Sometimes the supply chain from the extraction of virgin material to the complete assembly may be very long and difficult to document. When documenting regional materials, how far do I have to go in the supply chain?
Let's for example consider a manufacturer of precast concrete elements, located within the 500 mile boundary. The factory buys the reinforcement steel from a steel factory, also located within 500 miles. However, the raw material used for making the reinforcement steel is extracted outside of the 500 mile boundary. Does the steel constribute to the regional materials credit in this case?
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11478 thumbs up
November 20, 2011 - 11:14 pm
Magnus, in that case the steel does not count. With some exceptions, e.g. for recycled material, LEED really does want you to know where the raw material comes from. With many items this many be a combination of too difficult and not worth it. With big-ticket items it is worth overcoming the difficulty.
Lilian Seow
PrincipalLSDesignworks @ Vancouver, BC Canada
12 thumbs up
June 16, 2014 - 1:23 pm
Hi Tristan,
It is ideal to focus on 'big tickets' contracts but in the real construction world, this unfortunately doesn't happen.The big-ticket contracts are so protected by the owner or/and senior manager/s that these big-ticket holders are sort-of exempted from providing any LEED information. Instead, small ones are targeted to cover the 'big-ticket' loss to meet the % thresholds.
On how do we tackle multiple 'raw materials' suppliers? And who should provide such declaration - the suppliers or the final manufacturer?