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Barry Giles
BuildingWise LLC
Founder & CEO, LEED Fellow, BREEAM Fellow
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Credit language
© Copyright U.S. Green Building Council, Inc. All rights reserved.
Intent
To reduce the environmental and air quality impacts of the materials acquired for use in the operations and maintenance of buildings.
Requirements
Maintain a sustainable purchasing program covering materials with a low cost per unit that are regularly used and replaced through the course of business. These materials include at a minimum, paper (printing or copy paper, notebooks, notepads, envelopes), toner cartridges, binders, batteries and desk accessories. Food and beverages are excluded from this credit but are covered under MR Credit 5. Sustainable Purchasing - Food. For materials that may be considered either ongoing consumables or durable goods (see MR Credits 2.1 and 2.2), the project team is free to decide which category to put them in as long as consistency is maintained with MR Credits 2.1 and 2.2, with no contradictions, exclusions or double-counting. Consistency must also be maintained with MR Credit 7.
A template calculator for MR c1 is available in LEED Online 3 as a credit submittal. One point is awarded to projects that achieve sustainable purchases of at least 60%, of total purchases (by cost) during the performance period. Sustainable purchases are those that meet one or more of the following criteria:
- Purchases contain at least 10% postconsumer and/or 20% postindustrial material.
- Purchases contain at least 50% rapidly renewable materials.
- Purchases contain at least 50% materials harvested and processed or extracted and processed within a 500 mile (800 kilometer) radius of the project. Building materials or products shipped by rail or water have been extracted, harvested or recovered, as well as manufactured within a 500 mile (800 kilometer) total travel distance of the project site using a weighted average determined through the following formula:
(Distance by rail/3) + (Distance by inland waterway/2) + (Distance by sea/15) + (Distance by all other means) ≤ 500 miles [800 kilometers] - Purchases consist of at least 50% Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)–certified paper products.
- Batteries are rechargeable.
Each purchase can receive credit for each sustainable criterion met (i.e., a $100 purchase that contains both 10% postconsumer recycled content and 50% of content harvested within 500 miles of the project counts twice in the calculation, for a total of $200 of sustainable purchasing).
Ongoing consumables must be purchased during the performance period to earn points in this credit.
Pilot Alternative Compliance Path Available
The following pilot alternative compliance path is available for this credit. See the pilot credit library for more information.
Credit substitution available
You may use the LEED v4 version of this credit on v2009 projects. For more information check out this article.
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Cost estimates for this credit
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© Copyright U.S. Green Building Council, Inc. All rights reserved.
Intent
To reduce the environmental and air quality impacts of the materials acquired for use in the operations and maintenance of buildings.
Requirements
Maintain a sustainable purchasing program covering materials with a low cost per unit that are regularly used and replaced through the course of business. These materials include at a minimum, paper (printing or copy paper, notebooks, notepads, envelopes), toner cartridges, binders, batteries and desk accessories. Food and beverages are excluded from this credit but are covered under MR Credit 5. Sustainable Purchasing - Food. For materials that may be considered either ongoing consumables or durable goods (see MR Credits 2.1 and 2.2), the project team is free to decide which category to put them in as long as consistency is maintained with MR Credits 2.1 and 2.2, with no contradictions, exclusions or double-counting. Consistency must also be maintained with MR Credit 7.
A template calculator for MR c1 is available in LEED Online 3 as a credit submittal. One point is awarded to projects that achieve sustainable purchases of at least 60%, of total purchases (by cost) during the performance period. Sustainable purchases are those that meet one or more of the following criteria:
- Purchases contain at least 10% postconsumer and/or 20% postindustrial material.
- Purchases contain at least 50% rapidly renewable materials.
- Purchases contain at least 50% materials harvested and processed or extracted and processed within a 500 mile (800 kilometer) radius of the project. Building materials or products shipped by rail or water have been extracted, harvested or recovered, as well as manufactured within a 500 mile (800 kilometer) total travel distance of the project site using a weighted average determined through the following formula:
(Distance by rail/3) + (Distance by inland waterway/2) + (Distance by sea/15) + (Distance by all other means) ≤ 500 miles [800 kilometers] - Purchases consist of at least 50% Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)–certified paper products.
- Batteries are rechargeable.
Each purchase can receive credit for each sustainable criterion met (i.e., a $100 purchase that contains both 10% postconsumer recycled content and 50% of content harvested within 500 miles of the project counts twice in the calculation, for a total of $200 of sustainable purchasing).
Ongoing consumables must be purchased during the performance period to earn points in this credit.
Pilot Alternative Compliance Path Available
The following pilot alternative compliance path is available for this credit. See the pilot credit library for more information.
Credit substitution available
You may use the LEED v4 version of this credit on v2009 projects. For more information check out this article.
XX%
Upgrade to LEEDuser Premium to see how many projects achieved this credit. Try it free »
Got the gist of MRc1 but not sure how to actually achieve it? LEEDuser gives step-by-step help. Premium members get:
- Checklists covering all the key action steps you'll need to earn the credit.
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- Ideas for going beyond LEED with best practices.
- All checklists organized by project phase.
- On-the-fly suggestions of useful items from the Documentation Toolkit and Credit Language.
In the end, LEED is all about documentation. LEEDuser’s Documentation Toolkit, for premium members only, saves you time and helps you avoid mistakes with:
- Calculators to help assess credit compliance.
- Tracking spreadsheets for materials purchases.
- Spreadsheets and forms to give to subs and other team members.
- Guidance documents on arcane LEED issues.
- Sample templates to help guide your narratives and LEED Online submissions.
- Examples of actual submissions from certified LEED projects.
LEEDuser expert
Barry Giles
BuildingWise LLC
Founder & CEO, LEED Fellow, BREEAM Fellow