Mahesh Ramanujam

Chief Operating Officer, USGBC, president, GBCI

The U. S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has been established for 22 years, and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for 15. As we travel around the globe, we hear one consistent message from our leaders: “USGBC is leading the way.” LEED, our tool for market transformation, is used in more than 150 countries and has helped create a trillion dollar industry. USGBC and LEED continue to serve as inspiration for many green building councils and green building rating systems around the world.

USGBC has been able to realize this phenomenal success by associating equal emphasis on the development and implementation of LEED. While USGBC focused on the development aspects of LEED, Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) began focusing completely and singularly on LEED implementation in 2008. In the past six years, GBCI has accelerated the growth, adoption, and implementation of LEED.

From my past experience with IBM and Lenovo, I know very well that to stay relevant in today’s global landscape, an organization must focus and scale its core competency. In 2013, our board of directors gave me and Rick Fedrizzi, CEO of GBCI, the mandate to “enhance the performance continuum.” Our response to this mandate was a three-step strategy: (1) Continue to focus on capacity building, (2) Create access to a wide variety of markets, and (3) Create significant value to the community, both perceived and actual.

First, GBCI has developed strategic partnerships with Canada, Korea, and Sweden green building councils, in addition to Green Building Japan. We also have established a global strategic partnership with Bureau Veritas (BV) allowing access to their certification capacity in about 100 countries around the world. The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) will help GBCI in India and the Southeast Asia region. These partnerships will focus on establishing regional and local capacity for certification, credentialing, education, and building performance.

Second, in addition to LEED, GBCI also will become the exclusive certification and credentialing provider for the WELL, Performance Excellence in Electricity Renewal (PEER), Sustainable Sites, and Green Garage Certification standards. Through these engagements, GBCI is able to extend its core competency to new sectors like health, wellness, electricity, microgrids, green parking garages, sustainable land design, and development.

Third, GRESB was added to the GBCI portfolio in September 2014. Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) provides the same kind of transparency into the sustainability performance of global real estate holdings as LEED provides to a building. For the first time, there is an asset to portfolio sustainability measurement solution for the world’s largest asset class.

By integrating the LEED Dynamic Plaque, which delivers a live LEED performance score for a building; and GBIG, which provides insights into a green building; into GRESB, GBCI will establish the next generation platform for demonstrating actual and perceived value of green buildings and communities. This is the future.

Recently, I heard a Michelangelo quote in one of our member meetings: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

I am grateful that USGBC and GBCI are aiming high with our goals for market transformation. “Everyone in a green building within this generation” is our target, and I have no doubt—with our entire green building community leading us from the front—we will achieve our mark.

LEED ON,

Mahesh Ramanujam

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says. “You have to make change happen.” This passion, he says, creates the motivation to stay around on earth to enjoy more of life.

For industry and other communities, success is rooted in changing the organizational culture: opening minds to create an environment that promotes physical and emotional well-being, to safeguard people and the earth itself. Or as Roizen says, “Change the environment, change the person.”

The first testing ground for Roizen’s philosophy is Cleveland Clinic and its 40,000 employees. “As the largest employer in northeast Ohio, we have a responsibility to take a leadership role in making the community more vibrant,” he says, “then to take what we learn with our employee base to other corporations.”

Creating vibrant communities, he says, means conserving and reinvigorating both its human and nonhuman resources. That means assuring that Cleveland Clinic’s building environment is sustainability based. “The clinic has been a leader in recycling, energy conservation, and water conservation,” Roizen says. “Any human could literally eat any part of the building materials.” Every building material and practice, he says, should be sustainable and efficient in its use of energy and water, leaving as small a carbon footprint as possible. “It can be something as routine or small as turning off computer screens at night,” he notes.

