State of Sustainability 2016 – Aug/Sep 16

By Darius Helm and Calista Sprague

Sustainability is here to stay. No one can convincingly argue against that. It’s already woven into the built environment. It has guided the commercial market toward an understanding of lifecycle assessment, and of how to make it profitable. Green materials are increasingly designed to protect both human health and the environment. Everyone may not yet be on board, but the industry as a whole has pushed off from the shore. 

It’s natural at this stage in the journey to ask some obvious questions. How do we gauge success? How many certifications are enough? Is there such a thing as too much transparency, and who draws the line? How much progress has been made so far? And what impact are the industry’s collective efforts having on the climate problem?

Unfortunately, nobody currently has the answer to any of those critical questions, except perhaps that true success cannot be claimed when the climate and environment are still on the decline. Also, there is data out there that quantifies the specific impact of, for instance, green buildings and renewable energy. Calculations can show how much carbon is sequestered by a given product, or even by the totality of every product manufactured by a specific firm or across a category. But they can’t show where the journey ends, or even how things will look 20 years from now.

How many green carpets does it take to stop a glacier from melting? Not enough, Interface has determined. To secure the planet for future generations, Interface has decided that, first, manufacturers need to go beyond neutral to a more regenerative role and, second, that true change means taking the movement beyond one’s walls, as advocates and messengers. It’s what the leading environmental thinkers are saying, too, like Paul Hawken, who envisions manufacturers using CO2 as a product ingredient. (Kemp Harr’s interview with Hawken starts on page 15.)

Over the last couple of years, there has been a subtle development in the focus of sustainability. Human health, which at first was mostly addressed through indoor air quality, has been expanded to include a range of other impacts, from the hazard and risk of material ingredients to daylighting, acoustics and softer, more welcoming environments to balance out the open plan office.

The human experience of the built environment has ascended quickly to become a top priority in the A&D community. Many have started using the Well Building Standard by the International Well Building Institute as a way of measuring and certifying how various aspects of buildings and the built environment impact human health. And that will eventually yield another question: When is a building healthy enough?

This focus on human health and wellness is worth watching because it signals a shift toward the social pillar of sustainability—sustainability’s three pillars are ecology, economy and social equity. And perhaps the hardest one to define, never mind achieve, is social equity. Hopefully, it won’t engender a shift in focus away from environmental challenges.

NET-WORKS UPDATE

When it comes to sustainability models, a leading example in the flooring industry is the Net-Works program, an initiative led by Interface and the Zoological Society of London. The basic structure of the program is to identify subsistence fishing communities and pay them to retrieve their used nylon nets, which in turn are funneled to Aquafil to turn into new nylon 6 carpet fiber. 

It’s not that this program is turning the world on its head or visibly impacting the environment. It’s still too small to even have a significant impact on Aquafil’s recycled nylon supply. Instead, its appeal is in the elegance of the program and how it so readily integrates all three pillars of sustainability. It gives the fishing villages another badly needed source of income, it removes hazards from the ocean environment, it recaptures and reuses synthetic material—and it’s economically viable for everyone up and down the chain.

Over the last four years, the Net-Works model has been introduced into 27 communities in the Philippines and Cameroon. So far, 100 tons of nylon nets have been reclaimed. 

According to a GlobalScan Report, “55,000 people have benefited from a healthier environment. Over 600 families have been given access to finance through community banks [created by Net-Works].”

With the model now fairly streamlined, the team behind Net-Works is ready to move beyond the pilot phase to scale it up, and it recently announced a 2020 goal of providing access to finance for 10,000 families, protect a billion square meters of ocean and create a healthier environment for one million people.

USGBC UPDATE The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is the organization behind LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a third-party verification system that provides certification for green building projects. Among many other sustainability 

initiatives, USGBC has been busy preparing for LEED v4, introduced at Greenbuild 2013, to go into full effect. The sun sets on LEED 2009 at the end of October. 

“LEED was developed with a philosophy that recognizes that buildings function more like living, breathing organisms,” explains Rachel Gilbert, USGBC media and communications specialist. “Modern buildings are a collection of systems working together in order to help the building perform. LEED v4 represents the most innovative approach to integrating these systems in order to ensure optimal standards in human health and environmental sustainability.” 

The key changes in the new version of certification include a greater emphasis on indoor air quality, as well as an emphasis on the effects of building materials on human health and the environment; credit for smart grid digital systems, which increase energy savings; and a new whole-building approach to the evaluation of water efficiency. When it comes to flooring, material transparency has had the biggest impact.

Another area of focus for USGBC is the new LEED Dynamic Plaque, which constantly monitors a building’s energy, water, waste, transportation and human experience, and displays near real-time scores on a digital plaque. “The Performance Score is helping to drive the green building market to a new era of accountability and data transparency,” says Gilbert.

The green building movement started with a singular focus: to decrease the impacts of buildings on the natural environment. In recent years, however, concerns have shifted to also include the effects of the built environment on human health and wellbeing. Critics of LEED have complained that too much weight has been placed on the percentage of recycled content in building materials rather than their effect on building occupants. This shift of focus has given rise to conversations about VOCs, orthophthalates, asthma and allergy irritants, and scads other health