The company manufactures drywall from 99 percent recycled gypsum boards.
CertainTeed, a subsidiary of Saint-Gobain that manufactures drywall from 99 percent recycled gypsum boards, announced six additional Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), bringing the total number of drywall EPDs to 12. EPD is an international, independently verified registered document that shows transparent and comparable information about a product’s life cycle environmental impacts. "CertainTeed is proud to have pioneered EPD verifications both within our drywall products and extending across CertainTeed insulation and ceilings categories. Since the beginning, we've delivered on our commitment to provide better product transparency so that our customers can make informed decisions on environmental sustainability implications at the initial stages of project development," says Dave Engelhardt, president, CertainTeed Gypsum. CertainTeed Gypsum offers 12 product-specific Type III EPDs, which include seven plants in four different product categories. Under the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) v4 guidelines, projects must use a minimum of 20 permanently-installed products from five different manufacturers with EPDs or HPDs to achieve the Building Product Disclosure and Optimization credits for Environmental Product Declarations (MR Credit 2) and Material Ingredients (MR Credit 4). CertainTeed's Type X, AirRenew, M2Tech or Easi-Lite drywall EPDs count as one full product each. Specifying CertainTeed's EPDs across gypsum, ceilings and insulation also count for three manufacturers out of the five needed for LEED v4. CertainTeed Gypsum is the only manufacturer to offer "cradle-to-grave" EPD transparency, taking the entire development process into account; from downstream material extraction and selections, transportation and logistics, to installation and finishing, in-use and durability performance and final end-of-life impacts. A cradle-to-grave transparency approach takes into consideration all the environmental impact of the product throughout its entire lifecycle. The EPDs from CertainTeed Gypsum are third-party verified by UL Environment and include information on global warming potential, embodied energy and other impacts that occur as a result of manufacturing. The six new EPDs, grouped by manufacturing plant location, are available for the following four popular product groups:
CertainTeed's commitment to sustainability spans beyond EPDs to include seven certifications from the Health Product Declaration Collaborative (HPD) in Wakefield, Massachusetts. "Sustainability and transparency continue to drive product purchase decisions across the industry and CertainTeed Gypsum remains committed to delivering products that meet the sustainability needs of our customers," says Peter Mayer, vice president of sustainability and quality for CertainTeed Gypsum. "Our EPD and HPD verified offerings provide our customers with significant differentiation in the marketplace."
More than 90 percent of construction debris was diverted from landfills.
Online marketplace Etsy, Brooklyn, New York, earned the International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge Petal certification for its global headquarters. The Living Building Challenge certifies building that create a positive impact on its surrounding environment and include seven performance areas: place, waster, energy, health and happiness, materials, equity and beauty. Early on in the project, it became clear that Etsy’s aspirations to hold this project to the highest standards for sustainability aligned with the goals and Imperatives of the Living Building Challenge, particularly those of the Materials Petal, with more than 90 percent of construction debris diverted from landfills. These five principles guided the project from concept to ribbon-cutting:
The wide range of collaborators on this project is nearly innumerable. They included many of the internal Etsy teams—Workplace Ecology & Design, Sustainability & Social Innovation, Culture & Engagement, Global Food, Brand Design, Audio Visual and IT, among many others—the design firm Gensler in San Francisco, dozens of local artists and Etsy sellers and hundreds of other partners. This collective effort resulted in a space that reflects Etsy’s values and its overarching mission.
The XR is designed to handle municipal, commercial and industrial waste for alternative fuel production.
The Granite High School building in south Salt Lake will be replaced with 76 single-family homes.
Paint, carpet and and tree stumps among the items being proposed for recycling by three separate companies.