Perspectives on greener product development and manufacturing from Sustainable Minds, our partners, customers and contributors.

Innovation

Transparency is the New Green in Product Selection and Specification Part 12: CIMA–CIMAC deliver the first industry EPD for Loose-Fill Cellulose Insulation, a carbon-storing material

By Sustainable Minds on January 22, 2020

Recorded Mon, Jan 20, 2–3pm ET | 11–12pm PT

Welcome to our webcast series featuring manufacturers making credibly greener and healthier products. Learn how they are working to understand and improve the environmental performance and material health of their products.

Transparency is the New Green in Product Selection and Specification: Introducing Transparency Catalog / EC3 tool integration and NEW lower cost, product and facility-specific EPDs

By Sustainable Minds on December 22, 2019

recorded Thu, Dec 12, 12–1pm ET | 9am PT

AECOs: The Transparency Catalog now includes EC3 tool results making it super easy to find lower embodied carbon products in every MasterFormat® section in 1 click.

Find all EPDs from a manufacturer with Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) tool results. Results link directly to the EC3 tool to enable comparisons within the category or to start modeling a project. Connecting the last mile: in the EC3 tool, manufacturer and EPD pages link to their Transparency Catalog listing for product and contact information to help get the product into the specification.

The Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator Tool methodology: Not just what, but why? Not just how, but how big can the impact be?

By Sustainable Minds on November 18, 2019

The Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) tool methodology takes several bold steps to use what program operators, LCA providers and manufacturers have worked very hard to produce. Product category rules (PCRs) using different parameters to define product categories or groups; inconsistent content and data in an environmental product declaration (EPD), and PDF delivery in non-standardized layouts all make it very complicated to machine read and digitize to put today’s available data to use. Notwithstanding, this methodology delivers, for the first time, a scalable way to compare a single product’s embodied carbon impacts to all other similar products in a category.

Join us to meet experts on embodied carbon & EPDs @ our Greenbuild booth talks

By Sustainable Minds on November 18, 2019

We’re excited to be announcing several important new partners. Sign up for booth talks.

Sustainable Minds offers the opportunity for demos and discussion F2F with the people doing the work! If you're in Atlanta, come to Booth #1713 to learn from our partners.
Check out the schedule and RSVP >

Transparency is the New Green in Product Selection and Specification Part 11: Sloan & Hunter Panels

By Sustainable Minds on September 29, 2019

Recorded Thu, Sep 26, 2–3pm ET

Welcome to our webcast series featuring manufacturers making credibly greener and healthier products. Learn how they are working to understand and improve the environmental performance and material health of their products.

Transparency is the New Green in Product Selection and Specification: Using EPDs to create actionable information about embodied carbon in construction

By Sustainable Minds on September 13, 2019

Recorded Tue, Sep 10, 12–1pm ET

Using EPDs to make decisions about which products actually have better environmental performance isn't simple. Introducing the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (“EC3”) tool.

The EC3 tool is a collaborative, open-source industry-led sustainability platform that helps professionals make better decisions about embodied carbon in construction, and enables supply chain accountability. The EC3 tool is part of an integrated ecosystem of data, tools and knowledge that empowers, informs and inspires low carbon solutions. The EC3 tool is set for formal release in the fall of 2019.

Sustainable Minds Announces Transparency Catalog v2.1: Now with all Health Product Declarations® (HPD) AND all environmental product declarations (EPD) for building products in North America, with powerful MasterFormat® filtering

By Sustainable Minds on August 13, 2019

HPDs and EPDs increasingly becoming specification requirements for greener and healthier high-performance buildings

Cambridge, MA, Aug 13, 2019 – Sustainable Minds today announced the availability of the Transparency Catalog v2.1, continuing the company’s commitment to deliver simple, easy to use and powerful tools. With this release, architecture, engineering, construction professionals and owners (AECOs) can now find all manufacturers and the published Health Product Declarations® (HPDs) for their products in each CSI MasterFormat® division and section – in 1 click.

The Transparency Catalog now includes access to all v2.0, 2.1 and 2.1.1 HPDs — a total of 3,175 from 332 manufacturers in 18 MasterFormat (MF) divisions adding ~195 more sections to the Catalog across divisions 03 Concrete, 04 Masonry, 07 Thermal and Moisture Protection, 09 Finishes and 12 Furnishings.

Innovating a Greener Future: Radical Plastics & Techstyle Materials

By Sustainable Minds on May 17, 2019

Recorded Tue, Apr 30, 11–12pm ET

The Cleantech Open runs the world’s largest clean technology accelerator program. Meet 2018 National Winner, Radical Plastics and Northeast Finalist, Techstyle Materials.

Sustainable Minds is proud to be a national in-kind sponsor, offering a free subscription to our SM Eco-concept + LCA software to the 2018 CTO Cohort to improve their products' environmental performance by integrating life cycle thinking and LCA into their product development processes.

Sustainable Minds Announces Transparency Catalog v2.0: Powerful MasterFormat® Filtering and Every Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) in North America

By Sustainable Minds on January 23, 2019

The first cloud-based productivity solution for Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Owners (AECOs) to make it super easy to find & specify greener and healthier products for high-performance buildings — and reward manufacturers for making them.

Cambridge, MA — January 23, 2019 — Sustainable Minds® (SM), recognized leaders in customer-centered product sustainability cloud solutions, today announced the availability of the Transparency Catalog v2.0, continuing the company’s commitment to deliver simple, easy to use and powerful tools. Flexible MasterFormat® number filtering, aligned with MasterSpec® sections, enables AECOs to find exactly the brands, products and transparency disclosures, in each division and section, to meet project and green building rating system requirements. This makes it possible to do in minutes what today takes weeks, or wouldn’t even be possible to do at all.

WEBINAR: GreenCE, Elixir Environmental, Sustainable Minds: Product Transparency and Specification – A Guide

By Sustainable Minds on September 10, 2018

Recorded Mon, Sep 10, 2018 12 – 12:30pm EDT
Presenters: Terry Swack, CEO, Sustainable Minds
Tara Blank, Founder, Elixir Environmental

View the recording >

Environmental impact and material health are performance criteria, now part of ‘high performance’ building. Specification decisions for green building projects are increasingly being made based on whether or not products have transparency documentation.