I'm very pleased to see this credit (the last one in Table 2 above) added to the mix. I think it represents an important advance for the LEED system in bringing healthy materials to building projects, encouraging both content disclosure and screening for chemicals of concern. It rewards building projects with one point toward LEED certification if 20% of all building products and materials, by cost, have a publicly available list of ingredients and do not include California Proposition 65 chemicals in their contents.
This is a great start. In the next few weeks I'll be suggesting ways to refine it (definitions for what it means to fully disclose contents, some other red lists to consider beyond Prop 65, etc) and will be interested to see more discussion here.
http://www.pharosproject.net/index/blog/mode/detail/record/106/leed-2012...
Christina Macken
Assistant Project Manager, LEED v4U.S. Green Building Council
141 thumbs up
August 10, 2011 - 12:14 pm
Hi Tom -
Thank you so much for your support. We look forward to seeing your comments.
Anne Less
Green Team Consultant, Healthy Materials + Knowledge ManagementGoogle
18 thumbs up
August 22, 2011 - 5:29 pm
I agree with Tom. I am very pleased to see that LEED is starting to address this important issue.
I have been working on a number of projects where we've attempted to obtain ingredient lists for building products and avoid Chemicals of Concern. This pursuit requires A LOT of time and effort. I am concerned that one credit alone does not honor the effort required to fulfill this credit. Considering this, I am also concerned that this does not provide enough of an incentive to participate, which effects the market transformation aspect of the credit's intent.
Can someone explain the thinking behind the credit weighting?