Page 078 - embodied environmental impact and costs associated with extraction, production,
Source section: Section 4 - Green Building Core Concepts and Application Strategies PDF page: 78 Guide page: 71 OCR quality: high (343 words)
OCR Text
Materials are the foundation of the buildings in which we live and work. The ubiquitous nature of materials and resources makes it easy to overlook the embodied environmental impact and costs associated with extraction, production, transportation, consumption, and disposal. The Materials and Resources (MR) credit category focuses on minimizing the embodied impacts associated with the entire life-cycle of building materials. Each requirement identifies a specific action that fits into the larger context of a life-cycle approach to embodied impact reduction. Setting goals for using sustainable materials and resources is an important step of the green building process. “Reduce, reuse, recycle” may seem like the extent this work; and clearly, reducing consumption is critical, and reusing and recycling waste are important strategies. But green building requires rethinking the selection of materials as well. Ideally, the materials and resources used for buildings not only do less harm than typical materials but go further and regenerate the natural and social environments from which they originate. To evaluate the best options and weigh the trade-offs associated with materials selection, teams must think beyond a project’s physical and temporal boundaries. Life-cycle thinking can help a team make informed, defensible decisions. Plentiful opportunities exist to reduce the harms associated with materials. Using less, finding materials with environmentally preferable attributes, using locally -harvested materials, and eliminating waste provide a great starting place. A systems-based, life-cycle perspective and an integrative decision making process will help projects achieve their goals addressing materials and resource use. LEED ADDRESSES THE FOLLOWING ISSUES RELATED TO MATERIALS AND RESOURCES:
- Conservation of materials
- Environmentally, socially, and locally preferable materials
« Waste management and reduction CONSERVATION OF MATERIALS Meaningful material conservation begins with eliminating the need for materials and new materials during the planning and design phases. The highest form of material conservation is reuse. Reusing existing s buildings or using salvaged materials not only eliminates the need for new materials to be created but also ra retains the cultural value and the contextual relevancy of those materials. Another way to reduce demand 5 for new materials is to design denser, mixed-use neighborhoods. Compared with sprawling communities, a
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