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Builders Asked to Help Benchmark Healthy Products
Architect and designer William McDonough, world renowned for his leadership in sustainable development, has invited green builders to participate in efforts to benchmark the performance of various building products through his Cradle to Cradle initiative.
Along with Dr. Michael Braungart, McDonough founded MBDC in 1995 to promote a revolutionary new approach to products and services emphasizing their health for humans and the environment, including the ability of waste materials to be broken down into nutrients or reused for other purposes.
As an example, McDonough, in a keynote address to the NAHB Green Building Conference in St. Louis last month, described how his company was able to overhaul a textile factory in Switzerland so that the water at the end of the manufacturing process was drinkable, and cleaner than the water that entered it.
McDonough, who is also the founding principal of Charlottesville, Va.-based William McDonough Partners, Architecture and Community Design, said that MBDC has also devised an online supply chain tool that provides information on the desirability of products.
Of the 104,000 chemicals that are currently being used to produce things, the first 6,000 have been entered into Cradle to Cradle’s database and categorized in a stop-go system where unhealthy is indicated by red, environmentally desirable by green and yellow signals caution because there is not enough available information, he said.
 Hycrete, a form of concrete that is made completely waterproof through the addition of a product first invented as an anti-corrosion agent in car engine oils, was one of the earliest products to receive Cradle to Cradle certification.
The product eliminates the need for external membrane and coating systems. It also speeds up the construction process, reduces the materials that are needed for the job and is suitable for handling the moisture collected by plants on green roofs.
In China’s Luzhou, McDonough said, soil has been lifted onto the roofs of new office buildings and they are being used for farming in a country that has a dwindling amount of agricultural land and is in the process of building housing for 400 million people in the next 12 years.
McDonough told green conference-goers that he is pursuing designs that will “love all the children of all species for all time,” and his goal is to create a “delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world with clean air, water, soil and power.”
One of his top design priorities is harnessing energy from the sun, he said, which can provide 5,000 times more power than people need. He built three solar houses in Ireland, “where there is no sun,” and designed the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin College, which makes 30% more energy than it needs to operate and purifies water through a wetland in the auditorium.
For more information on green building resources available from NAHB, e-mail Calli Schmidt, or call her at 800-368-5242 x8132.
 ‘Green Building Products’ Available at BuilderBooks.com
“Green Building Products: The GreenSpec Guide to Residential Building Materials,” available through BuilderBooks.com, provides descriptions and manufacturer contact information for more than 1,400 environmentally preferable products and materials — from age-fiber panels to zero-VOC paints.
To view or purchase this publication online, click here, or call 800-223-2665.
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