Introducing Declare Health and What Comes Next
Last year, Living Future shared a vision for the future of our materials program: one that is more holistic, offers multiple pathways for engagement, and continues to push the industry forward. At the core of that vision is the evolution of Declare – from a primary focus on material health to a broader, three-label system that also addresses environmental and social impacts. The goal is to better reflect the full spectrum of impacts that matter in the built environment and serve as the framework for our new Living Product Challenge.
We’re excited to take a major step in that journey this summer as we introduce the next version of Declare: Declare Health.
Building on a Strong Foundation
For more than a decade, Declare has helped transform how the industry understands material ingredients – bringing transparency to what products are made of and whether they are free of toxic chemicals. Declare Health builds on this legacy while positioning the program for what comes next.
This updated version includes:
- Revised definitions – improving clarity and consistency across the program, with stronger alignment to ISO standards on sustainability claims and product circularity, as well as the mindful MATERIALS Common Materials Framework (CMF) categories.
- Targeted program refinements – streamlining ingredient reporting, improving label formatting, gathering relevant data on ingredients without CASRNs, and reporting progress toward safer materials beyond Red List screening.
- Enhanced third-party partner programs – clarifying expectations and formalizing the approval process and ongoing support for Third-Party Preparers (3PP) and Verifiers (3PV), strengthening the Declare Health program’s rigor and credibility.
These updates, grounded in extensive input from Habitable and our Technical Advisory Group, ensure that Declare Health remains a trusted, high-integrity pathway for material ingredient transparency. These changes are.
👉 Get notified when the public comment period opens.
A New Platform for What Comes Next
Declare Health is also launching on a new technology platform. As the program evolves toward a multi-label system, this next phase requires a platform that is purpose-built to support that growth, enabling ongoing iteration and expanded program scope.
To meet this need, Living Future is partnering with Geofund, a sustainability traceability platform that will fully host and support label submission and program workflows. This platform is designed to offer:
- Streamlined workflows that make it easy to navigate and manage submissions
- Ingredient data sourced from Habitable’s Pharos, the industry’s leading database of substances and their associated health hazards
- Strong data integrity and integration capabilities, including API connectivity
- A flexible, future-ready architecture that can support Declare Health, Declare Environment, and Declare Equity
- Advanced review and verification workflows with in-app communications to streamline label approval
- Alignment with emerging CMF data structures to support interoperability
Living Future is working closely with 3E and the Exchange platform, which remains a committed partner to Declare and the impact it enables, to support a smooth transition and integrated workflows. For manufacturers, this means:
- Existing data will be pre-populated in the new platform, with updates required for label renewals only where changes align with the new Declare Health 2.1 requirements
- Manufacturers who use, or are interested in, 3E’s data management services will be able to continue doing so through connected systems
- Published Declare labels will remain usable, promotable, and accessible within existing data libraries
Living Future is incredibly grateful to SMS Collaborative (and its divisions Parallel Sustainability and Verico) for both the financial support and thoughtful guidance and partnership that have helped bring this platform to life. This is an important step toward a more connected, transparent, and high-impact materials ecosystem.
👉 Join an upcoming demo and info session
Expanding to Equity and Environment
Declare Health is just the beginning. The other two labels are already underway:
Declare Equity: Currently in pilot with seven manufacturers, Declare Equity is creating a first-of-its-kind pathway for product-level transparency on labor and social equity conditions across supply chains. The program is sectioned according to Stephen Covey’s circles of control, influence, and concern, and tracks progress from entry level to high achievement. This work has been made possible through countless hours of support from our social sustainability partners at Liveable, the willingness of pilot manufacturers, including Anduba, Hightower, Mohawk, Nova Terra, Tarkett, and Vode, to step into new territory, and industry leadership from Design for Freedom.
Declare Environment: In development, Declare Environment will help project teams better understand and compare environmental performance across key and cutting-edge indicators, enabling better material decisions in underserved impact areas such as ecosystem health – a truly necessary step towards regenerative goals. We’ve already developed a draft embodied carbon indicator, thanks to collaboration with ERG and the Carbon Leadership Forum.
Together, these three labels will form a comprehensive, interoperable system – supporting more informed decision-making across the architecture, engineering, construction, and manufacturing sectors.
Looking Ahead
As sustainability expectations continue to expand – from material health and embodied carbon to circularity and social equity – the need for clear, accessible, and trusted product data has never been greater. Living Future’s vision is not to centralize this information in a single system, but to help build a distributed, interoperable ecosystem – where shared frameworks and aligned data structures enable better access, comparison, and action. Declare Health, and the broader Declare suite, are key steps toward that future. We’re excited to continue building this next chapter with our partners, manufacturers, and the broader community.
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