Green Buildings

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The NEW NORM

From the average homeowner to high-powered companies; all looking to incorporate green building practices into their construction projects.

Green buildings have globally became industry standards. Sustainable designs, energy and water-efficient measures, sustainable building materials are taking over the construction industry!

Since 1995, building and construction activities worldwide consume billions of tons of raw materials each year, with over 40 percent of total global use. At the forefront, green building materials are environmentally critical as their impacts are considered over the life of the product.

Through a life cycle assessment (LCA), businesses can now evaluate the “greenness ” of building materials and products by addressing the impacts of the product through all of its life stages.

The usage of green building materials and products promotes the conservation of dwindling nonrenewable resources both nationally and internationally. In addition, integrating green building materials into building projects can help reduce the environmental impacts associated with the extraction, transport, processing, fabrication, installation, reuse, recycling, and disposal of these building industry source materials.

Going Green in Building and Construction

No matter a builder’s project size and budget, from the average homeowner to high-powered companies, they are looking closely to incorporate green building practices into their construction projects.

With more regulations and standards that are put in place, and developers shifting towards green buildings, the rising demands continue to look closely at Building Materials.

Manufacturers meet such demand by improving their products or creating more innovative and quality products that work from a sustainability standard.

The entire building and construction supply-chain is taking a responsible turn towards its products: from transport, fabrication, extraction, processing, installation, and disposal of materials.

Understanding your challenges

We understanding your challenges in producing and distributing green construction materials.

The Environmental Product Declarations (EDPs) look at a product’s total environmental impact from beginning to end on the supply chain. Today, manufacturers are conducting Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of their products; measuring the total environmental impact of products from harvesting of resources to energy usage to final waste.

Positioning your products with EPD EN 15804

The EN 15804 is the EPD standard for the sustainability of construction works and services. This standard harmonizes the structure for EPDs in the construction sector, making the information transparent and comparable.

The EN 15804 standard provides several options in methodological choices. It describes the technical performance of a construction product. Therefore, it provides data on a set of indicators for each of the different life cycle stages of the product.

In addition, the standard defines different “modules” across the entire life-cycle. This protocol, therefore, provides a pathway for developing type III  declarations intended to assess the sustainability of construction works.

The EN 15804 standard provides the structure for three different scopes of LCA:

• Cradle-to-gate: includes the raw materials supply stage to the manufacturing stage of the construction product.
• Cradle-to-gate with options: includes the raw materials supply stage, through transport and manufacturing of the construction product, and other selected life cycle stages (e.g. product use, product maintenance, refurbishment, waste processing, etc.
• Cradle-to-grave: includes all the life-cycle stages from raw materials supply stage to the disposal of the construction product.