Championing the
Changemakers

For the past 15 years, BuildingGreen has recognized green building products that significantly improve upon standard “business-as-usual” practices.

These products help transform the industry by conserving energy and water, reducing emissions, and fundamentally changing how we approach our building systems. In this presentation of Top Ten... Read more

CEUs are available for reading the cluster of articles on outcome-based design. Click here to learn more and take the quiz.

You’ve checked the box and specified interior products that are certified as low-emitting. But are you actually protecting building occupants from hazardous VOCs?

Yes!

Okay, maybe. Mostly.

... Read more

What if we told you that the original purpose of reducing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in wet-applied building products was to prevent smog in cities—not to improve indoor air quality (IAQ)? And that certain hazardous VOCs are “exempt” from being counted because of that? And that “zero VOC” doesn’t come anywhere close to meaning a product... Read more

Construction is one of the primary industries fueling modern slavery, according to a recent report by LexusNexus Business Information Services, a U.K.-based company that provides due diligence services. The report documents human rights violations involving construction workers as well as violations in the building material supply chain.

CEUs are available for reading the cluster of articles on outcome-based design. Click here to learn more and take the quiz.

A lot of building projects these days are targeting certification in multiple rating systems. You’d think that if these programs were all working toward the same goal—like indoor air quality—they would get the... Read more

For the past 15 years, BuildingGreen has recognized green building products that significantly improve upon standard “business-as-usual” practices. These products help transform the industry by conserving energy and water, reducing emissions, and fundamentally changing how we approach our building systems.

This year’s BuildingGreen... Read more

Chalk one up for Team Green. Zero-VOC paints and low-emitting commercial carpets and workstations are now mainstream. We won!

Try telling that to the proud owners of green buildings that turn out to have indoor air quality (IAQ) problems.

After the post-construction flush-out, VOC levels sometimes “start to skyrocket,” according... Read more

A grassroots campaign started by a small number of Chicago-based architecture firms has quickly caught fire. The group, Architects Advocate for Action on Climate Change, now has 114 architecture firms as signatories and has just gone nationwide.

The goal of the initiative is to make the voice of the architecture community heard by... Read more

Every couple years, a revolting list of “food defects” allowed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hits the Internet, with stats like these:

For more than seven years, groups in the U.S. have been struggling to reach consensus on how to measure VOC emissions from products and establish protective VOC limits based on sound science. The standard, which may someday be finished, is called NSF/UL 440.

What’s taking so long?

It turns out that human toxicology and human... Read more

Do you know what it means if the checkboxes for “characterized” and “screened” are checked off on a Health Product Declaration (HPD), but the box for “identified” is left blank? (See the answer at the end.)

This and other nuanced questions about how to use HPDs are answered in a new handbook—Project Team User Guide: Using Health Product... Read more

I can’t believe how hard it is to write this op-ed piece. All I want to say is that building professionals who care about the health of planet and people should actively support the growing movement at Standing Rock—where Native American tribes and their supporters have gathered to stop development of the Dakota Access pipeline.... Read more

As low-voltage LED lighting becomes the norm in our buildings, a power struggle has begun.

These LEDs—and much of our other commercial equipment—use direct current (DC), while our electricity grid supplies alternating current (AC—see The Death and Rebirth of DC Power). When you consider that onsite renewables also generate DC power,... Read more

OPR: three letters that can spell the difference between a contented client and a contentious callback.

Building projects are complex, collaborative, and long-lasting, and they have more pitfalls than level ten of Temple Run. The owner’s project requirements document is designed to keep everyone on the same page about the basics from... Read more

As outcome-based contracts become more popular, there’s more money on the line to meet performance metrics.

But are those metrics fair? And do they reliably measure the outcomes that we really care about?

As demonstrated by the project examples in Mouth, Meet Money: Case Studies of Outcome-Based Design,... Read more

Illegal logging is one of our most pressing environmental and social issues. Yet just a few months after the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) began addressing it with a new LEED pilot program, several major environmental groups say the effort should be scrapped and reworked.

The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and other environmental... Read more

Here at BuildingGreen, we’ve been covering all aspects of sustainable building design since before LEED and other frameworks even existed. But we’ve always had a soft spot for issues relating to products and materials. In our publications, trainings, and consulting work, we have consistently come back to those issues more often than any other... Read more

There’s a dark underside to many of our recent high-performance projects. They’re not actually performing as designed—and owners are starting to notice.

“With all the new energy benchmarking ordinances, more owners are starting to realize that their new buildings are performing worse than their old ones,” says Adam McMillen, P.E., the... Read more

Connect occupants with nature: great idea, but who asked for the toxic fallout?

Insect- and rot-resistant boardwalk sleepers, decking, and exterior structural members are commonly needed to provide low-impact access to the outdoors. But there’s really no perfect solution, especially given the need for products that are code-rated for... Read more

Here in Vermont, the rolling mountains can be deceptive. As you round the crest of a hill or outcrop, the glimpse of blue sky might make it feel like the summit is just ahead when in fact you’ve got miles of climbing to go.  

That vast difference between the ultimate goal of a hike—get to the top—and the near-term goal that... Read more