Healthy Materials Summit 2016 Afternoon Session: Living Building Challenge

By Alexander Landa

There's a lot going on with the Healthy Materials Summit next week. Between networking sessions, workshops, panels, speakers, and more, you'll have busy day for sure. From 1PM-5PM, Shawn Hesse and ILFI's Dr. Greg Norris will be speaking at the ILFI Living Product Challenge.

This event will feature an Understanding the Living Product Challenge presentation delivered by Dr. Norris, to be followed by a free Cocktail Reception courtesy of Mohawk Industries.

The production, use, and disposal of products – in buildings and beyond – is the major way that humanity is unwittingly fraying the web of life. The Living Product Challenge was launched by the International Living Future Institute in April 2015 to further pursue a materials economy that is non-toxic, transparent and socially equitable. Designers of Living Products must go further than typical manufacturers, using human creativity and ecological inspiration to design products that create positive handprints while shrinking negative footprints. These “handprints” measure the positive impacts that a product cause across its life cycle, such as harvesting more water and generating more energy than was required to make it. While a product's footprint can never be reduced to zero, the product can still be Net Positive if its handprint is bigger than its footprint. Getting to the goal of truly restorative products requires unprecedented levels of innovation and collaboration, across supply chains, industries, disciplines and lifecycles.

This session includes a brief overview of the Living Product Challenge and then will dive into Handprinting. It will explore what handprinting means for organizations today and look at positive real-life examples of successful handprinting methods. It will seek to inspire participants to join in the challenge, and to answer questions about how they can do so.

This is approved for 4 CEU's. (AIA, GBCI, LFA).

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand what a handprint means and how it differs from a footprint.

2. Understand the Living Product Challenge framework and how handprinting is a part of that system.

3. Understand how product lifecycles can “give more than they take” and how to encourage positive impacts.

4. Learn about the development and implementation of real-life organizational handprints.

The Healthy Materials Summit is a unique event that doesn't compare to anything else in the market. Please signup to become part of the premiere materials summit in the Northeastern US. Not only will you personally benefit from becoming an expert on healthy materials, but you will become a massive catalyst of change in the bigger picture. Future generations will be thankful that we're now focusing so much on our environment, and focusing on the literal building blocks of new designs will help to propel a safer tomorrow.