Know the Tools

To Understand the Holistic Impact of Products, Including Carbon

A Life Cycle Assessment of all the environmental impacts of any project, product, process, or organization. LCAs assess all the impacts from “Cradle to Grave,” which means they cover everything from the origin of materials to the end of its useful life.

• Use AIA’s Architecture and Design Materials Pledge to understand how materials contribute to five types of impact, including climate health.
• Use mindful MATERIALS resources to learn how to consider products using these impact areas.
• Use EC3 to compare embodied carbon emissions of products within certain categories and calculate their impact on your project.
• CLF 2023 Material Baselines provide benchmarks for global warming potential for dry wall, ceiling tiles, and flooring. Other materials will be addressed over time. Use these to benchmark the carbon emissions of your selected products.

To Find Low-Carbon Products and Materials

• Sample sustainable products using the filters on Material Bank, then receive those samples and return them with carbon neutral shipping.
• To search products by different types of impact, including climate health, use Ecomedes.
• The DPR Product Directory, powered by Ecomedes, provides a wide selection of sustainable products across categories.
• BIFMA’s LEVEL Directory offers a way to filter furniture by low-emitting options, recycled content, biobased materials, and other criteria.
• Mindclick’s Design for Health Vendor Library offers assessments of a wide range of interior design products across many different criteria. 

To Assess the Embodied Carbon of your Projects

• Start by collecting EPDs from mindful MATERIALS or the Sustainable Minds Transparency Catalog.
• Use Architecture 2030’s EPD Quicksheet to identify the most relevant data from every EPD.
• For tenant improvement projects, you can use the CLF TI LCA Calculator.
• For early-stage decision making on projects, use EPIC.
• For Embodied Carbon estimates, use Cove.Tool.
• For Whole Building Life Cycle Assessments, use Tally or OneClickLCA.