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the Supply Chain—accounts for the social impacts of building design and construction with a focus that the LEED rating system has never employed before. The credits earned a Malcolm Lewis IMPACT Award at Greenbuild 2014 last October, and while it’s too early to glimpse their full impact, the energy and enthusiasm for what’s to come is unmistakable, says Susan Kaplan, a co-chair of the Social Equity Working Group. “I’ve been working on LEED committees for more than 10 years, and I’ve never seen so much excitement.”

With more than 14 percent of Americans living below the poverty line during a drawn-out economic recovery, social equity remains a pressing concern, and sound buildings have potential to be forces for good in the communities where they’re assembled. But while LEED never completely overlooked the social impacts of the built environment, it didn’t address them with the same fervor as resource conservation and battling the environmental impacts of climate change. Before getting to work on LEED v4, Brendan Owens, the USGBC’s chief of engineering who helps establish LEED’s overarching system goals, surveyed how well the existing framework addressed social equity issues. “We really came to the conclusion that while we had credits that touched on aspects of each of those things—power-plant siting, energy use, and air quality are all social equity issues—we didn’t really have anything that was specifically focused. We felt there was more we could do to use the rating system to effect change.”

—Susan Kaplan, co-chair of the Social Equity Working Group

With the recent launch of LEED’s Social Equity Pilot Credits, those hypotheticals are beginning to seem a little more real. The set of three one-point credits—Social Equity Within the Community, the Project Team, and the Supply Chain—accounts for the social impacts of building design and construction with a focus that the LEED rating system has never employed before. The credits earned a Malcolm Lewis IMPACT Award at Greenbuild 2014 last October, and while it’s too early to glimpse their full impact, the energy and enthusiasm for what’s to come is unmistakable, says Susan Kaplan, a co-chair of the Social Equity Working Group. “I’ve been working on LEED committees for more than 10 years, and I’ve never seen so much excitement.”

With more than 14 percent of Americans living below the poverty line during a drawn-out economic recovery, social equity remains a pressing concern, and sound buildings have potential to be forces for good in the communities where they’re assembled. But while LEED never completely overlooked the social impacts of the built environment, it didn’t address them with the same fervor as resource conservation and battling the environmental impacts of climate change. Before getting to work on LEED v4, Brendan Owens, the USGBC’s chief of engineering who helps establish LEED’s overarching system goals, surveyed how well the existing framework addressed social equity issues. “We really came to the conclusion that while we had credits that touched on aspects of each of those things—power-plant siting, energy use, and air quality are all social equity issues—we didn’t really have anything that was specifically focused. We felt there was more we could do to use the rating system to effect change.”

Once LEED v4 added enhancing social equity, environmental justice, community health, and quality of life to its seven system goals, says Joel Ann Todd, another co-chair of the Social Equity Working Group, “It gave us a firmer foundation for looking at social equity and other aspects that had been ignored thus far in LEED.” After establishing the Social Equity Working Group, members Kaplan, Todd, Heather Rosenberg, and others spent hundreds of hours speaking with organizations devoted to low-income communities and environmental justice, and thinking about incentives LEED could provide to encourage engineers, architects, and managers to consider social equity in their projects. “For a lot of engineers and architects, this was a completely new world,” says Kaplan, “and it had us really scratching our heads in the best way to get project teams to understand what could be done.”

The result, unveiled at Greenbuild, is three credits added to LEED’s Pilot Credit Library, each devoted to measuring and fostering a piece of the social equity puzzle. The first, Social Equity Within the Project Team, concerns the workers directly involved with design, construction, and ownership of the project. The cornerstones involve paying fair wages—commensurate to specific local or national guidelines, depending on the project’s location—and providing access to training programs designed for workers to leave a project possessing more job skills, life skills, and opportunities than when they arrived.

Social Equity Within the Supply Chain aims to source building materials from suppliers who foster healthy, just environments for the workers who produce them. Among other criteria, the credit requires that suppliers provide safe working conditions, fair wages, and ethical labor practices that avoid using child labor or sweatshop conditions.

