Urban Sustainability Bulletin – USDN: Urban Sustainability Directors Network

If ever there was a marker of modern-day middle-class excess, it has to be a pillowy bag of lettuce leaves gone mushy before they can be eaten.  Most days, for the past six years, Hanneke van Linge, who is now managing director of the non-profit Nosh Food Rescue, spends her mornings recovering food from the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market in City Deep and a small network of supermarkets in the city. She’s after food that is safe to eat but no longer fresh enough to entice consumers. “We have been conditioned to expect crisp at all costs and we need to start confronting why we think of food surplus as food waste or that some foods are for poor people and some food is for rich people,” she says.

The Product Platform Rulebook is an open-access guide, developed by the Construction Innovation Hub and industry leaders, for various stakeholders within the supply chain to develop and deploy Product Platforms. The Rulebook aims to enable and promote the adoption of Product Platform approaches by providing guidance, tools, and a common framework for the industry.  The construction industry needs disruption, which the innovators and early adopters have initiated over the last few decades with the adoption of Modern Methods of Construction. But we now need guidance to build confidence in the approach for the majority to follow.  A Product Platform is often referred to as a ‘Kit of Parts’ which is a group of common and repeatable assets that can be configured and combined with interoperable components to deliver a range of distinct projects.