CA43 - Are you carbon curious?
A tool to help you tackle embodied carbon, ASHRAE releases new draft, and my curious kids.
NEWSWORTHY
THE SPONSOR
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THE TOPIC
Have you heard this saying “curiosity killed the cat”?
Yeah - I think that saying is crap. Curiosity is the lifeblood of carbon reduction.
Here is a story from my life.
For the last six months, I’ve been looking a little more tired than usual.
Classic architect? Deadlines, all-nighters, workaholic?
Wrong - 6 month old baby. 😴
The thing that amazes me the most about young children is their curiosity.
It knows no bounds and is constantly changing as they get older.
At 6 months it’s all about putting everything in your mouth. And when I say everything, I mean everything!
My 3-year-old has a very different approach to curiosity. It’s the question Why? And it gets thrown around regularly.
My 5-year-old is also very curious but wants to try everything. This morning she told me she wants to learn the trumpet!
So what’s my point?
Sustainable Architects are curious architects.
Curiosity is the yeast to your sustainable design approach.
You can have all the right ingredients, but being curious is what drives the change.
Questions like:
How can we do this better?
Am I missing something here?
Where did these materials come from and how do they impact the environment?
If you are not a curious architect - this is one thing should work on.
So how can you be sustainably curious?
One way to start is by looking at the environmental impact of materials.
There are several resources you could use, but I want to walk us through the Transparency Catalog.
The first thing I love about this site is that you don’t need an account to get started.
Rather than setting up an account and verifying passwords, you can just search materials.
Let’s walk through the process:
THE TRANSPARENCY CATALOG
1 | Searching for products is easy because it’s organized by Master Format and you can be as detailed or not detailed as you need to be. For this example, I am simply going to be looking for some resilient flooring. As you can see from the example below. I’ve simply selected 09 Finishes, and 09 60 Flooring to get started.
Once you’ve selected a type of material you’ll be greeted by a list of products organized by their Brand/Product. In the screenshot below you can see that the first few products are listed under Forbo Flooring Systems.
2 | Looking for EPD or Carbon information? Here is where you need to look. This will give you a live link to the published EPD so you don’t need to dig for it and it will also give you a quick snapshot of the product's performance if it is listed in EC3.
3 | One of the other key features that makes this catalog great is that it shows you more than just carbon. It also gives you a great snapshot of the material ingredients and if the product has Declare labels or has an HPD.
4 | As you are skimming through the products you’ll see this handy 20th, 40th, 60th, or 80th percentile which gives you a quick indication of the GHG emissions of the product relative to the other materials in its category. The 20th percentile are the products you should be looking for. This is also where you can quickly download the EPD if you need to save it for later.
5 | Quickly we can also see that Marmoleum also has a Declare Label and is LBC Red List Free which means the product is 100% disclosed at 100ppm and does not contain any ingredients on the Red List.
It might seem obvious, but the Transparency Catalog has one simple goal.
Transparency.
Transparency and curiosity are two key ingredients you need to design your next low-impact building.
TL:DR
To be a sustainable architect, you need to be a curious architect
Curiosity starts by asking questions
Curiosity ends by finding answers
Use the Transparency Catalog to get the answers you are looking for quickly.
THE PERSON
Terry Swack is an internet & environmental entrepreneur which are two types that rarely seem to go together. Her passion for transparency and her commitment to making data simple and easy to get is inspiring. She is the founder of Sustainable Minds which hosts the Transparency Catalog. Well worth a follow.
THE PROJECT
A few weeks ago we looked at a “Zero Carbon Hotel” that used a lot of offsets to make that claim. The Hines Seattle Headquarters by LMN Architects has a very different approach to sustainability which allows it to have a 65% reduction in embodied carbon by maximizing material reuse. This included carpets, glazing, doors, and several other materials. This building is truly looking to contribute to the circular economy and change the way we design buildings.