As Research Director at BuildingGreen, I dabble in - or dive headlong into - a wide range of BuildingGreen internal and collaborative projects, and am part of the team working to make the GreenSpec product directory as robust as possible. I have every intention of making my bio personalized, but there are too many other fun things to do than talk about myself – so in the mean time:

Through her work with BuildingGreen, Toxics Use Reduction Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Demand Management Institute, Jennifer has conducted research and analysis in a variety of sustainability topics including green building, commercial and industrial energy efficiency, electronics recycling, and the economics of toxics use reduction. Her activities at BuildingGreen include providing technical and research support for GreenSpec, EBN, and other BuildingGreen activities, as well as collaborating on projects such as the ASID/USGBC ReGreen Guidelines and a policy white paper for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. A primary focus of hers has been developing and clarifying standards to assess the environmental sustainability of products, processes, and organizations. To this end, her activities at BuildingGreen include researching and updating product criteria for GreenSpec, and providing technical support to the Construction Specification Institute (CSI) on GreenFormat. Jennifer has a dual MS from MIT in Technology Policy and Material Science & Engineering, and a BS in Environmental Science from Brown University.

It's easy to get lost in a sea of greenwash. Our updated GreenSpec criteria provide clear direction on what makes a product green.

BuildingGreen has been defining what makes a product green since the start of the GreenSpec directory in 1998--and we're repeatedly surprised by how far and wide our list of green attributes travels. The industry is not static, though, and it is our aim to continue providing a compass that points from today's best practices to truly sustainable materials management.

This month's EBN feature article on what makes a product green lays out our "green attributes" for 2012--a set of broad criteria and definitions, knit together with life-cycle thinking, that we use to evaluate products for listing in GreenSpec. Key changes from our last update in 2006 show both how far we have come and how much further we have left to go in achieving the kind of materials management that would support a sustainable society.

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What's in it? Where was it made? Is the manufacturer socially responsible? These questions about green building products are getting easier to answer.

This is Part 1 in our series on transparency.

Part 2: Why We Need "Nutrition Labels" for Building Products

Part 3: The End of Greenwashing? Five Myths about Product Transparency

There's been a growing amount of buzz recently about "transparency"--a catchy word for giving people more information about products, finances, corporate behavior, and more.

It looks to us like the move toward transparency will be a major theme in 2012, so we focused EBN's January feature on explaining different forms of transparency and what this that could actually mean for the building industry in practice. To whet your appetite, check out this quick video we put together for a taste of what transparency means and how it could change our lives (thanks to our multi-talented sales administrator, HB Lozito, for her brilliant animations and narration).

Highlighting transparency in GreenSpec

We're also going to make it easier to find products from companies that are taking the lead in providing greater information transparency about their products and activities. Starting today, GreenSpec will have a new Green Attribute for Information Transparency.

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Eco-friendly bamboo options have gotten better, but the choice is still not simple.

If you want the "greenest" bamboo flooring out there what do you look for? We have talked a lot about bamboo over the years, starting in 1997. The options have gotten better, but the choice is still not simple. GreenSpec lists what we think is the best bamboo flooring available today, and our section description explains our criteria, but lets break it down a bit.

Looking beyond "Rapidly Renewable" to FSC

Bamboo was originally championed as an inherently green material because it is rapidly renewable, but EBN's feature article, Bamboo in Construction: Is the Grass Always Greener? made it clear that sustainability isn't just about how fast it grows.

EBN dispelled the myth that bamboo flooring is taking food away from endangered Giant Pandas--pandas no longer live in the lowlands where bamboo is harvested for industrial use; but there are still a lot of variables to consider. Nearly all of the bamboo used in North America is grown in China, and there is great variability in bamboo growing and harvesting practices. BuildingGreen announced the first FSC certified bamboo in 2008, as a way to verify growing and harvest practices and GreenSpec now lists four companies with FSC certified bamboo. (FSC certified bamboo can contribute to the Certified Wood credit in LEED. We'll see what happens in LEED 2012).

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When it comes to green building, you can't always get what you what. So how do you get what you need?

Note: some of the links below will only work for registered subscribers. See low-cost membership options.

BuildingGreen's recent field trip to a local Passive House under construction led to some interesting conversations about product selection, with windows and doors a highlight. Ted and Andrea showed us their beautiful new Schüco windows and doors and told us the story of their product selection process, also described in their blog.

Ted and Andrea had quite a challenge finding products appropriate for Passive House-level efficiency. For residential construction, it's hard to find domestic windows (and doors) that achieve the level of quality and energy-efficient construction of top European companies.

A good time to import

They told us they were lucky that with global financial markets in flux, their imported Schüco windows and doors all of a sudden became price-competitive with a high-grade Andersen window. Right now just happens to be a decent time to purchase and import high-efficiency products from the EU. However, if you aren't prepared to special-order European products, GreenSpec lists the best windows available domestically, and Ted and Andrea's candid talk about the pros and cons can still help you refine your choice.

In GreenSpec's window overview, we explain that by careful selection of low-e coatings, windows can be "tuned" to optimize the performance of a structure, so it was fun to see that in action at Ted and Andrea's house.

