Nutrition-type label for building materials approved under LEED v4

“The adoption of Declare into the LEED v4 credit is a major milestone for aligning materials requirements across green building certifications,” says James Connelly, director of the Institute’s Living Product Challenge (LPC).  “LEED is a mainstream green building certification program so this news signals an overall industry shift to materials ingredient disclosure and toxic chemical avoidance that will accelerate the transformation of the way materials are made, and will have an enormously positive human and environmental health impact.”
 

Sara Cederberg, technical director, USGBC noted in the USGBC announcement that “central to the path LEED is clearing an understanding that transparency is a foundation on which future development will occur.” Declare’s recognition within LEED v4 was the result of an overall industry effort to harmonize and align materials protocols, and a rigorous review process by the USGBC Materials Tag.
 

Amanda Sturgeon, chief executive officer of the International Living Future Institute, believes this alignment on materials programs will benefit both Living Building Challenge (LBC) and LEED v4 projects, “by adopting Declare, the USGBC will accelerate implementation of both the LBC materials petal and LEED v4, and further transform the materials market.”
 

The Living Building Challenge currently has 326 registered projects in 19 countries totally just under 14 million square feet. To date, Declare has over 415 products from 85 manufactures, with another 90 label submissions in process.