BuildingGreen Report

By Wendy Vittori

“Ask for transparency.” Over the past decade, the material health and transparency movement has demonstrated that ingredient suppliers, product manufacturers, architects, designers, contractors, and owners can work together to make ingredient transparency the norm in the building industry.

It... Read more

It would seem at first glance like a simple proposition: provide a standard format for reporting on the contents of a building product or material. Like anything in real life, however, as you look more closely, you discover that it’s not so simple.

That dynamic explains the development of the Health Product Declaration, which has... Read more

Decarbonization of the building sector is vital to countries striving to dramatically cut their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. But might there be less altruistic reasons to pursue net-zero carbon? A recent study, Making the Case for Building to Zero Carbon, says yes.

Commissioned by the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) and... Read more

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere just reached the highest levels in human history, and our gas-guzzling transportation industry—the United States’ largest greenhouse gas emitter—is partially to blame. Minimizing these transportation impacts to and from our green buildings should be a priority, and encouraging the use of plug-in... Read more

Resilience, the ability of a building to remain functional or recover quickly after a major disruption, is becoming a more common consideration when designing new structures. Unfortunately, it’s too late for millions of buildings that are already in harm’s way. Or is it?

With some notable exceptions, retrofitting buildings for... Read more

In this on-demand webcast on the sustainability of wood construction, we tap the expertise of leaders in the field and look into three main issues:

Mass timber construction is gaining ground in North America, with the frequent justification that it reduces embodied carbon (the upfront greenhouse gas emissions associated with manufacture and transportation of materials) when compared with concrete or steel. But not all wood products are created equal when it comes to carbon emissions,... Read more

Metal coatings have a difficult job. When used on building exteriors, such as for cladding, they have to last decades, protecting the metal against oxidation. They also have to resist damage from abrasion, temperature extremes, dirt, acidic urban conditions, moisture, and ultraviolet light—all while maintaining color and gloss. Combining all... Read more

If you’re selling run-of-the-mill double-pane windows in the Greater Vancouver market in Canada, it’s time to start retooling your production lines, according to a new study by the Vancouver Economic Commission. Demand for those windows will drop by 2022 and vanish by 2027, according to the study, which tracks the implementation dates for... Read more

Passive House has graduated—and it’s going off to college. Over the years, the original Passive House Institute (PHI) certification system has branched out considerably to offer different requirements for different building types, such as offices, hospitals, schools—even swimming pools. There’s also a considerably different standard in the U.S... Read more

Passive House has graduated—and it’s going off to college.

Created in the early 1990s, Passive House started out as a standard for certifying single-family homes. It had three core requirements having to do with modeled heating and cooling demands, modeled total energy demand, and actual airtightness verified by a blower-door test. The... Read more

The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) has announced updates to its stringent Living Building Challenge (LBC) standard as well as the rollout of a new, related certification called Core. With Core, ILFI moves into the previously taboo realm of rewarding relative improvements (as opposed to absolute achievements, like net-positive... Read more

There is a bittersweet irony in celebrating a sustainable design award for the renovation of a major cathedral a mere week after Notre-Dame de Paris was devastated by a fire that was started, according to initial reports, by renovation activities.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City sees about... Read more

The limits are aggressive—no one argues with that. A sweeping new law—the most ambitious in the world for any large city—forces owners of almost every large building in New York City to drastically limit carbon emissions or pay an annual fine, starting in 2024, of $268 per metric ton of CO2 over the limit. The buildings covered by the law will... Read more

Who’s in favor of legally sourced wood?

If you’re raising your hand, you’re not alone: illegal logging is a global scourge that destroys ecosystems and contributes to climate change. It’s carried out by organized crime, and is used to fund civil wars and terrorism. And by some estimates, as much as half the timber in the world is... Read more

It will be a great day for health advocates, who’ve been fighting for years to eliminate toxic flame retardants from insulation: on January 1, 2020, California will begin allowing flame-retardant-free foam insulation below grade. And the recommendations that were ultimately accepted by the California Building Standards Commission came from an... Read more

Platinum used to be the ultimate LEED rating. Not anymore. A new program, LEED Zero, asks project teams to show a year’s worth of data proving zero impact in at least one of four categories: energy, carbon, water, or waste.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has now awarded its first LEED Zero certification, for net-zero energy, to... Read more

Extruded polystyrene’s (XPS) high R-value and water resistance have made it the default insulation for below-grade applications, but its petroleum-based styrene chemistry, inherent flammability, and high-global-warming-potential (GWP) blowing agents make these board products less than desirable environmental choices. And although high-density... Read more

PVC from China is some of the worst in the world, but it’s being imported into the U.S. at astounding rates. This and other interesting facts are covered in depth in a new study from the Healthy Building Network (HBN).

Chlorine is one of the most common industrial chemicals and is one of the key ingredients used to manufacture PVC,... Read more

A lot is being said about the Green New Deal—a broad and intentionally vague vision laid out by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. This proposal for transitioning the United States to a carbon-neutral economy in ten years has already been a huge success: by spurring a lively discussion about... Read more