Environment
“… ‘Credible scientists give us 10 years to be well on our way toward global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.’ The urgency of the emissions reduction adds significance to the role of embodied impacts. Most current sustainability thinking is informed by the fact that roughly 20 percent of a building’s total environmental impacts are embodied in the materials, with the remaining 80 percent due to operations (Figure 1). However, a frequently overlooked element is that the embodied impacts occur today, while the operations impacts occur over the building’s lifetime. Consider a building built today with a 50 year design life. The solid lines in Figure 2 show that, for at least the first 10 years, the majority of the environmental impacts are due to those embodied in the building, not operations. The dashed lines represent a more energy efficient building, where 60 percent of the total impacts are due to operations; in this case it takes over 30 years for the operations impacts to overtake the embodied impacts.”
Figure 2: Embodied vs. Operations impacts over time.
Excerpt from Structure Magazine, June 2009. Used by permission.
Sustainability: Thinking Beyond the Checklist
Technical
The following information provides the documentation necessary for your LEED project.
CalStar LEED Calculator
Our process for making fly ash into bricks binds the materials within a strong crystalline matrix that holds even if exposed to the intense acids found in landfills. Test results on our products from respected third-party laboratories have been reviewed and analyzed by Gradient, a respected environmental consultancy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They find that “the presence of coal fly ash metals in newly manufactured CalStar bricks is not expected to result in any exposures of health concern.
View the Gradient Memorandum