91ÊÓƵ

Local attorney Joseph Eckhardt of Stoel Rives has an interesting piece on about the “green inputs” that go into buildings to reach certifications like LEED. His basic point is that materials manufacturers can exaggerate the greenness of their materials, and that can be bad news for builders or owners depending on those materials to reach certain certification goals.

If green building certification depends on the quality of underlying green certifications,  what does that mean for builders and consumers?  A cynic will surely recognize the fact that green building certification may drive unscrupulous and careless manufacturers to overstate the environmental attributes of their products.  (People in my profession will anticipate intense legal battles as undermined certifications go sour.)

Eckhardt continues by recommending that builders keep track of the warranties and contracts, so that responsible parties can be held accountable if a problem comes up. I don’t know exactly how that would happen, but Eckhardt seems ready to help you if it does.

This reminds me of the Living Building Challenge, which has much higher standards than LEED for green building, including for the sourcing and content of materials. Designers on projects aiming for the LBC, such as the Oregon Sustainability Center, have found that material selection for those projects is intense. A “Red List” of forbidden chemicals includes substances so common that designers are needing to commission materials specifically for their projects.

I wonder when it will be feasible for real green building materials to be common and accessible. Another complication, of course, is that programs like LBC prefer local sourcing of materials; in an ideal world, a plant that produces insulation without formaldehyde would have to be built about every 200 miles.