Episode 7- Materials: Is life cycle assessment the holy grail?
Our buildings consume roughly 40% of our raw materials; over 50% of our landfills’ content consists of building construction and demolition waste. Green building designers often consider the content of the materials being selected, such as recycled, reused, rapidly renewable, and regionally extracted components. Teams also manage construction methods to limit waste being sent to landfills. A more sophisticated approach asks designers to compare the environmental impacts of materials form “cradle to grave”, such as quantifying the energy embodied in these materials from mining, manufacturing, transporting, installing, maintaining, and disposing of these materials at the end of their useful life. Tools for such life cycle assessment, or LCA, are emerging. A “cradle to cradle” approach looks at how products can become “biological nutrients” at the end of their useful life.
Our guest, Scot Horst, was a founding Partner of 7group, an internationally recognized green building and sustainability consulting firm. He has focused his efforts on materials issues for over 15 years; he currently serves as the U.S. Green Building Council’s Sr. Vice President for LEED.
