Championing the
Changemakers

We are used to talking about building products and materials that introduce toxic substances into our buildings, but what about products engineered to keep them out?

At Greenbuild this year, we did look at furniture with low emissions, but we also scoped out products that reduce the carcinogen radon—a... Read more

With slightly more than 400 building design and construction (BD+C) projects registered after two years, LEED v4 appears to be suffering from a case of risk aversion.

First there are uncertainties about costs. Then there’s reluctance to raise the bar on sustainability in exchange for a lower LEED rating... Read more

Greenbuild’s expo floor always has products that save water and energy, use rapidly renewable resources, and improve our indoor air quality. But we’re looking for the standouts that deserve extra recognition.

This year, we’ve selected some innovative solutions to some of our biggest environmental... Read more

Brief provided by Agent Malin. Code name: El Presidente.

The American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten awards for 2016 is open for submissions until January 19,... Read more

Well-ventilated buildings have a secret superpower: they double the thinking abilities of those who step through their doors.

That’s not hyperbole: it’s the findings from a joint study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, SUNY Upstate Medical... Read more

This special energy-and-moisture-focused issue of EBN features a downloadable product guide in place of the whole-issue PDF.

If the only time you think about insulation choices is when you’re figuring out how to meet code for your design, you’re missing the point.

The building envelope isn’t... Read more

CEUs are available for reading all the building-envelope product guides and primer. Click here to learn more and take the quiz.

Water moves through buildings in four ways. Capillary movement, or wicking, is special—and not just because the water defies gravity. Capillary movement is... Read more

Estimating the total amount of VOCs from a wet-applied coating used on a job is difficult, but the Healthy Building Network’s recently released CompAIR VOC calculator should make the process easier. Located on HBN’s Pharos website, CompAIR gives design teams a tool for calculating total VOCs and the ability to compare that... Read more

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving energy and water, and seeking durable, safe materials: for 14 years, BuildingGreen has given its Top 10 Green Building Products award to products that transform the design and construction industry by helping solve these and other significant environmental problems.

A suite of three new pilot credits on resilient design was just approved by the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Steering Committee, opening them for use by LEED project teams for innovation credits.

Alex Wilson, founder of BuildingGreen, has been working to develop the credits since 2013 through the... Read more

LEED v4 contained a curious and unprecedented gap when it was published in 2013. Wrangling between chemical transparency advocates and chemical manufacturers had a cascading effect on the rating systems, and one of the credit options in the reference guide came with no guidance, no explanations, no calculations—and thus no... Read more

Any product manufacturer can produce a Health Product Declaration (HPD), and they don’t have to go through a third party to do it. So unlike with certifications with central databases identifying compliant products, there is no single source for HPDs. Even if you gather a lot of HPDs, as some designers have done, matching them... Read more

Over the last few years, building product manufacturers and their supply chains have been under pressure to report full disclosure of environmental and human health impacts through LEED v4 material transparency credits.

There has been a lot of discussion and resistance about these credits by design teams... Read more

As leaders in our firms in the areas of sustainable design and product selection, we are responsible for guiding our practices into a better understanding of the health issues associated with material choices, and for training our colleagues in the use of new standards and tools.

We are also members of... Read more

Our goal at Tarkett is to create products that will enhance the human experience and allow us to live and work in spaces that are made of healthy products.

As we consider that people spend more than 90% of their time indoors, it is important to think about the products with which we surround ourselves... Read more

David Edward has been practicing product transparency before those industry buzzwords existed. The family-run company’s U.S.-made furniture is often used in offices where sustainability and the health of occupants are priorities, but the company also supplies products for 15 other manufacturers under license, including Allsteel... Read more

The Health Product Declaration (HPD) is a standard way for manufacturers to disclose building product ingredients and associated health hazards. But how do they decide whether something is considered a hazard?

In short, they don’t: the developers of GreenScreen decide.

The... Read more