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What do over a thousand protests around the world last weekend in support of Occupy Wall Street have to do with Green Building?

When NYC Mayor Bloomberg was speaking via video-link at Greenbuild, and while the Toronto Airport security strike delayed green building practitioners from returning home, a growing group of "occupiers" continued a now one month old occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York City. There are many attempts to explain what's going on there, but the best I've seen comes in the words of those on the ground–-this is no simple single-issue movement to be cordoned off as a faction. Nor is it a "left" or "right" movement; the call has appeal to original tea party members, greens, labor, and so many others who count themselves among "the 99%."

I won't attempt to create my own container to box-in what's happening there. I was there Sunday, and it's very clear to me that attempting to do so would do a disservice to the passion, creativity, community, diversity, and collective seeking found in Zuccotti Park. But I came away mulling over the links to what the green building community is trying to accomplish.

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Are there any sustainable materials? What does that even mean?

Near the end of another exciting and exhausting Greenbuild, I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with three other women deeply invested in sustainable material management: Lindsay James, InterfaceFlor; Gail Vittori, Center for Maximum Building Potential Building Systems, and Sarah Brooks, Natural Step Canada. We started the session with the question "Are there any sustainable materials?" and ended with the question " What does material stewardship look like in a sustainable society?"

In between these two questions lives a world of aspiration and complexity followed, if you're lucky--or defiant--by deeper aspiration. The thing is, this stuff is hard. It's complicated and can be messy. Simple answers can lead to different problems. The deeper answers we need to figure out together--no one can single-handedly provide the roadmap.

What became very clear to us as a panel, in all our discussions leading up to Greenbuild, was that we wanted to continue and deepen the conversation. It is our belief that the shift toward sustainable materials--and likely sustainability in general--will require dialogue across boundaries.

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BuildingGreen is pleased to announce the launch of the 2030 Challenge for Products Information Hub. Launched by Architecture 2030 in February 2011, the 2030 Challenge for Products is a call to action to reduce not only the operational energy of buildings but also the embodied energy of the products that go into them.

While operational efficiency remains a vital goal, the embodied energy of a building represents greenhouse gas emissions that exacerbate climate change before the building ever starts operating. That means that embodied carbon has an effect today, during what many understand to be the critical window to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

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A "red list" of chemicals is supposed to make the screening process simple. But with so many red lists popping up, which ones should you trust?

If you're one of the many people becoming increasingly concerned about chemical hazards found in building products, you might turn to a "red list" of chemicals for help in your screening process. Red lists have been proliferating, and whose should you trust?

How does the Living Building Challenge red list of chemical hazards match up with the list associated with the LEED Pilot Credit 11? What's covered by the Perkins+Will Precautionary list that isn't covered by the others?

Visualizing the complexities

Tom Lent from Healthy Building Network (HBN) has given me liberty to share this incredible Venn diagram that he developed, in which he's shown a host of pertinent chemical hazard lists and how they relate to each other.

I want to share it here not just because it's an amazing diagram that anyone who cares about these issues should have on hand, but also to illustrate a few additional points.

For one, the chart shows how attention to chemical hazard concerns has increased over the years--and how far behind federal regulators are in addressing these concerns. The U.S. EPA is currently extremely limited in its ability to regulate hazards. There are numerous efforts to address the situation at the state level, but national efforts like Senator Lautenberg's Safe Chemicals Act bill, move a lot slower.

Red-listing is harder than it looks

The design community has stepped up to fill in the gap. Green Guide for Health Care, Perkins+Will Precautionary list, the Living Building Challenge, and most recently, LEED, have all provided their own lists. There are more lists that we could challenge Tom to artfully add to his diagram. Many standards and certifications for green building products also use red lists--but they're each somewhat unique in both the chemicals on the list and the rules about when and how those lists are used. (For more detail on that, see our special report Green Building Product Certifications, and the EBN article What's New in Multi-Attribute Environmental Certifications.)

Closer to home, our company's GreenSpec guide to green building products doesn't use a red list per se --there isn't a list of chemicals that automatically knocks outs a product. No, not even PVC--a common target of red lists. We keep an eye out for all the hazards captured in this diagram, but what we do with that information depends on what else is a key concern for the product category, the degree of hazard represented, and how bad the alternatives are.

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There's already been a lot of excellent debate around the new LEED Pilot Credit 43. I find myself agreeing with both sides! Here's where I stand in what may be the eye of the storm.

LEED is supposed to be about buildings--and market transformation

On the one hand, LEED is fundamentally supposed to be about designing high-performing green buildings, and product and material selection is one integrated component. It's not supposed to be about cobbling together a building out of greener products and materials. If the core purpose gets lost amidst the debate surrounding one material (yes, I'm talking FSC/SFI), we all lose.

On the other hand, LEED is at this point a major market driver for green building products. We need to use all the levers we can find to create truly sustainable manufacturing and sourcing if we're ever going to make it through these pivotal times into a vibrant, thriving, truly sustainable world. So we ought to use LEED for all it's worth in pushing real substantive improvements down through the supply chain.

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