Finally, the Social Equity Within the Community credit seeks to connect projects with the folks living in their vicinities—especially those most vulnerable to the impact of the project—and develop strategies for addressing broader social needs. The specifics vary by community, but the approach involves reaching out to religious and civic groups, neighborhood organizations, and other parties to figure out how to engage communities for positive results. “We’re really trying to reward project teams and give them incentives for actively engaging in a conversation with the community that they’re moving into about what a successful project in that community would look like,” Owens says. “It’s about what the neighborhood can do to support the project, and what the project can do to support the neighborhood.”

While several projects have applied for the credits, Chicago’s Town Hall Apartments are likely to be among the first to achieve them. Built within a decommissioned police station, the 79-unit senior housing complex in the heart of the city’s LGBT community helps a demographic facing a lack of affordable housing. “Providing these seniors the ability to age gracefully within their community not only reduces their annual carbon footprint by half, but it also keeps them connected to a healthy, walkable urban lifestyle with access to amenities, such as healthcare and public transportation, that support their daily lives,” says Gail Borthwick, design director for Gensler, the architecture and design firm that helped bring the project to fruition.

Features of the complex’s design include two green roofs to collect stormwater runoff and healthy building materials that avoid toxic off-gassing. “We also were careful to specify a high percentage of our materials from local sources, in part to promote employment growth and product innovations in our larger Chicagoland community,” Borthwick says. During the project’s execution, previous contamination on the site from leaking gas storage drums was restored to safe levels. By repurposing a structure that had been part of the neighborhood for more than a century, the project maintains a sense of authenticity in the broader neighborhood, while simultaneously reducing the raw materials that needed to be processed and shipped to the site. Today, the complex incorporates measures to improve the lives and health of its tenants, like a fitness room and a therapist on staff, as well as access to the services at the adjacent Center on Halsted senior community center.

When Borthwick discovered the Social Equity Pilot Credits at Greenbuild 2014—in the midst of Town Hall Apartments’ LEED review and a few months after tenants began occupying the building—she was immediately interested. “Generally, for LEED credits, you need to develop a strategy to achieve the credit at the beginning of a project, but we had intuitively met all of the criteria they seemed to be looking for,” she says. Now that the credits are within reach, Borthwick is eager to see how the complex could make a broader impact. “The designation would allow us to not only showcase the project, but also bring the issue of the shortage of affordable senior housing and the importance of community in sustainability to the forefront.”

Along similar lines, Kaplan and Todd say there has been a deluge of emails, phone calls, and face-to-face conversations expressing interest and excitement around the Social Equity Pilot Credits. “Everyone has said, ‘This is an idea whose time has come,’” says Todd, adding that the enthusiasm has gone international. “People from developing countries are saying that this is what we need to bring green building to countries where developing social infrastructure is as important as the environmental side of things.”

When LEED was first launched, Owens says, so many projects exerted so much time and energy getting up to speed on the system’s energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality elements. Today, the fact that social equity is now under LEED’s umbrella is a sign of the system’s maturity. “I think [a greater focus on social equity] is a signal that we can deal with a more integrated, holistic approach in developing LEED projects. There’s definitely been a very positive market transformation: We’ve gotten people so familiar with the way the LEED rating system works that now we can have a broader, more interesting conversation that includes other critically important topics.”

And one more thing, Owens says, “This is just the start.”

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It has been 15 years since the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) launched the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system. That first year, 51 projects participated. Today, LEED is the most widely recognized green building program in the world, guiding the design, construction, operations, and maintenance of over 68,000 projects globally.

With the emergence of LEED, USGBC’s mission of market transformation took the first steps toward realization. Credits for single-attribute building products featuring recycled content, certified wood, or regional sourcing prompted manufacturers to not just divulge such characteristics about their products, but also to make the information easy to find. Today, manufacturers of building products routinely offer lists of green attributes through convenient resources.

