” Tom explains.
Flooring presented another opportunity for innovation. Rather than using glued-down vinyl – which creates massive waste when replaced – the Better Green team installed floating floors over a screed base. “In 10-15 years’ time, when the vinyl gets ruined, you can just take that floor out and lay new vinyl on the screed,” Tom explains. “As long as there’s no fundamental damage, the screed will last 100 years. Before, you’d rip it all out, and it would all go into landfill.”
Materials like plasterboard go to specialised facilities where they’re jet-washed and tumble-dried, then reused. “We send it off to be recycled, and then we’re essentially buying materials from the people we’re sending it to. Everything we buy is recycled,” creating a closed-loop system.
Better Green also uses birch plywood from sustainably managed forests, operates electric vehicles in London, and collaborates with waste companies committed to circular economy principles – even though this incurs higher upfront costs. According to Tom, King’s commitment to and Better Green’s zero-waste approach resonate positively with students, who often ask the Better Green team about the sustainability of their sources.
Better Green also plants trees for every room they refurbish – an initiative that Tom says students have reacted to very positively. Students get one tree for their bedroom and one for their living room and one for their kitchen area, with a QR code showing where their tree is planted in Indonesia. So far, Better Green Living has planted approximately 16,000 trees, with a target of 25,000 by 2026.
The cost of sustainability
Tom is candid about the economics of zero-waste construction. “Keeping waste out of landfill isn’t any more expensive,” he explains, “but using recyclable, repurposed products definitely is.”
So how do they make the business case? They don’t – at least not in the traditional sense. “We don’t really have to make the business case. We push quite heavily what we do and how we do it, and our price is our price,” says Tom. “But mostly people are having conversations with us because of our sustainability and our social aspects, rather than because we’re cheaper.”
The quality of their work speaks for itself. “Our finishes are high-end, our work is really good. People walk in and think, ‘wow, this is different.’ And we are honest – everything we do is quite open book.”
When asked what advice he’d give to accommodation providers who think zero waste is too hard or too expensive, Tom is very pragmatic: “I would show them the figures and the facts.”
For example, for a recent project, Better Green kept toilets, sinks, door frames, and toilet cubicle walls that another contractor had planned to throw away. “It was half the budget, and the lifespan we’re predicting will be about three-quarters of what a brand-new installation would get,” he explains. “You can do the whole project again for the same money and get essentially one and a half times what you would otherwise.”
Tom notes that they have found generational differences in receptiveness to their approach. “If you get a young project manager, they get it straight away and are up for new technologies and new ideas,” they observe. “Older project managers and construction managers take longer, but they do come around. It’s about educating them to understand why, because that’s how they’ve always done it – throwing things away.”
Managing a project in a live environment
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Better Green’s King’s project is that it was completed while students remained in occupation – something that’s relatively rare in the sector.
“We were the fourth company that King’s brought in to try refurbishing occupied accommodation,” Tom explains. According to Tom, the key to success is communication and collaboration with students. The process works like this: 4-6 flats are generally refurbished at a time. Four weeks before handover, students receive notification they’re moving. Two weeks out, they get a confirmed time and date. Then, after the move, on Friday at 11 am, the team walks students through their new rooms to ensure they’re happy.
“We have a key handover process. We base our whole team on-site, and we help students move all their stuff. If they’re not on site, we’ll take photos of the old rooms, pack everything up for them, and move it all across. Then Monday morning at 8 am, we’re at the doors making sure everyone’s happy, and we start the cycle again.”
Better Green has a small, dedicated team, which is one of the reasons for its success – “we’re talking about 12 people on site – you just don’t notice them,” Tom notes. “But we’re patient, we communicate, and we blend in. For King’s, it’s also great because we’re always there if they have a problem. For example, if a water system goes down, we can help fix it.”
Technology and student wellbeing
Looking ahead, Tom says they are most excited about technologies that combine sustainability with student welfare. Better Green is exploring innovations such as cisternless toilets and showers that connect directly to drainage systems, using about a third less water than conventional systems. But for Tom, the real innovation lies in what else these systems can do.
“If nobody’s used them in a day, they’ll flush themselves,” he explains. “But they also tell you – because the system knows – whether a toilet or shower has been used.” This creates a passive monitoring system for student wellbeing without any intrusion.
“In my experience in the last 10-15 years of student accommodation is that there is a huge wellbeing crisis that wasn’t as obvious 15 years ago,” Tom observes. “Sometimes we go into a room about to be refurbished, and you can see the student has struggled – the room hasn’t been cleaned in ages. These systems can flag up on a computer: ‘This student hasn’t showered in a while, hasn’t left their room.’ It can bring awareness without any intrusion.”
The technology also includes movement sensors to detect occupancy. Combined with the water usage data, it creates a comprehensive but privacy-respecting approach to identifying students who may need support.
A sector in transition
Tom notes that interest in zero-waste refurbishment of PBSA has primarily come from universities to date, although there are signs of cultural change. With student numbers down and budgets tight, Tom notes that there is growing interest in refurbishment over new build. “Students are giving us feedback that where an ensuite was the most important thing five years ago, now it’s about budget. They want nice, clean, tidy accommodation – they’re not overly worried about all the bells and whistles anymore because they’re conscious of their budget.”
The 20% commitment
Giving back and outreach are core to Better Green’s ethos, with Better Green donating 20% of post-tax profits to sustainability and social projects. When they secured the King’s contract, Better Green decided to partner with King’s to focus on an issue around the King’s campus: homelessness.
Better Green and King’s run an annual event where they open King’s gym and wellness centre to local homeless people, providing meals, showers (in partnership with Shower Box), clean clothes, and haircuts. Better Green also sponsors New Horizon, which helps young homeless people under 25, and regularly invites them to play football with the Better Green team.
In Kenya, Better Green supports a school, and in its first year of the partnership, purchased a minibus to transport children to school. Better Green funds summer school places for 12-15 children annually and also supports a charity that helps mothers start small businesses, enabling them to afford their children’s education.
The company’s tree planting project in Indonesia supports 16 farming families with land, training, and a sustainable business model. “It’s not just funding trees,” Tom explains. “The way they do it is they find farmers that are struggling with land, give them training, and it’s all about helping them make a business from planting that tree – selling trees. Over the years, we have supported 63 families in Indonesia.”
Key takeaways
As the sector grapples with falling student numbers, tightening budgets, and a generation of students who expect sustainable practices, Better Green’s work at King’s demonstrates that it’s possible to achieve ambitious sustainability goals, maintain a high standard of quality, adopt a student-centric approach, and do it all while students remain in occupation.
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About Better Green Living
Better Green Living is the largest division of delivery icons, The Better Green Group. Better Green Living is not your typical traditional commercial building company but instead represents a new era of design and build partnerships that fuse decades of expertise with innovation and vision.
Better Green Living specialises in crafting sustainable and design-driven environments that enhance student living and learning experiences and is also adept at implementing comprehensive fire-stopping compliance strategies and managing specialised projects within university estates. Additionally, Better Green Living has expanded into the private nursery school sector and is now exploring opportunities in the private education and hospitality industries.
