There’s so much contention around the topic of what really is ‘sustainable’ in home building...Is it the material used to build the home?Is it the energy efficiency of the home?Or, is it the use of second hand and recycled materials?While there are arguments for and against each of these (which I will dissect in a later article).There is one thing we can do as a design and build company that stands above all else and it’s one thing that is so often overlooked by the industry.After over six years of wrestling with the question ‘what is the most sustainable thing we can do at SHM to ensure the homes we build are as sustainable as they can be?’ We’ve finally come to the answer and it’s not what you’d expect.The Number 1 thing we can do as builder’s to ensure the homes we build are as sustainable as possible and to truly enable a sustainable society is to ensure our homes are…‘BUILT TO LAST’.Pretty simple, right?Wrong!Let me assure you it is in the hundreds of thousands of Australian homes being built today that are NOT ‘built to last’. The sad reality of the Australian housing industry is that most homes built today may only last 25 years.Our homes should well and truly outlast us and that is why our goal at SHM is that our homes last 100+ years. We’ve made this our priority over the years.Building homes that last 100 years will have a great impact on helping our society be truly sustainable. Melbourne and particularly the inner north is littered with homes that have terrible, tacked on ‘lean to’ extensions built to solve short problems.Our design teams focus must be to solve long term problems for families, and our construction teams focus must be to build homes to stand for a century.To prevent the churn rate of materials and energy to rebuild our homes every 20 or so years we must be building for longevity not just for profit. That is sustainability for all of us.