Hello, Green Gurus!
It was lovely to see some familiar faces (and names) in this afternoon's webinar about Low Carbon Specs. A little personal info, but I have just recently returned from maternity leave, and plugging back in to this network of passionate sustainability professionals is one of the things that actually made me look forward to returning to work. I've been fortunate to be able to now split my professional time 50/50 between my role as a Sustainable Design Leader within an architectural practice, and a new role as Director of Outreach and Engagement with mindfulMATERIALS.
I imagine many if not all of you are at least somewhat familiar with the mindfulMATERIALS library tool, but a lot of work has been going on with the organization behind the scenes (with some serious contribution from several members of this peer group - shout out to Lona Rerick, Maria Papiez, and Mary Dickinson) to develop a Common Materials Framework, mapping over 100 different declarations and certifications and their endpoints to understand how they contribute to the 5 buckets of the AIA Materials Pledge. The first round of development of this framework is complete and will soon be issued to ecosystem partners/certifying bodies for review, and our goal is to have this information digitized and available to search and filter within a (2.0 version) of our connected database in time for Greenbuild.
That said, I've had some great conversations with some of you already about this framework (what it is, how it will help you all in your efforts toward meeting the AIA materials pledge), and the overall direction and focus of mindfulMATERIALS in the industry to support more investment in - and specifiation of - holistically sustainable materials, and I'd love to continue those conversations and ultimately connect with all of you directly. We have a handful of upcoming events, including a pop-up event next week at MSR Design's office in Minneapolis focused around Circularity, and an exciting (but sold out) workshop at the AIA National Conference, so I'd love to see you there if any of those things happen to be in your area, otherwise please feel free to set up a call with me to learn more.
-Laurel Christensen