As the market for green building products continues to evolve and improve, it is clear that LEED must continue to lead if it is to remain relevant. Enter the rating system’s latest update—version 4—where credits have been revised to ensure that they truly add quality to the utility of a project. In the case of building products, this means going beyond crediting single-attributes and toward an integrative life-cycle-based framework by encouraging manufacturers to disclose information about the materials that comprise their products—enabling practitioners to make better decisions.

For well over a decade, Interface—a global manufacture of commercial carpet tile—has offered customers products with single-attribute “green” characteristics, like recycled content. Yet, Mikhail Davis, director of restorative enterprise at Interface, is quick to point out that it was not until the company adopted a life-cycle approach to sustainability that the true impacts of Interface’s products could be understood. In fact, Interface learned that increasing the recycled content could actually increase the environmental footprint of their products if they did it wrong. “Life-cycle assessment gave us a way to model changes to our products in advance to see if they would move the needle in the right direction, rather than creating unintended new impacts, perhaps at a less visible stage of the product life-cycle.” Interface’s early efforts to put recycled content in their products focused on the backing, the component they make themselves. “But a life-cycle assessment showed us that until we got our nylon suppliers on board, we were not going to be able to seriously shrink our impacts,” explains Davis. In 2011, years of supplier engagement bore fruit in the form of the company’s first 100 percent recycled content nylon yarn products, which have a dramatically lower environmental footprint.

The transformative potential of disclosing the life-cycle environmental impacts of building products is not lost on USGBC. One of the ways LEED v4 encourages life-cycle-based decision-making is by crediting projects for using products with fully disclosed ingredients. The most popular reporting tool through which a product’s life-cycle impacts are conveyed is called an Environmental Product Declaration (or EPD). These are comprehensive, internationally harmonized documents through which manufacturers can provide transparency about their products’ ingredients. Think of EPDs like the nutrition facts label on the side of a box of cereal—only for building products. In the case of LEED v4, eligible EPDs must be third-party reviewed and certified.

EPDs are not new. They have been around in Europe since the 1990s. However, only since USGBC took a bold stand on product transparency with LEED v4 has the EPD marketplace blossomed domestically—a testament to LEED’s ability to shift the market. “EPDs have experienced an explosive level of growth. Five years ago, one would be lucky to find 10 or so EPDs, whereas now there are close to 300 to 400 EPDs, when considering all the North American programs,” states Paul M. Firth, product manager at UL Environment, a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL).

—Paul M. Firth

LEED v4 uses EPDs as a tool to promote product transparency, but it also encourages project teams to use the information to make better choices about building products and, consequently, optimize the life-cycle environmental impacts of a project. This is easier said than done in a burgeoning EPD marketplace. The reality is that the market has not quite matured to the point that EPD comparison and product optimization is widely practical. There are a few particular obstacles to greater market uptake. Confusion abounds regarding the usefulness of EPDs; they frequently offer incomparable information; and program operators (the entities that oversee EPD development) are not regulated by consistent standards.

In order to overcome these obstacles and accelerate market transformation, USGBC and UL Environment entered into an exclusive partnership just over a year ago. The partnership is focusing on building materials and product transparency.

The leading program operator in North America, UL Environment is uniquely positioned to facilitate USGBC’s work through LEED. “We decided to partner with UL because they have demonstrated they can produce and deliver high quality EPDs,” says Sara Cederberg, technical director at USGBC. With over 120 years of experience with manufacturers in industries ranging from electronics and consumer products, to the automotive industry, UL understands the challenges that companies face.

Prior to LEED v4, the organic nature of market activity related to building product life-cycle assessment allowed manufacturers to engage substantively in the creation of a broad range of tools with varying degrees of oversight. Transformation and innovation was decentralized. The trade-off was significant confusion and a slow rate of market maturity.

