Cradle-To-Cradle and Living Building Challenge Define the Building of the Future

We had two great presentations last week on buildings that are so focused on no-carbon that they are made of wood and recycle water.

The most sustainable building in the southwest, Kendeda. From a Greenbuild 2019 presentation.

“Are something that people was very skeptical that could be done in the Southeast. And we’re pretty sure we’re going to hit the benchmark for performance. We have to prove it for 12 months of continued operation. What we want to be is the most environmentally advanced education building of its type in the Southeast. And again, the way we’re going to back that up is by getting certified to really build the challenge. And the goal here, since Spider changed, not just at Georgia Tech but across the Southeast. I’m being told to go back to the mic. Oh, it’s being recorded.

It’s a building that will inspire change, not just at Georgia Tech and in the Southeast. Inspiration is about storytelling. You know, the President said yesterday, let’s not focus on facts. Let’s focus on stories, but let’s make sure that our stories are backed up by facts. We’ve really seen that in the building.

So we start with the story of why buildings? Buildings are humanity’s most abundant creation. We spend 90% of our time indoors. That statistic doesn’t necessarily ring with people. So in telling the story of 90% of our time indoors can say it another way. Nine out of 10 breaths that we take is indoors, and now we can start talking about healthy materials. People relate to nine out of 10 breaths, they don’t necessarily relate to 90%, so that’s just a slight tweak and it becomes a story.

Buildings impact on the U.S. We know these statistics, 12% of water studying 71% of energy, 40% of construction and waste degree, the Marine 40% CO2. We can talk about warming projections and all this stuff, but the story there is incremental change is not an option. You go through all those statistics, they’re not going to remember the statistics, but what they will remember, they’ll get sort of the feeling of what you’re saying, and then incremental change is not an option. Simple words, regenerative, self-sufficient, create a positive impact. We got to like parse through what those mean, but we’re getting to simplicity. This is a slide that you had seen in a typical slide deck, right? It’s got all the information that you have about the building and all this stuff.” https://livingbuilding.gatech.edu/

Greenbuild 2019 Presentation by Mecho on their Cradle-to-Cradle Shade Blind material – a plastic aluminum – imagine recycling the plastic you receive into 3D printed household items – forever.

“Hi there. My name is Rachel Berman. I am the sustainability program manager for Mecho, and here we are at our education lab at Greenbelt and we’re going to be talking about two of our shadecloths today. The first is EcoVeil shadecloth. EcoVeil is a cradle to cradle certified material. It is made of an [inaudible 00:00:20] core with an thermoplastic elastomer jacket, and it was designed and released in about 2004. And what’s so unique about it is that it has a similar aesthetic and performance of a vinyl coated polyester since it has opaque yarn, but it is PVC free and can be 100% recycled.

The other material we’re going to talk about today is EcoVeil Sheer. This is our newer product. EcoVeil Sheer was launched in 2017, and it is made of 100% polyester shadecloth. It also has a cradle to cradle material health certificate and a declare label, and it also meets the Living Building Challenge requirements. What is so unique about this, it is the first commercially available shadecloth to meet NFPA 701 without the use of any chemical-free retardants, which makes it Healthier Hospitals Initiative compliant for safer chemicals, and it is a really unique weave. It is a broken twill weaves, so you can see what it looks like on the front. It’s also different on the back, and it is something we are very excited to share with the community.” https://www.mechoshade.com

Water Recycling Solutions.

“Hi, my name is Ben Arnold. I work for a company called Phoenix Processing Equipment. We’ve partnered with a company called Aquacell out of Sydney, Australia. We engineer, manufacturer, install and maintain a rainwater, greywater, and blackwater systems with the intent of reuse and non-potable applications.

So we custom engineered systems from very early in the design phase, all the way through construction, and ultimately to the point where billions are using it in toilet flushing, irrigation, and cooling tower makeup.

We’ve had a steady presence over the past 10 years in San Francisco and as the water shortage continues to increase, we hope to grow elsewhere throughout the country for years and years to come.” aquacell.us

There is a steady push to make buildings and the built environment completely independent of the location of the project. This allows the building and the campus to have very little or zero impact on the local eco-system. Much like a space ship that landed on the site. The first steps to this are zero consumption of carbon fuels, the second is generating zero waste and that includes human waste, lastly these buildings generate more energy than they use so they are a net benefit to the surroundings. Cradle-To-Cradle products allow these conscious communities to recycle and reuse their materials from aluminum to new plastics that can be recycled infinity like metals.  The Kendeda Building, http://livingbuilding.gatech.edu/, is and example of this in the southeast and the Bullitt Center, http://www.bullittcenter.org/, in the north west. Typically these are Living Building Challenge, https://living-future.org/lbc/, projects. Both of these buildings use wood and not concrete because concrete embodies too much carbon and wood can be grown, harvested, manufactured and disposed of in a zero carbon manner.

Learn more about Greenbuild at https://www.greenbuildexpo.com

We got a nice email from Carter Hale, Outreach Executive,  with GH Clark Contractors and would like to share it with you along with his link. It’s a nice overview of the home building process. Thanks Carter.

“My name is Carter from ghclark.com, and while researching for my latest article, I found your website.

I spent a couple of hours checking out your site, and honestly, it’s great. I specifically enjoyed this article.

You have fantastic content, and that’s why I want to reach out to you. One way to gain more traction is to link to helpful resources. It makes your content stand out even more.

I was originally researching for my article, A Step By Step Guide On Building Your Own Home which you can find here: https://www.ghclark.com/step-by-step-guide-on-building-your-own-home/”

Carter Hale | Outreach Executive

C: GH Clark

E: carter@ghclark.online