Author
Products & Materials Specialist and LEED AP BD+C Brent Ehrlich excels at deep, unbiased, and nuanced technical research on the health and environmental impacts of green building products and materials. Some areas of focus include:
product and material constituents, including their risks
product certifications
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Hi folks,
On behalf of ILFI, I'm sharing a notice that the early registration deadline for the Living Product Expo in Pittsburgh is tomorrow! This is a great event for anyone interested in a deep dive into materials transparency, hazard avoidance, low-carbon products, overall innovation, and the Living Product Challenge. There will also... Read more
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Hi all,
Just wanted to put a couple of useful webinars on your radars if you haven't heard of them yet:
#1: The Contractor’s Role in Quantifying and Reducing Embodied Carbon: Why, What and How
This webinar will provide an overview of what a contractor's role is towards embodied carbon reductions, and how two General... Read more
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Hi folks,
I'm looking into lower-carbon pipe options for HVAC and plumbing. The MEP 2040 has slides from a Buro Happold study in 2020 showing PEX to be much lower in embodied carbon than copper, which is unsurprising. CPVC is also a lower-carbon option.
But PVC has its issues and neither PVC nor PEX are recyclable (especially if... Read more
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Hi there colleagues!
Out of curiosity, do you plan on attending Greenbuild in person in San Diego in September? My staff asked me if we were going and my answer is partially contingent on the extent to which attending would mean getting to see some of our favorite people (read: all of you). Looking forward to taking the temperature of... Read more
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Dear Green Gurus: I'm so sorry to have missed seeing many of you at AIA last week. I heard the BG and COTE events were the highlights of the week! Congrats.
I'm sure by now you've heard of the dreadful Supreme Court decision about the EPA. I thought I'd share a helpful, if not sobering, perspective in an Op-Ed today in the Washington... Read more
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Friends of EPIC –
Hey, everyone. As some of you might have heard, we’ve been working for a while with Autodesk to get c.scale (the data model behind EPIC) built into Forma – Autodesk’s AI-powered planning tool. Forma is packaged within Autodesk’s AEC collection and most firms using Revit should already have access. This integration is... Read more
Quiz
Welcome to the quiz portion of Biobased Materials: Not Always Greener.
Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:
1. Explain why "biobased" is too general a term.
2. List the primary concerns associated with biobased building materials, finishes and furnishings, and wet-... Read more
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Hello all!
I'm new to the group, and so excited to be here. Two part question here (as we think about processes and new year goals).
I am at a smallish firm (20 people) in Boston helping to reform our processes to enable even those that are not steeped in sustainability at a daily level to be comfortable looking for opporutunities... Read more
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Hello all, there has been a fair amount of discussion about the emerging Cove Tool for early stage energy modelling and parametric optimization at our firm. I am very curious if any of you are using this software, and if so, what are your thoughts about it?
https://www.covetool.com/
Thanks,
Esteban Matheus
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Hi Everyone. Hope you and your families are all healthy and safe.
We are starting to figure out how we are going to implement the Contractors Commitment at my company, and we're using the opportunity to simultaneously set corporate wide and jobsite metrics and goals for sustainability tracking.
Each year we issue a sustainability... Read more
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consider supporting Varun Kohli for AIA Board At-Large seat
If you are a voting delegate for the AIA, please consider casting a vote for my friend and COTE colleague, Varun Kohli, FAIA; he's running for the At-Large seat on the AIA national Board of Directors.
Varun is a former COTE Leadership Group member and he understands... Read more
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I am very interested to understand the deployment of LED temp jobsite lighting on a national level. I think this all goes back to the low emitting jobsite.
1. Does your firm utilize temp jobsite lighting on your projects?
2. Is this every project or a percentage of projects?
3. In your state or area is it prevalent, one... Read more
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Good morning, All,
Just a bit of news this morning. My family and I are moving back out west! I am continuing in my current role with EwingCole, but will be doing so from Portland, Oregon. Although North Carolina has a been a wonderful place for us for the past 13 years, it is time to be close to family in the northwest and southwest... Read more