Can you reuse it? Can you take it apart and make something new? Can you safely recycle it? The Product Circularity Data Sheet (PCDS) is designed to answer questions like these about building products.

First developed in Luxembourg, the PCDS not only lists product constituents, something like a health... Read more

So you’ve been working remotely for a while and are thinking about returning to the office soon. Before you get your first drink or make that first pot of coffee, you’ll want to make sure the water is actually clean. According to a recent study in the journal PLOS Water, stagnant water can have significant impacts on water quality after sitting... Read more

Aspirational limits on embodied carbon in our buildings are all well and good, but how do you actually determine and implement those limits? New code language and a new model specification could be the ticket.

The New Buildings Institute (NBI) has developed and submitted code language that it hopes will... Read more

The sun streaming into our buildings can be both a benefit and a nuisance. Controlling its glare and solar heat gain in order to maximize energy efficiency, occupant comfort, and views to the outdoors is difficult. In commercial offices and all-glass buildings, the impacts are multiplied. Low-e glazing and exterior or interior shading systems... Read more

Laboratories are notorious energy hogs. They also tend to have high embodied carbon when built new. Reining in the carbon footprint of this booming building type will be necessary in order to reach the net-zero-carbon goals of both the American Institute of Architects’ and the Royal Institute of British Architects’ respective 2030 Challenges.... Read more

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has announced five research projects that will receive funding through the Upjohn Research Initiative. All of this year’s projects are designed to promote climate action.

Grid-... Read more

Mass timber—especially cross-laminated timber (CLT)—has captured the imagination of designers across North America. From biophilia to jobsite safety to the promise of ultra-low embodied carbon, this relatively new structural material has made its way into the International Building Code (IBC) and the National Building Code of... Read more

Billed as the smartest, most resilient, most sustainable building on the planet, the elegant Beacon of Hope office complex at 10 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Atlanta was supposed to showcase state-of-the-art building controls, lighting, HVAC, glazing, and... Read more

Renata Quimby of Knoxville, Tennessee was expecting a new roof. What she got instead was a bit of a riddle. Literally.

As Habitat for Humanity volunteers hammered at her new roof, Quimby kept hearing giggles, gasps, and guffaws. The source? “Turns out they... Read more

Protests continued for a fifth straight day as demonstrators picketed outside the gates of Anheuser-Busch’s flagship brewery in St. Louis, Missouri. The cause? Layoffs? Unequal pay? Unfair labor practices? Nope. The cause was the company’s adoption of its annual... Read more

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has come under fire due to a leaked draft of part two of its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). The formerly secret document reveals that the panel’s first attempts to analyze climate change impacts had devolved into a... Read more

The sun streaming into our buildings can be both a benefit and a nuisance. Controlling its glare and solar heat gain in order to maximize energy efficiency, occupant... Read more

Carpets and fabrics will be the first to go. Come 2023, the sale of carpets, rugs, and textiles with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) will be against the law in the state of Maine.

These “forever chemicals,” ubiquitous in building products, are used as stain and dirt repellents not only on... Read more

Resilient design is no longer optional. If you aren’t accounting for future climate changes and extreme weather events in your designs, you could be held professionally liable in the future, according to The American Institute of Architects (AIA).

A new report released by the Scalable Climate Action... Read more

We know the global trajectory of temperature spikes based on different carbon scenarios—and we hope for an average lower than 1.5°C—but international projections don’t help us predict local climate impacts. With a new tool from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), project teams and building owners can now check on... Read more

The EcoDistricts Protocol, initially published in 2016, was one of the first green building frameworks to put social justice on par with other sustainability concerns, and it seeks to bring the equity imperative to the conversation at the neighborhood scale. Now EcoDistricts is working with another nonprofit, the Partnership... Read more

It may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of sustainable building materials, but durability is one of the top green attributes we look for at BuildingGreen. So selecting one of the most durable materials on the planet—porcelain tile—for floors, walls, and even countertops should be a no-brainer for green... Read more

Calculating a product’s cradle-to-grave carbon impacts has always been a challenge. Though environmental product declarations do a great job of capturing the carbon emissions from manufacturing (cradle-to-gate), most don’t provide a full picture of a material’s impact in a building through end of life (cradle-to-grave).

The news coming out of Ukraine is heartbreaking. A modern European country with cafés and clothing boutiques that weeks ago had been bustling with the goings-about by ordinary people of a modern society, was invaded by an authoritarian despot, consumed by a thirst for power... Read more

Without intervention, already vulnerable communities in New York City could bear the brunt of cost impacts from Local Law 97—the building performance standard that places carbon caps on large buildings starting in 2024.

“On average, building owners in environmental justice communities [EJCs] will need... Read more