Championing the
Changemakers

If you use the mindfulMATERIALS library to easily access material transparency documentation (if not, check it out!), please take 5-10 mins of your time to fill out this quick survey and help guide the future of the library.

The mindfulMATRIALS Collaborative is an industry-led initiative, visit www.mindfulmaterials.com to learn more. ... Read more

Following up on the Decarbonizing Existing Building: Envelope + MEP Solutions Integrative Design Jam, a cohort of us determined a "Decision Making Tree Toolkit" that begins to classify decisions into and "if/then" framework using region, market, climate, scale of intervention, and other factors would be useful in helping us collectively move... Read more

Will any SDL folks be at AASHE in Pittsburgh next week? Would love to grab a coffee and catch up. 

Wall and corner guards increase durability, but these products are typically made of PVC.

BuildingGreen-Approved Guards

BuildingGreen approves products that avoid the use of PVC and are made with recycled content, FSC-certified wood, other biobased materials, or less-problematic plastics. 

Health and Environmental... Read more

Team,

Many of you saw this from BlackRock.

https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter

SOM, starting with London office, is drafting a letter to our MEP consultants, demanding and holding them accountable for climate change as a preference on consultants selection.

Best,
LL 

I am the Moderator of the 2023 Strategic Council and the call for nominations for the 2024-2026 Strategic Council at-large representatives has just been released.  I would encourage any interested parties to apply for this position.

The Strategic Council’s purpose is to develop ideas to inform future needs and opportunities for the... Read more

Hi, all. We missed you at the standing check in today. We have a couple of questions for the BG team:

1. What is the timing criteria you need for Best Practice content? We need to back into a deadline on submissions and believe your critical path timing will help define ours.

2. Can you elaborate on what LEED User/BG content may... Read more

Hey All,

I just received this from AIA MA. How fantastic would it to have a bunch of Green Gurus on the ICC Development Team! Is anyone on here already on it?

From AIA MA:
The International Code Council (ICC) is now accepting applications to serve on the Code Development Committees to develop the 2024 editions of the... Read more

Hi everyone,
The city of Portland recently expanded acceptable certifications for affordable housing projects they provide funding for to include Enterprise Green Communities Certification. Other options are LEED (flavor depends on project size) and Earth Advantage Multifamily, which is a regionally owned and operated certification. This... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Climate Change: Building Industry, You’ve Got This!

Important: This quiz covers all related articles within this topic. Scroll to the bottom of the article page to find links to all the articles covered by this quiz.

Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course,... Read more

Hi SDLers: ESG Investing is mushrooming which is a very good thing. AIA National, for example, just switched over to 100% ESG investments. With it, there seems to be a growing number of "ESG-lite" options. I'm wondering if anyone among this informed group has recommendations on how to determine a quality investment approach. I'd appreciate any... Read more

Hello SCL,

Our diligent Contractor's Commitment working group (led by the great Amanda Atkinson) have reviewed a massive amount of feedback and will soon be releasing an updated version of the program (CC 2.0). We will need a majority of the SCL membership to vote YES to adopt the updated version for 2023. 

In advance of the vote... Read more

All,

Some of my colleagues and I have been working to promote interest in mass timber construction for K-12 builidngs.  As part of that effort we redesigned a large high school using mass timber in lieu steel, and conducted a whole building life cycel assessment to measure the reduction in embodied carbon.  We also conducted a program-... Read more

Hi All, 

The rural concrete supplier that is used for most of our projects sources their fly ash from a nearby coal burning plant that is scheduled to be closed in the next two years. In anticipation of this, they are looking into alternative fly ash sources and SCM options and we'd like to provide suggestions.

Does anyone have... Read more

Hi Everyone - I'm posting this on behalf of Jeff Frost whom many of you know from his days as an SD Leader with SmithGroup and SERA and in his new role as head of Brightworks Sustainability's materials group.  I am excited to be working with Jeff on this concept of multi-attribute product scoring.  Cheers, Lona

Dear SDL’ers,

We’ve... Read more