one product both meet two criteria in option2.

Hi Renaud,

You're only allowed to count the value of each product once, even if it meets more than one criterion. So you would choose the one that gives a higher value.

Nadav,

Clarification questions about this....Under Requirements, Option 2 section of the IDC Reference Guide it states:

"For credit achievement calculation, the base contributing cost of individual products compliant with multiple responsible extraction criteria is not permitted to exceed 100% its total actual cost (before regional multipliers)...."

Question: In Renaud's example above, the carpet is part of an EPR (perhaps take-back program?), which would qualify for/contribute 50% of its material cost. Assuming its recycled content is <50% altogether, it's overall qualifying contribution toward this credit would be <100% of the actual product cost, which appears to meet the noted restriction.

However, the requirement language continues as follows:

"... and double counting of single product components compliant with multiple responsible extraction criteria is not permitted ......"

QUESTION: I had interpreted intent to be that a project cannot claim >1 material specific eco-attribute for any single product (for example, claiming both recycled content AND biobased content in the carpet would be prohibited)

Alternately, if the restriction means you cannot claim benefit from both a product attribute (recycled, or biobased for example) AND a manf program EPR...I am confused how a product even theoretically claim more than 100% of its value before regional multipliers? Is this just worded to ensure project team's don't attempt to claim credit for more than one product qualifier?

Lemme get this straight...
For argument's sake, let's say we have a unicorn product that contributes evenly and magically to 3 categories. If I'm interpreting this correctly, this means that this product could contribute the same weight (so to speak) as a much less sustainable product that happened to meet the same threshold in 1 category, since we are not able to claim the magical product as contributing to multiple categories.
Does this not give adequate benefit to projects that would more carefully select materials with multiple attributes that happen to fall under this credit?
Why does LEED hate us?

That's my understanding, Joanna and Emily. When it says "double-counting is not permitted" I think that's pretty clear.

I can see how one could make a good case for setting it up either way--this is how they chose to do it. I guess they want to force us to spread the credit across lots of products and not allow a few "unicorn" products to drive credit achievement.

I found this whole thread confusing. So for clarification only. The first question, the product has recycled content and an EPR. Yes you can realize value from both those characteristics, just not more than 100% of the value of the product. So no, you don't have to choose the higher contribution and forego the other completely. You just have to know that if both together exceed 100%, you're only getting 100% (unless regional is involved). You would still enter both things on the row for the product and let the spreadsheet limit the sustainable value to 100% if necessary.

Double counting refers to exceeding 100% of the value of the product. Not counting two characteristics for the same product.

So you can claim the unicorn product for all three categories, but Emily's right it won't be considered any better than a product that meets one category to the same dollar threshold.

Hi Michelle,

For obvious reasons I think we all prefer your summarized interpretation....that a combo of qualifying attributes can yield a 100% product value contribution toward credit achievement (before considering any bonus regional value).

Would be nice to get official USGBC/GBCI confirmation for "the record".

Nadav- any chance we can request a formal addendum/clarification or via official comment from a LEED tech team lead in this forum?

Hi all,

Since this thread, we've had two CI projects get certified under v4. In both cases, we've had furniture or other products with both EPR and recycled content characteristics. Both values were entered on the same row, and both values were included in the summed total of sustainable criteria value acknowledged for these products. We had no comments about this on either project.

re: "For credit achievement calculation, the base contributing cost of individual products compliant with multiple responsible extraction criteria is not permitted to exceed 100% its total actual cost (before regional multipliers)...."

For example, FSC wood cannot count both towards FSC wood and recycled content (i.e. preconsumer sawdust/wood chips that might go into an engineered wood product). If you want to claim both, you need clear documentation that the claimed recycled content does not include FSC wood. 

A product can count towards multiple sustainable criteria as long as it does not exceed 100% value (before local multiplier). Like Michelle, I have had products accepted through LEED certification that had multiple sustainable criteria value, such as an EPR and recycled content for carpet or furniture.