Northstar Green Lease

The future can no longer just be about profit. And property companies can no longer afford to simply think about property.

Creating places and prosperity are the outcomes of our effort; they are how we ‘Affect’ the world around us, they are our “what and how”.

Having a positive impact on the planet and people, through creating places and prosperity, is our Cause, our “why?”.

We feel a sense of urgency around our responsibility in addressing the climate emergency.

The built environment contributes 40% to global emissions and urbanisation continues apace.

We believe passionately that the answer lies in championing design and innovation; refurbishing where we can, building responsibly where we can’t, seeking expertise and excellence always.

Our ambition is to nurture the ideas that inspire the loved places of the future.

And to nurture those ideas and to drive positive change requires people to be inspired to join our Cause and to become a community. At the forefront of that community we aim to build are our tenants, our partners in making lasting change.

In rethinking the traditional lease we’ve aimed to find a partnering approach to encourage and support you to join that Cause and collectively to make the best decisions we can to bring the places we jointly build and inhabit to life while minimising our environmental impact.

We see ourselves as a Corporate Activist aiming to positively affect the world we inhabit and change through our actions. We hope you’ll join us in that spirit, and in the ambition that is set out in the lease. This companion document aims to set out some of our thinking behind that ambition which translates into obligations within the lease and aims to make you more comfortable in joining our cause.

The future of workspace buildings is all electric and we believe it’s important to work with trusted suppliers who can evidence that their energy is from 100% renewable sources. We want to encourage tenants to follow suit and, were possible, we want to make any bulk purchasing savings available to all. If you choose not to follow our lead with 100% renewables, we’d like to understand why and what we could do to change your mind. The clauses in the lease are aimed at encouraging that open dialogue.

It’s important to be aware of energy usage to be able to adapt and reduce both costs and environmental impacts. Where possible we want to monitor both our and your energy use and make that information available to encourage that best practice. We’ve partnered with an energy monitoring and report service to support this and will make that available wherever possible. The clauses in the lease are intended to support this open information gathering and sharing to achieve what we hope is a shared goal of minimising environmental impacts.

We believe reducing waste, recycling and encouraging a circular economy initiatives are imperative. We will always make sure recycling services are available in our buildings and encourage tenants to use them fully and responsibly. We’d be surprised if you were unwilling to do so but the proposed lease terms require you to explain if you are not.

The choices we make in our supply chain are really important and we take care over those supply chain choices both when refurbishing our buildings and also when entering into long term contracts to manage our buildings. We’ve set up partnerships for many of the standard workspace requirements that tenants have, such as stationary, with organisations who we feel offer products or services which minimise environmental harm. The drafting of the lease aims to encourage and support you in joining us in that, and we will extend bulk purchasing opportunities to you whenever we can.

We’ve endeavoured to work with cleaning companies who share our ethos in terms of minimising environmental impacts and use appropriate products that aren’t unnecessarily harmful. We’d like to encourage you to do the same for the cleaning requirements that fall within your responsibilities.

Wherever possible we have maximised the provision of bike parking spaces, showers and lockers within our buildings. We hope that tenants will use and enjoy these facilities. We’d hope you will also encourage your staff to travel to work in the most sustainable way reasonably practical for them and we’ll support that in whatever way we can.

In designing our buildings we consider the impact of building works on the environment and as far as we are able will choose products that are not unnecessarily harmful. We track the carbon impact of the work that we do to help inform and improve upon those choices. In your fit out design we’d encourage you to consider a similar approach and will support however we can. We can support in terms of calculating the carbon impact of your choices and advise as to alternative approaches.

We have also worked with partners to offer a low-impact furnishing solution sources from re-manufactured high-quality furniture diverted from landfill at the end of another occupiers fit out. Recycling of furniture has a huge impact on your carbon footprint and we’d like to encourage you to consider this option and can support you in designing a low-impact fitout solution if you require.

Similarly, we don’t want to cause unnecessary environmental damage insisting you rip out your fit out if we feel it is serviceable and could be reused by a future tenant. We will work with you openly and pragmatically at the end of your occupation to work out what we could avoid asking you to remove or replace and the lease terms allow for this.

Our aim is to build a community of tenants in all our buildings to work with us to encourage best practice. We’d like to encourage a regular forum to share ideas, particularly in terms of sustainability and how we can improve. The lease provides for you to attend this which we hope wont be onerous and should be both interesting and fun.