Now in its seventh year, the annual gathering of Living Building Challenge project teams and their kin—known as Living Future—has really hit its stride.

The annual Living Future event rotates between Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland, the three hubs of Cascadia Green Building Council, which is a chapter of both the U.S. and Canada Green Building Councils and a program within the relatively new International Living Future Institute (ILFI). (Jason McLennan, CEO of the Cascadia GBC and ILFI, is not one to follow the rules, and his organizations routinely flout the policies of their parent organizations.) READ MORE

A sneak preview of LEED 2012 documentation details with LEEDuser and the USGBC
Brought to you by BuildingGreen, Inc.

Webcast: Behind the Scenes on LEED 2012: New Developments in Credit Documentation, Reference Guides, and More
Date: Thursday, April 26th at 3:00 pm Eastern Time
Cost: Free
Length: About 60 minutes, including a Q&A Session

LEARN MORE

ANDERSON, S.C. – The Tile Council of North America (TCNA) announced a new sustainability  standard today for tile and tile-installation products.
The Green Squared Certified program, developed in the past five years, will include hundreds of products available at the start of the Coverings trade event this month from eight product manufacturers – with more products and producers slated to be certified within the year.
“This early adoption, within just a few months of the passage of the Green Squared (SM) ANSI standard,” says Eric Astrachan, TCNA executive director, “is a clear indication of the commitment North American manufacturers have made to sustainable manufacturing and sustainable products, in many cases starting years ago when conversations began regarding an industry standard for sustainability.”  READ MORE

This information comes via BSI member Daniel Wood:

Good evening everyone, in the spirit of sharing information I attended a USGBC class a few weeks ago that was very interesting.  I am including the PowerPoint presentation (that is brand new and was first shown at this event) on EPD’s and the .pdf document for the paper on EPD’s (Environmental Product Declarations) that was handed out. This event was held at UL Laboratories facility and presented by the EPD Program Manager in their new environmental division, which is working with companies to help them develop all of the documentation that the architecture community is looking to see now and in the future.

Apparently there are three types of so called eco-labels and what this presentation addressed was type III labels, which involve; PCR’s (Product Category Rules), LCA’s (Life Cycle Assessment) and EPD’s (Environmental Product Declarations).  They said that Europe and other countries have already been working on these for a few years and that we are behind them in this documentation development.