The LEED rating system puts a strong emphasis on using sustainable building materials throughout construction and operation. The use of recycled content and locally sourced materials reduces the need for virgin resources, minimizes transportation emissions and supports local economies.
Mutual Materials offers a number of products that can help earn LEED credits for projects seeking to reduce embodied carbon. These credits also address indoor environmental quality, materials ingredients and more.
Materials and Resources
The materials used in a project can have significant environmental impacts over the course of their life cycle. LEED certification addresses this through a credit dedicated to material selection and management, which emphasizes the use of recycled building materials, products with lower toxic emissions, and those that are locally sourced or produced.
Additionally, LEED credits address energy and water conservation. This includes measures that reduce a building’s water consumption, such as low-flow plumbing fixtures, and ensuring occupants conserve water with water-saving appliances and practices. There are also credits to minimize a building’s waste by recycling, salvaging, and diverting materials from landfills, as well as using green cleaning products.
LEED also addresses a building’s embodied carbon by evaluating its impact during construction and operations. This is accomplished through selecting low-carbon or recycled materials, and reducing the amount of carbon in a project through efficient transportation, production, and use.
Lastly, LEED encourages projects to monitor and track a building’s performance over time with energy consumption, CO2 emissions, indoor air quality, and other metrics. By implementing energy-monitoring devices, such as Nanoenvi IAQ, in occupied spaces, project teams can earn points towards LEED certification.
Indoor Environmental Quality
The health, comfort and productivity of occupants is a major part of LEED’s focus. The LEED ratings system promotes the use of materials that are non-toxic to indoor environments, while also encouraging projects to implement strategies that maximize access to natural light and views and improve acoustics.
LEED also sets goals for sustainable construction practices and site location that minimize environmental impact. This includes ensuring that buildings are located away from environmentally sensitive areas and using advanced framing techniques to reduce the amount of building materials required.
Another area that is a priority is the use of low VOC materials for interior finishes. VOCs are the chemicals that are emitted from products such as paints, glues, cleaners and carpets, and they can lead to a variety of health-related issues, including eye, nose and throat irritation, asthma, dizziness and headaches.
Whether you are looking to build green, earn LEED certification or both, it’s important that you understand how the various credits affect your project. Check out the USGBC’s rating system selection guide for a comprehensive overview of your options. Additionally, attending Greenbuild can provide an excellent opportunity to learn more about the latest in sustainable building materials and practices from experts in the field. This year’s event is taking place November 14-16 in Chicago, and you can register to attend online.
Materials Ingredients
The LEED certification system operates on a point-based mechanism that evaluates sustainable systems and design elements employed in building projects. Projects that earn sufficient points receive one of the following LEED certification levels: Certified (40-49 points), Silver (50-59 points), Gold (60-079 points) or Platinum (80-0+ points).
The green building rating system focuses on sustainability from a life cycle perspective, reducing a building’s operational GHG emissions throughout its lifetime. These include carbon emissions from energy consumption, water usage and transportation, as well as embodied energy in materials and construction waste.
To reduce GHG emissions, the LEED rating system requires building owners to use green construction methods for new buildings and renovations, such as utilizing recycled and low-emitting products in construction. It also aims to minimize the amount of waste produced, from landfills and incinerators to recycling facilities and even through the development of green roofs and land use strategies.
The LEED rating system has evolved to incorporate new knowledge, including the impacts of materials and products during their production and use. The current version of the system, LEED v4, has increased the emphasis on transparency in the Material and Resources (MR) credit category. The MR credit encourages project teams to consider the full range of environmental impacts for a product, from the raw materials to the end of its useful life. Manufacturers can either certify their product through an automated GreenScreen list translator for Option 1 of the MR credit, or submit chemical inventories using the full GreenScreen method for Option 2.
Materials Disclosure
The LEED rating system is a comprehensive tool to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings, homes and neighborhoods. It sets the stage for greener construction, providing a framework for project teams to reduce emissions, use resources more efficiently, and provide healthier environments for occupants.
Manufacturers have made great strides with material ingredients, life cycle analysis and embodied carbon transparency in recent years, giving LEED project teams access to healthier products. Advanced material databases like UL Spot, Sustainable Minds Transparency Catalog and Ecomedes are also making it easier for LEED project leaders to select the best materials for their projects’ specifications.
In addition, LEED v4 introduced new disclosure credits that push the industry toward more inherently safer building materials. The Material Ingredient Disclosure and Optimization credit categories require manufacturers to identify the chemical identity for all proprietary ingredients above certain thresholds as well as report a GreenScreen List Translator or GreenScreen Benchmark score for each ingredient. The USGBC is working to establish a certification mark for products that are able to contribute to these credits.
As LEED standards continue to evolve and become more sophisticated, keeping up with the requirements can be challenging for project teams. Getting help from an expert can make all the difference in the success of a project, ensuring that project teams are pursuing the most up-to-date practices and maximizing their potential for achieving certification.