Professor Contreras in Nature Climate Change - Higher standards for sustainable building materials
Jorge L. Contreras, Meghan Lewis and Hannah Rae Roth
Nature Climate Change 2, 62–64 (2012) doi:10.1038/nclimate1383 Published online 27 January 2012
Excerpt: The US Green Building Council, which develops and administers the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, has certified nearly 5,000 green buildings since 2000. US state governments and federal agencies have adopted policies to make their construction and building projects environmentally sustainable. But despite such programmes, quantifying and evaluating the sustainability of building materials has proved difficult. There is little coherence in the measurement and assessment of sustainability attributes, resulting in competing, inconsistent and often imprecise eco-labels, standards and certifications. This discord has led to confusion among consumers and commercial purchasers alike, as well as inconsistent sustainability criteria in building certification programmes.
