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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Can Commercial Kitchens Go Electric?
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An all-electric commercial kitchen offers potential energy and carbon savings over using natural gas, but making the switch can be complicated—and even controversial.
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Is Using Smart Glass Smart?
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Electrochromic glazing holds the promise of less glare and better energy efficiency with fewer attachments. The reality is much more complicated.
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ESG: 6 Things Building Professionals Need to Know
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Clients need AEC professionals to help them achieve environmental, social, and governance goals. Here’s how people are turning aspirations into strategies.
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How IRA Can Take Ground-Source Heat Pumps Mainstream
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Incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act help GSHPs pay for themselves faster than conventional HVAC systems—with far better performance.
Quick Takes
Jump straight to the essentials with these short explanations of green building concepts.
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Demystifying Climate Change Lingo: From Scope 3 to SSP
Explainer
Climate change is complicated, and the terminology can also be hard to decipher. Here’s a short glossary of a few relevant terms.
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Understanding Emission Scopes in the GHG Protocol
Explainer
The GHG Protocol’s three emission scopes acknowledge the complexities of supply and demand while also encouraging sector-wide alignment, consistent transparency, and support for science-based decarbonization targets.
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Building Decarbonization: How LCA and EPDs Fit in
Explainer
Life-cycle assessment and environmental product declarations reveal embodied carbon and other impacts, but it’s important to know their limits.
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Building Decarbonization: Learn the Lingo
Explainer
Building decarbonization 101 for architects, engineers, and sustainability consultants cutting emissions from building materials and operations.
Product Guidance
Unbiased information from our product experts helps you separate green from greenwash.
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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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Heat-Pump Water Heaters
Product Guide
Heat-pump water heaters are preferable to gas or electric resistance. Those that use CO2 as a refrigerant are future-proofed against refrigerant phaseouts and are also the most efficient.
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Engineered Wood
Product Guide
These sustainably sourced structural timbers offer low indoor emissions and other environmental benefits.
In The News
We break news down to the essentials and provide expert analysis.
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Embodied Carbon Limits: New Language for Codes and Specs
News Analysis
Now there are standardized ways to write embodied carbon limits into both building codes and architectural specifications.
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A Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity to Green Public Schools
News Analysis
With federal funds flooding in, the industry can transform K–12 education in the next three years—but only if we do it right.
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A Boatload of Building-Related Incentives in Inflation Reduction Act
News Analysis
Architects and engineers will be able to claim energy-efficiency tax credits when working for tax-exempt clients.
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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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Google Goes Public with Ambitious Carpet Tile Standard
Blog Post
With a new procurement program, Google adopted comprehensive sustainability requirements for modular carpet tile that raise the bar for major manufacturers.
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Press Release: Major Green Building Orgs Team Up on Material Education
Blog Post
Mindful MATERIALS has partnered with BuildingGreen to expand knowledge of the Common Materials Framework across the building product manufacturing and AEC industries.
Learning Resources
Syllabus supplements and CEU content, with automatic reporting for AIA and GBCI.
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The BuildingGreen Guide to Building Product Certifications and Ecolabels
Special Report
This BuildingGreen publication provides a no-nonsense guide to the world of green building product certifications to help designers, purchasers, manufacturers, and others in the industry to focus on what is significant and relevant so that market forces can work and the industry can focus on bigger issues.
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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.
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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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Using Low-Carbon Concrete in Your Next Project
Spotlight Report