Acknowledging the confusion, one of the first things to be addressed by the USGBC/UL Environment partnership will be EPD delivery. “We’re starting with EPDs because that’s an area where the consistency and credibility are currently a bit problematic,” explains Firth.

UL Environment ensures that all of their EPDs conform to international standards. However, they go a step farther by delivering a concise transparency summary, which essentially serves as an EPD executive summary. The summaries are usually just a few pages, making essential data more palatable to practitioners. Interface—the first North American company to deliver an EPD—has worked closely with UL Environment for a number of years and understands that the market success of EPDs will hinge on content delivery. Davis states, “We worked with UL Environment to develop the transparency summary format because we understood that EPDs will not increase product transparency if the important EPD facts like material ingredients or carbon footprint are too difficult to find.”

Through a joint EPD program, USGBC and UL are endeavoring to bring a clarity commensurate with the UL transparency summary to the EPD marketplace at large. The belief is if project teams are presented with a succinct and coherent EPD format, then a multi-attribute framework for building product choices may be leveraged more successfully.

The real value in promoting transparency is exposing the detrimental environmental impacts over the creation, usage, and disposal (or reuse) of a product. LEED v4 encourages teams to go one step farther by using the information about the impacts in order to optimize product selection. EPDs are useful because they present life-cycle performance information through numerous distinct environmental impact categories. The problem is that the categories—such as acidification of land and water sources, formation of tropospheric ozone, and eutrophication—are somewhat esoteric and measured in complex units that vary considerably based on which method is adopted for the life-cycle assessment (LCA). Firth affirms, “Ultimately, the goal is to be able to use these EPDs to compare products—currently they are not quite ready for this.”

EPDs simply report the results of an LCA. To the extent that LCAs for similar products may be scoped differently, one can look to the “rules” defining their respective assessments—termed product category rules (PCRs). “In order to produce high quality EPDs, we must first provide robust product category rules,” Cederberg explains. There are a handful of PCR guidance documents available internationally, but they are open to a wide range of interpretation.

To establish greater consistency, USGBC and UL Environment are exploring a common PCR development framework that addresses the aspects of inherent variability in PCRs to date. “One of the reasons the USGBC/UL partnership was launched is to try to help narrow in on those aspects of LCAs, PCRs, and EPDs that need to be refined to best provide information necessary to make an informed comparison,” states Firth.

All Type III (third-party verified) EPDs require an independent agency, called a program operator, to ensure that EPDs are developed in accordance with international standards.

According to USGBC’s Cederberg, another important piece of developing a quality EPD is ensuring the program operator is experienced and credible. “Just like we look for credentials for commissioning agents or require labs to be accredited for testing low emitting materials, so too would we want to be sure that there is a level set for program operators.” The USGBC/UL Environment partnership is in the early stages of developing such criteria.

The intended outcomes of the USGBC/UL Environment partnership focus on the coherence, consistency, and technical rigor of the EPD development process. This in turn will accelerate the rate of market transformation and improve the overall quality of transparency in the building product market sector.

Considering past successes in shifting the marketplace, it makes sense that LEED could serve as a vehicle for greater market transformation. Firth suggests, “Manufacturers will be able to develop and certify EPDs with LEED-specific criteria in mind, thus providing their products a differentiator in the marketplace.”

Davis attests that rigorous product transparency holds the promise of incentivizing manufacturers to take on the tough challenges that will really improve their products, rather than doing just enough to make a product claim. “For example, we could claim recycled content using recycled mineral fillers in a product, but EPDs show that only when we replace high-footprint plastics like nylon with recycled or biobased substitutes can we really reduce our impacts.”

The promise of the partnership, however, goes far beyond LEED. Armed with consistent declarations and comparable data, a more sophisticated marketplace may be able to aggregate building product data to achieve environmental building declarations. Practitioners may eventually be able to optimize impact categories through building information modeling (BIM). It is even conceivable that building occupants will someday be able to observe real-time impacts on a dashboard, such as the LEED Dynamic Plaque.

