mindful MATERIALS: Climate Health
Embodied carbon is an increasingly urgent consideration: massive emissions from manufacturing concrete, steel, foam, gypsum board, and other building products are happening right now. Some products save energy and carbon during building operation. Our resources help you minimize the use of the worst offenders and support climate health by preferring products that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester more carbon than emitted.
mindful MATERIALS: Climate Health
Deep Dives
Get up to speed on complex topics. You can also earn CEUs and download PDF Spotlight Reports.
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Lighting Design for Health and Sustainability: A Guide for Architects
Feature Article
A report providing architects guidance on how to design sustainable lighting that supports health and wellness while reducing energy use.
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What Makes a Product Green Today?
Feature Article
Lots of manufacturers call their products "green," but are they? Here's our guide to the high-performance attributes that matter.
Quick Takes
Jump straight to the essentials with these short explanations of green building concepts.
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Product Guidance
Unbiased information from our product experts helps you separate green from greenwash.
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Blown Insulation
Product Guide
Blown-in products with high recycled content, superior energy performance, and low-toxicity ingredients
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Board Insulation
Product Guide
These insulation products and thermal breaks provide superior thermal performance and avoid common chemical hazards.
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Wallboard
Product Guide
Wallboard with high recycled content and Greenguard Gold certification
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BuildingGreen Announces Top 10 Products for 2023
Product Review
BuildingGreen’s Top 10 industry-transforming products this year include heat pumps that use low-GWP refrigerants, products that encourage recycling and re-use, wood insulation, and more.
In The News
We break news down to the essentials and provide expert analysis.
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Someday, Back-up Batteries Will Pay for Themselves
News Analysis
Most utility rate structures don’t encourage battery back-up systems. Here’s what needs to change.
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Climate-smart Mass Timber Is Coming
News Analysis
Better forestry practices and mass timber market development will benefit from tens of millions of dollars from USDA.
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Buy Clean: Federal Funds to Have Low-carbon Strings Attached
News Brief
The Biden administration is going bigger on embodied carbon by committing to lower emissions from 98% of its construction material purchases. New standards will apply to all federally funded projects.
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Grounding the AIA Materials Pledge in Data
News Analysis
With a Common Materials Framework, mindful Materials is mapping product labels to industry commitments.
Perspective
Thought-provoking opinions from the most trusted minds in sustainability.
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Learning Resources
Syllabus supplements and CEU content, with automatic reporting for AIA and GBCI.
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The Urgency of Embodied Carbon and What You Can Do about It
Feature Article
Building materials emit massive amounts of carbon long before the lights go on. Here’s how thoughtful design can reduce global warming impact.
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Using Low-Carbon Concrete in Your Next Project
Spotlight Report
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LEED and Life-Cycle Assessment in Buildings
Webcast
Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a way of understanding the environmental impacts of something, starting with raw material extraction and ending at a landfill or recycling plant. You can use LCA to identify the hot spots—that is, the worst impacts of the thing you’re analyzing—so you can reduce or eliminate them.
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Choosing Certifications & Ecolabels: From Projects to Products
Webcast
The presenters, Brent Ehrlich and Paula Melton, share what they learned about today’s certification landscape while writing BuildingGreen’s Guide to Building Product Certifications & Ecolabels, distilling some of the information available in that guide to help attendees start to make sense of it all.
