By Grey Lee
Healthy materials is a topic that every green building proponent and advocate must engage on. Join us on 10/26 for a day of exploration, inspiration, and hands-on “how to” events with experts from the field of building materials science. What do you need to deepen your understanding of? What resources do you wish you had? Join us for the Healthy Materials Summit at Google in Cambridge to connect with your colleagues to share how to structure healthy materials concerns into every project you work on.
Speakers include Brent Ehrlich from Building Green, Rebecca Calahan Klein of Global Health Exchange, and Monica Nakielski of Partners Healthcare. USGBC Massachusetts Chapter Board Member Barbra Batshalom of the Sustainable Performance Institute will share how firms can systematically embrace healthy materials and the International Living Future Institute's Greg Norris will update us on the Living Product Challenge. Stay the afternoon for a full workshop on that!
We know buildings need to be net positive for our society – not just places to get things done or pretty things to marvel at.
The industry has come a long way since the first oil price shocks and energy efficiency became synonymous with a good building. Now, with net zero and passive house certifications, we have ways of really asserting the energy performance of a building.
Next is health. We are moving fast to embrace buildings as places to improve quality of life (or work) and improve physiological effects on occupants. The LEED system (v4) is incentivizing transparency in materials – considering their health effects. The Living Building Challenge has the Red List of “no-go” materials. The WELL building standard was developed to force thinking around health outcomes and materials concerns are right there.
Come out an participate with this community in a deep dive to get better with the tools, the terminology and the techniques that will be standard practice in the coming months and years.
We look forward to seeing you at the Healthy Materials Summit!
If you're interested in attending, you can find tickets here.
For those interested in sponsoring, you can find all of that information here.