The USGBC/UL Environment partnership sends a clear message to the marketplace—the stakes for product transparency have just been raised.

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Since 2008, U. S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC’s) Texas Gulf Coast Chapter board chair, Sergio Grado, has been promoting Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Homes in Houston. Grado, owner of GradCo Structures and Homes—a construction company specializing in green building—has made it his mission to push LEED certification toward the mainstream. He feels most green efforts are made in either low-income sectors or among affluent homeowners. According to Grado, multifamily, section eight, or million-plus-dollar homes are more likely to be LEED certified than are those belonging to the middle class. “That’s where the bulk of the activity is being seen right now,” notes Grado. The other arm of the effort is in the military, which is building LEED-certified army barracks and homes.

But he and board members Paul Vanderwal and Michael Martin, among others, are working to change that. “Here in Houston, we are trying to spotlight those builders who have taken it upon themselves to [construct] super energy-efficient homes,” he explains. In 2010, Grado joined forces with Vanderwal, a local architect focused on sustainability, and Martin, partner of law firm Martin & Stillwell, LLP, to organize the Piney Woods branch of the chapter. “We really need to get more of the mainstream builders involved in LEED for Homes, and get them to start including it in their marketing efforts,” says Grado.

Toward that end, the branch aims to build a home that will inspire contractors and homeowners to go green. The goal is to have people understand that LEED for Homes is highly beneficial and affordable. When Roger Platt, president of USGBC, came on board in October 2014, Grado spoke with him about his mission in Houston. “There are inroads we are trying to make,” he says. “Our chapter’s Piney Woods branch is doing a project in partnership with New Caney High School.” Modeled after a shipping container home designed by Costa Rican architect Benjamin Garcia Saxe, they plan to build a LEED-certified demonstration home. Grado purchased the rights to the design, but finding a place to locate it proved challenging. They wanted an easily accessible, highly visible locale that residents would readily visit. They looked high and low, to no avail. “We even tried putting it in a park so people would come out and see it,” notes Grado.

Ultimately, the vocational high school in New Caney agreed to host it on their property. Students from the welding and carpentry training programs will work alongside volunteer architects and contractors focused on sustainability. The project will be a real grassroots undertaking—one with regional reach. “The school will give us a lot of exposure—between students, parents, and media,” says Grado, who really values the public venue.

When completed, the home will feature energy efficiency, recycling, water management, and green products. Constructed from two 40-foot cube shipping containers, it will function “completely off the grid,” with solar panels, a composting toilet, a rainwater capture system, and a thermal dynamic water heater; the Piney Woods branch will seek LEED certification for the project. “Whether it will be Gold or Platinum is still unknown because it is a work in progress right now,” notes Grado.

His hope is that the model will influence Montgomery County community members to make their own homes green. He also hopes nonprofit organizations addressing the demand for affordable housing will look to it as an example of what can be built. “I know that if we get this [demonstration home] built, it would really send a message that LEED for Homes can be affordable,” says Grado. The home will be worth $50,000, at base price.

The city of Houston and the Houston independent school district have shown a lot of interest in the project. Other schools have even approached Grado to ask if similar efforts could be made on their properties. “The great thing about that is they actually have the money to pay for it,” says Grado. That, in part, is what the city likes about the proposal. In fact, officials have given thought to the idea of LEED homes being developed in areas where homes under $80,000 are desperately needed. The board even spoke at length with a resident who owned a condemned property; they suggested the house be demolished and replaced with a shipping container home. He entertained the idea. “There’s a lot of interest there, we just don’t have the showcase model yet,” says Grado. “If we can [build it] and attach LEED for Homes to it, then we can make some progress.”

That’s why the New Caney project is so important—when people come through the house with questions, they will have answers. They will be in a position to refer builders, break down costs, discuss requirements, and explain codes. For Grado, that’s the real value of the home—it will be a platform for promoting green building principles among the mainstream populace.

