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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
- Check if your spelling is correct, or try removing filters.
- Remove quotes around phrases to match each word individually: "blue drop" will match less than blue drop.
- You can require or exclude terms using + and -: big +blue drop will require a match on blue while big blue -drop will exclude results that contain drop.
Product Guidance
Unbiased information from our product experts helps you separate green from greenwash.
-
Heat Pump Transitions to Lower-GWP Refrigerants
Product Review
Daikin is speeding the transition to lower global warming potential with its Atmosphera ductless heat pumps, which use R32 refrigerants.
-
Energy Storage without Lithium
Product Review
Salient Energy is developing a zinc-ion battery that avoids some of the safety and supply chain concerns of current lithium-ion systems.
-
Rapidly Renewable Hemp Flooring and Lumber
Product Review
Hemp is a sustainable, low-embodied-carbon building material, but few products are actually made from it. HempWood is out to change that with its flooring and non-structural lumber made from hemp fibers.
-
Timeless Tile’s Carbon Conundrum
Product Review
Tile is an ancient type of flooring and wallcovering that can last centuries—even millennia. But can it check today’s sustainability boxes?
In The News
We break news down to the essentials and provide expert analysis.
-
TallyCAT Links Revit with Product-Specific Carbon Data
News Brief
Now in beta, tallyCAT facilitates embodied carbon decision-making through selection of specific products.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Perspective
Thought-provoking opinions from the most trusted minds in sustainability.
- Check if your spelling is correct, or try removing filters.
- Remove quotes around phrases to match each word individually: "blue drop" will match less than blue drop.
- You can require or exclude terms using + and -: big +blue drop will require a match on blue while big blue -drop will exclude results that contain drop.
Learning Resources
Syllabus supplements and CEU content, with automatic reporting for AIA and GBCI.
-
Construction Emissions: A Virtual Roundtable
Webcast
In this one-hour panel discussion, we will tap the leading experts on estimating and tracking construction emissions and talk about best practices for reducing this slice of a project’s carbon footprint.
-
Using Low-Carbon Concrete in Your Next Project
Spotlight Report
-
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.
-
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.
