Katherine keeps BuildingGreen’s physical and digital spaces running smoothly. A graduate with honors from the University of Iowa, Katherine has a background in filmmaking and administration. She lives in southeastern Vermont with her partner and enjoys hiking, board games, writing, and cats.

Hello Gurus,

I am working with an owner who is making zero-carbon commitments and wants to explore setting carbon budgets in their capital plan (and subsequently their individual projects). We will be starting exploratory discussions next week and I was hoping some of you might have been working with other owners who have already... Read more

Hi all!

I'm working on my first energy positive / passive house multifamily building and trying to figure out the trash/recycling chute. I am curious what solutions you have employed to make the trash chute air tight? We have excluded the whole chute from the envelope. Do you use airtight doors (and which ones?) at each floor trash/... Read more

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the Show and Tell at Greenbuild! Here are slides from the presentations:

Hi all, curious if anyone is involved with development / advocacy for the new MA stretch code? https://www.mass.gov/info-details/stretch-energy-code-development-2022 

My firm recently added a Boston location & I'm slowly getting to know the green building world there - would love to know if anyone is organizing public comments on the... Read more

Does anyone subscribe to Green Badger? Do you find it valuable?

Early laminate flooring had problems with premature surface wear, moisture damage, and hazardous formaldehyde emissions—and some products may still have these problems.

BuildingGreen-Approved Flooring

Laminate flooring products listed by BuildingGreen have high recycled content (greater than 70%) or FSC-certified content and:... Read more

Have you been perusing the recently launched Contractor's Commitment and thought to yourself, 'Companies are going to need more guidance/templates/resources if they're actually going to implement this thing'? Good--now's your chance to help develop those resources.

The Contractor's Commitment Working Group is meeting December 1, 1pm ET.... Read more

Is anyone else working on a project doing Living Building Challenge v4.0 Energy Petal? We're working through the Imperative 08 Net Positive Carbon Resiliency Strategy requirements that ask for the project to be habitable for a week in the event of an emergency. We're curious how others are defining "habitable" and what systems assumptions... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of What Makes a Product Green?.

Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:


1. List and describe at least three attributes that address each of the following categories: "efficient use of materials"; "responsible sourcing"; "energy and water... Read more

Hi everyone,

Happy new year!

The FIRST First Friday Fika* of 2024 is happening this Friday, January 5th from 11am to 12pm ET, hosted by Candace Pearson.

Here is the registration link for the Fikas, or if you've registered previously, you can use the same link for this week.

We look forward to seeing you Friday!

(posting here for Kira)

Sustainable Design Leaders:

Is your firm using the AIA COTE Top Ten Toolkit in some fashion? COTE would like to hear from you, especially if you are willing to share your story. 

Specifically, we'd like to share best practices and lessons about how it is working (with certain types of projects, at... Read more

Hi All,

I'm working on a LEED for Schools project under 2009, and received some amorphous comments back about our Mold Prevention Plan. We used the LEEDuser template as a guide, while also referencing the EPA document the credit is based around, but the reviewers feel we haven't provided proper metrics. The EPA plan is something like... Read more

Hello Sustainable Design Leaders!

I have an exciting announcement today, fall Peer Network events are now open for registration! You can see all the event details and register here!

Based on feedback we received from past events and the most recent surveys, we decided against doing one long week of events for this fall and instead... Read more

Huge shout out to Patty Lloyd, Luke Leung, Janet Olsen, and Sarah Gudeman for their webinar on the Power of Peer Networks. They share lots of insights into the value of participating in BG Peer Networks and many others. Ten bucks to Illinois Green gets you access to the recording--I loved it. What would you have said that they didn't?

ASHRAE 209 in all its glory has been uploaded. This will impact our architectural process, for better or worse, so we should embrace it and learn from it. The revised AIA Energy Modeling Design Guide (due out next year) has been timed to correspond roughly to 209 coming out and will include references to it. The first few energy modeling '... Read more

Hello Green Gurus!

Here are the details for an upcoming Peer Networks webinar, Strategies for Streamlining Sustainable Materials.
Save the date! The registration link will be posted shortly.

Strategies for Streamlining Sustainable Materials
September 24th, 2020
2pm - 3pm ET (11am - Noon PT)

This session... Read more