LEED v4 Adopts Living Future’s Declare Label

PRESS RELEASE

“We’re Catalyzing a Materials Revolution” says ILFI’s James Connelly

(Washington, DC, and Seattle) On April 4, 2016, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced that the Living Future Institute’s Declare label is now an approved pathway for Option 1 of the Building Product Optimization and Disclosure, Material Ingredients credit for LEED v4. Declare labels with ingredient disclosure greater than 1,000ppm now comply with the LEED v4 credit requirements.

“The adoption of Declare into the LEED v4 credit is a major milestone for aligning materials requirements across green building certifications,” said James Connelly, director of the Institute’s Living Product Challenge (LPC).  “LEED is a mainstream green building certification program so this news signals an overall industry shift to materials ingredient disclosure and toxic chemical avoidance that will accelerate the transformation of the way materials are made, and will have an enormously positive human and environmental health impact.”

Declare has also been adopted by the WELL Building Standard and New Zealand’s Green Star program.

Sara Cederberg, Technical Director, USGBC noted in the USGBC announcement that  “central to the path LEED is clearing an understanding that transparency is a foundation on which future development will occur”. Declare’s recognition within LEEDv4 was the result of an overall industry effort to harmonize and align materials protocols, and a rigorous review process by the USGBC Materials Tag.

Amanda Sturgeon, CEO of the International Living Future Institute, believes this alignment on materials programs will benefit both Living Building Challenge (LBC) and LEED v4 projects, “by adopting Declare, the USGBC will accelerate implementation of both the LBC materials petal and LEED v4, and further transform the materials market.”

Declare has seen incredible growth in 2016, driven by the growing demand from LBC projects, particularly corporate offices and commercial interiors. The Living Building Challenge currently has 326 registered projects in 19 countries totally just under 14 million square feet. To date, Declare has over 415 products from 85 manufactures, with another 90 label submissions in process.

About the Declare Label:

By providing manufacturers and specifiers of building materials a clear, elegant and informative ‘nutrition-label’ Declare aims to transform the marketplace through transparency and open communication. Declare also provides an expanded point of entry into the most groundbreaking restorative projects in the world. Project teams pursuing the Living Building Challenge—widely accepted to be the most advanced green building standard in the world—use the Declare product database and label to select products that meet the Living Building Challenge’s stringent materials requirements, streamlining the materials specification and certification process.

About the Living Building Challenge:

The Living Building Challenge™ is a building certification program, advocacy tool and philosophy that defines the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment possible today and acts to rapidly diminish the gap between current limits and the end-game positive solutions we seek.

The Challenge is comprised of seven performance categories called Petals: Place, Water, Energy, Health & Happiness, Materials, Equity and Beauty. Petals are subdivided into a total of twenty Imperatives, each of which focuses on a specific sphere of influence. There are well over 300 registered Living Building Challenge projects, in 19 nations plus American Samoa, representing just under 14 million square feet of gross building area worldwide.

About the International Living Future Institute:

An inspiring hub for visionary programs, ILFI’s mission is to lead and support the transformation toward communities that are socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative. Composed of leading green building experts and thought leaders, the Institute is premised on the belief that providing a compelling vision for the future is a fundamental requirement for reconciling humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The Institute runs the Living Building Challenge, Living Community Challenge, Living Product Challenge, Net Zero Energy Certification, the Cascadia Green Building Council, Ecotone Publishing, Declare, JUST and other leading-edge programs. A global network of more than 400 volunteers across nearly 30 countries drive the local adoption of restorative principles in their communities.