The LEED for Homes mission truly takes root in places where people constantly champion the effort. Grado is one of Houston’s greatest champions. At this point, he’d like to know who else is ready to take up the bullhorn. “We’re committed, but in order to really get the message out there, it’s got to get into the mainstream.”

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Whole Trees Architecture & Structures

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WholeTrees uses whole diameter tree trunks and unwanted branched timbers that would otherwise be removed from routine forest thinning (such as fallen or diseased trees) to create structural building solutions. What results is round-timber: a sustainable, cost-effective alternative to steel, concrete and heavy timber products. Round-timber uses less than one-fifth of the energy required to make conventional lumber. It’s 50 percent stronger in bending strength than comparably sized squared timbers and typically costs less to install than other materials and is more light weight, reducing the need for foundation capacity. Round-timber helps earn points in green building rating systems, including up to 10 LEED points (v 4.0), and comply with international and state building codes. For more information on using WholeTrees products, visit www.wholetrees.com or call 608/310-5282.

Whole Trees LLC
www.wholetrees.com

Solarban® z75

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Solarban® z75 glass provides a steel-blue/gray appearance with an exceptional 0.24 SHGC in a standard one-inch IGU. Similar in appearance to Solarban z50 glass, the coating on Solarban z75 glass provides an added level of solar performance, giving architects two options for neutral cool-gray glass that is optimized to local climate and building code demands. With VLT of 48 percent, Solarban z75 glass offers superior daylighting to support sustainable design. Low reflectance levels deliver clear, natural outdoor views and enable Solarban z75 glass to harmonize well with other clear, color-neutral glasses such as Solarban 67 and Solarban R100 glasses.

PPG IdeaScapes
www.ppgideascapes.com

Custom-designed Solar Systems

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Astrum Solar, a Direct Energy® company, is a leading national full-service solar provider. Astrum Solar’s mission is to spread solar power to the rooftops of America and to ensure that its customers get the most out of their solar panels: the most energy generated, the most electricity savings, the most beneficial environmental impact, and the most joy each time they see a sunny day. We do solar right. Astrum Solar is a BBB Accredited business with an A+ rating, serving homeowners and businesses in AZ, CA, CT, DE, MD, MA, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, VA, and D.C.

Astrum Solar
www.astrumsolar.com

Collins Pine FreeForm® MR50 Particleboard

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Kitchens, baths and other environments with high humidity and incidental moisture are no match for FreeForm MR50, the first particleboard to attain the ANSI’s highest standard for moisture-resistance.

• CARB Exempt
• NAF-no added formaldehyde
• Declare Product
• FSC®-certified particleboard
• High Pine Content
• 100% post-industrial recycled/
  recovered content

Photo: Gap office building in San Bruno, California

Collins
www.collinsco.com

Harmony® Interior Acrylic Latex Paint

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Harmony Paint’s enhanced formula features Formaldehyde Reducing Technology to promote better indoor air quality. Harmony Paint also delivers great hide and a durable finish that withstand frequent washings. This zero VOC formula meets the most stringent VOC regulations and has achieved GREENGUARD Gold Certification satisfying LEED(R) V4 criteria. Harmony’s Odor and Formaldehyde Reducing Technology works best when more surface area is painted.

Sherwin-Williams
www.sherwin-williams.com

Dow Powerhouse™ Solar Shingle

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The DOW POWERHOUSE™ Solar Shingle is a solar roofing product, developed to combine the benefits of solar technology with the durability and performance of traditional roofing materials. It is designed to install, look and function in a way that has never been done before. POWERHOUSE is reinventing the roof with a new generation of homeowners looking for a smart, renewable way to power their homes without compromising the home’s aesthetics. Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) products from Dow Solar are one of the many innovations from Dow establishing the Company on the forefront of alternative energy solutions.

The Dow Chemical Company
www.dowpowerhouse.com

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