April 15, 2019
Dear Living Product 50 Member,
Thank you for your letter to the design community in spring 2018. We want you to know that we are paying attention. We appreciate the enormous effort and progress that you’ve made in providing disclosure and improving your products’ impacts and chemistry. Your work allows us to deliver the optimized buildings that our communities need.
We are using this information to select and specify products by giving preference to those that have:
-
Publicly available material ingredient disclosure information.
-
Publicly available environmental impact disclosure information.
-
Documentation of compliance with strict VOC emissions requirements.
-
Proof that they do not contain chemicals of concern identified by the
-
Living Building Challenge Red List, the WELL Building Standard, the Healthier Hospitals Initiative’s Safer Chemicals Challenge, and/or the Green Science Policy Institute’s Six Classes.
To be clear, our ultimate aspiration is to design and construct with holistically optimized materials. We want the materials used to create our projects to positively impact human health, the climate, the environment, and society. We cannot achieve this goal alone. We must work together as designers, building owners, developers, and contractors to build knowledge and demand. And, of course, your help is crucial
EACH OF US PLEDGE TO
-
Continue asking for transparency and better products.
-
Continuously improve and update our specifications and procurement processes to require transparent and optimized products.
-
Collaborate and share best practices, tools, and education.
-
Support
Human Health
by preferring products which support and foster life throughout their lifecycles and seek to eliminate the use of substances that are hazardous.
-
Support
Climate Health
by preferring products which reduce carbon emissions and ultimately sequester more carbon than emitted.
-
Support
Ecosystem Health
by preferring products which support and regenerate the natural air, water, and biological cycles of life through thoughtful supply chain management and restorative company practices.
-
Support
Social Health and Equity
by preferring products from manufacturers who secure human rights in their own operations and in their supply chains, and which provide positive impacts for their workers and the communities where they operate.
-
Support a
Circular Economy
by reusing buildings and materials; and by designing for material efficiency, long life, and perpetual cycling.
We understand that none of us can do this alone. We welcome your engagement and commit to an ongoing dialogue with the Living Product 50, as well as other manufacturers, building owners, contractors, researchers, and others who are interested in working towards building product industry transformation. To move forward more quickly, we suggest convening face-to-face forums at Greenbuild, Living Product Expo, Living Future, and other similar conferences. We value our relationship with each of you and understand that the change we seek will not be accomplished overnight. Please join us in continued dialogue and collaboration as we learn from each other
and improve our industry together.
Sincerely,
MATERIALS PLEDGE SIGNATORIES
(listed below as of May 4, 2020)