WBCSD ReNEWW House Collaboration 2016: a summer of living learning

Whirlpool Corporation’s ReNEWW House is a traditional US home on the campus at Purdue University in Indiana, USA, that has been given a deep retrofit and is a “live-in laboratory” where R&D teams can experience sustainable living. It’s goal is to be a “Retrofitted Net-zero Energy Waste and Water” home. Whirlpool kindly invited members of the Sustainable Lifestyles project send innovation staff to live in the house, experiencing more sustainable living first hand. The immersive experience proved powerful, with benefits extending well beyond the company-specific investigations that staff members undertook during their stay. This short report explores some of these benefits, and builds the business case for similar collaboration exercises elsewhere in the world.