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

Marketing

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.

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Certifications & labeling, Innovation, Marketing, Materials & processes, Standards & regulations, Transparency is the New Green, Webcast

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.

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Certifications & labeling, Designers, Green Economy, Innovation, Life cycle assessment, Manufacturing, Marketing, Materials & processes, Packaging, Products, Standards & regulations, Strategies, Supply chain

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 >

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Certifications & labeling, Designers, Green Economy, Innovation, Life cycle assessment, Manufacturing, Marketing, Materials & processes, Packaging, Product service systems, Products, Software & systems, Standards & regulations, Strategies, Supply chain

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.

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Certifications & labeling, Innovation, Manufacturing, Marketing, Materials & processes, Transparency is the New Green, Webcast

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.

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Certifications & labeling, Green Economy, In the press, Innovation, Life cycle assessment, Manufacturing, Marketing, Materials & processes, Standards & regulations

Transparency is the New Green In Product Selection and Specification: Everything you always wanted to know about EPDs – but were afraid to ask.

By Sustainable Minds on November 13, 2018

Recorded Wed, Nov 7 | 11am ET

Recorded Wed, Nov 20 | 11am ET

Are you able to use EPDs to make informed decisions about which products actually have better environmental performance?
If you answered “not really,” it’s not you, it’s us.

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Certifications & labeling, Marketing, Transparency is the New Green, Webcast

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

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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.

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Certifications & labeling, Innovation, Marketing, Standards & regulations, Transparency is the New Green, Webcast

Transparency is the New Green In Product Selection and Specification: Sales enablement solutions for today's urgent product transparency challenges

By Sustainable Minds on August 21, 2018

Recorded Thurs, Aug 16 | 2pm ET, 11am PT

As you likely know, the challenges facing the mainstreaming of product transparency are complex. As such, solutions must be designed from a deep understanding of the entire process – disclosure creation, sales, marketing and specification – and for all users in the process.

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Certifications & labeling, Green Economy, Life cycle assessment, Manufacturing, Marketing, Transparency is the New Green, Webcast

We are extremely proud to be a 2018 Cleantech Open national sponsor.

By Sustainable Minds on July 16, 2018

As an in-kind sponsor, Sustainable Minds is offering a free 6-month subscription to its SM Eco-concept + LCA software for all members of the 2018 CTO cohort.

https://cleantechopen.org/en/page/national-sponsors-en

We kicked things off with the webinar: “Hands-on Training in Life Cycle Thinking & LCA for Cleantech Entrepreneurs.” The webinar provided an introduction to life cycle thinking and LCA and how to use the software in early stage product development to make informed trade-off decisions that can dramatically reduce impacts and drive innovation — in products, business models and systems.

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Certifications & labeling, Designers, Electronics, Green Economy, In the press, Innovation, Life cycle assessment, Manufacturing, Marketing, Materials & processes, Packaging, Product service systems, Products, SM in education, Software & systems, Standards & regulations, Strategies, Supply chain, Sustainability paradox, Sustainable Europe, Sustainable interaction design, Teamwork, Webcast

Ron Blank & Associates and Sustainable Minds Announce Collaboration to Increase Specifications of High-Performance Products

By Sustainable Minds on June 18, 2018

This strategic partnership will help design professionals find the best products and benefit building product manufacturers through increased access to the design community.

San Antonio, TX and Cambridge, MA, June 19, 2018 – Ron Blank & Associates, GreenCE, and Sustainable Minds® (SM), both with a track record in innovation and education, are collaborating to help building product manufacturers increase specifications of their sustainable building products. This comprehensive program allows manufacturers to select the offerings they need to move successfully through the process of creating product transparency disclosures, through marketing those products to get selected and specified — with education and training offerings in every phase. The strategic partnership will capitalize on both company’s significant strengths.

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Green Economy, In the press, Innovation, Marketing, Strategies, Teamwork, Transparency is the New Green