Presenters:

Jennifer Atlee, BuildingGreen, Inc., Brattleboro, VT

Tom Lent, Director, Healthy Building Network, Berkeley, CA

Eden Brukman, Research Director, Cascadia Region Green Building Council, Portland, OR

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Many manufacturers now have marketing material that includes the LEED potential for their products. But this information offers no more than a peephole view of a material's performance and often is misleading...

The claims of "LEED certified" materials is a case in point.

What is the true value in the array of certifications that are touted on the fact sheet? And what are the other properties that contribute to a product’s overall composition and environmental, health and social profile?

In this session we’ll discuss how you currently find and use the information you need to evaluate product options as well as other sources and tools available. We’ll also present “lessons learned” from the Living Future tradeshow survey, an attempt to glean a well-rounded impression of the products and services on display at the conference. Two frameworks for building material selection, GreenSpec and the Pharos Project, will guide the discussion of the process, from prescreening to hidden tradeoffs, and the ultimate impact of specification.

Presenter Bios

Jennifer Atlee
Jennifer Atlee is research director at BuildingGreen, Inc., the Vermont-based publisher of Environmental Building News (EBN), the GreenSpec Directory of green building products, and the online resource BuildingGreen Suite. Through her work with BuildingGreen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Toxics Use Reduction Institute, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Demand Management Institute, Jennifer has conducted research and analysis in a variety of sustainability topics including green building, commercial and industrial energy efficiency, electronics recycling, and the economics of toxics use reduction. A primary focus of hers has been developing and clarifying standards to assess the environmental sustainability of products and processes. To this end, her activities at BuildingGreen include updating product criteria for GreenSpec as well as providing technical and research support to other BuildingGreen projects and activities.

Tom Lent
Tom Lent is Policy Director for the Healthy Building Network. He has thirty years of experience with energy and environmental issues primarily focused on healthy and resource efficient building technologies and the environmental impact of buildings, materials, and energy. His career has been diverse, ranging from energy flow studies of row house attics to environmental critiques of war in Iraq to employment impact analyses of national energy investments to health analyses of PVC backed carpets, to coordinating a national solar and biodiesel fueled rock concert power system tour. Tom has helped coordinate development of the Green Guidelines for Health Care (GGHC), LEED™ for Healthcare, Sustainable Bioplastic Guidelines and now the Pharos Project. He is a recipient of the US EPA IX Environmental Award for Outstanding Achievement for his work transforming the building materials market.

Eden Brukman
An architect and sustainable building advisor, Eden has focused her professional career on incorporating socially and environmentally responsible strategies into design and construction. Since 2005, her work expanded to also include research and implementation of sustainable policies, particularly related to building certification using the LEED rating system and the selection of appropriate building materials. Eden received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master’s degree in Illustration from the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland.

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