Sometimes I receive a letter from a manufacturer stating that a material is harvested and manufactured within 500 miles of the project site however for proprietary reasons, they cannot disclose these locations.
Has anyone had experience in documenting this and whether or not USGBC has pushed back?
Jon Clifford
LEED-AP BD+CGREENSQUARE
LEEDuser Expert
323 thumbs up
May 10, 2015 - 9:41 pm
In lieu of a complete breakdown of all raw material extraction points, LI#2426 allows “a statement on the manufacturer's letterhead indicating that the point of extraction, harvest, recovery or manufacture is within 500 miles of the LEED project site.”
I do not know about LEED Reviewers, but I tend to be skeptical of such letters. They should not be “boilerplate” statements. I have required signed and dated letters that include the project’s name & address and the name of the product, explicitly stating the percentage of that product’s raw materials “mined, quarried, harvested, or recovered” within 500 miles of the project site. (The percentage is essential for entry into the MR Calculator spreadsheet.)
The point is that, if I must accept less that complete disclosure, I want to make sure that the authors of these letters understand their MRc5 claims and that they have exercised due diligence to ensure their accuracy.
Side Note: I have achieved MRc5 exemplary performance based on “big ticket” regional items like concrete, precast, masonry, paving, gypsum, stone, and steel, using complete material source data. I am not sure that I have ever actually had to fall back on data for lesser materials with less complete documentation.