This is Non-Toxic Environments, Episode 106, Green Building Certifications. Green Building, Eco-Friendly, Environmentally Preferred, Zero VOC. Terms we see and hear every day but to be really know what they mean. Welcome to Non-Toxic Environments.
I'm Andy Pace, an international expert in home health and wellness, and this program is here to help you in your quest to build, remodel, or just live in a healthy home. So if you suffer from allergies, asthma, chemical sensitivities, or just desire to avoid these issues for yourself or your family, this program is for you. Each week we'll discuss hot topics, delve into a component of home building, and even bring an expert guest who can answer your questions and allow you to literally breathe a sigh of relief. And welcome back to Non-Toxic Environments.
This is Andy Pace, and once again I'm here with Jay Watts. Today we're going to be talking about Green Building Standards. Oh my, what a subject. With all the different certification programs out there, Andy, it's sure our listeners are daunted by the task of trying to filter and understand it.
I know you have a good understanding, so why don't you go ahead and start educating us? Sure, so let me just give you a brief history of things here with the degree of Green Building Standards. In the Non-Toxic Environments, I started in this building industry in the Green Building and Healthy Building Industry back in the early 90s. And in 1992, 1993, when I started selling healthy building materials, you know, we didn't use the term green.
I'll be honest, back then, the word green was still just a color. It wasn't a way of life the way it is now. But we used phrases like common sense building materials, healthy building materials. And in the mid 90s, when building rating systems really started coming about, the discussion around the world started changing from what we'd call common sense or healthy to this term green building.
And really the first one that I know of that made an impact was the Energy Star program that was started by the EPA and the Department of Energy here in the US. And the Energy Star program, you know, back then it was revolutionary. I'll be honest with you. It was amazing to find a home that was built with what's called Energy Stars Certified Appliances and Heated Inventilating Equipment, Windows, Doors, you name it.
And today, it's almost the baseline. If you're a home builder, if you don't have at least that Energy Star stamp of approval, you know, most folks don't even consider you a quality home builder. Energy Star certification for homes, it really covers things like your doors and windows, the ceiling of that, the components like lighting efficiency, insulation, appliances, I mean, every year since then, they get a little bit stricter to make it a little bit challenging for builders. But it's certainly obtainable.
And again, it's a baseline. It's well woven into the mentality now of construction, just partly because it's been around so long now. And as you've said, people just kind of accept it as the baseline. The second program and also probably the most confusing is the LEED program, L-E-E-D.
Now I don't want to talk down to folks that know this very well, but I think there's a need to be very specific on what this program is. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. That's it. There's no word in there about leadership in healthy home construction.
It's all about energy efficiency, Jay. And I know that you, more than anybody else that I know, probably get calls on a regular basis from consumers all over the world saying, I want to use your, let's say, your paint product. Is it LEED certified? And how do you react to that?
It comes from architects too. I think the US Green Building Council has placed a strong focus, all over the focus on the architectural world. So a lot of the architects that are calling are asking about LEED. They're building a project and they want to go apply to the LEED standard and there's different levels of LEED.
There's platinum and gold and all the different ones that they have there. And you can subscribe to one of those. Actually, honestly, it's quite expensive to do it. But when people call and ask about the LEED certification, I think it's probably a little bit off-mark.
And what I mean by that is when any consumer or architect or that matter calls to a company, their focus I think is product specific. So does it meet the LEED standard? Well, I've always said we probably surpassed the LEED standard. And if you were to look at how the LEED quantifies things and you see where their quantification starts with health being at least in the earlier iterations, I think LEED's in version 4 now, aren't they?
LEED 4. So the whole idea where health fit into the metric is moved up. But I always fall back in the notion that despite whatever certification or programs people are using to analyze products, our idea has been to work in the real world with real people and with real challenges and say, how do we make this work for them? It goes back to the whole idea of working with the canaries in the coal mine, which people have heard me say before.
That's how I reference it. I really don't get caught up in kind of, are you LEED certified? I almost say to me, like I said, we're beyond LEED. We're trying to set a higher standard than the LEED standard.
Thankfully, there's a LEED standard there. So these builders have some sense of where to go. But at the same time, I ask the question, is it enough? And I think you and I both think not yet.
Right. Well, there's two good points there, Jay. First is, as you say, it's a good start. I've said that for a very long time.
I personally have been on the board of directors of the Wisconsin affiliate of the USGBC. A couple of times. And I've always said, it's a good start for our industry. It doesn't nearly go far enough.
But here's the other distinction. And I asked you this specifically because of when consumers call and ask if a product is LEED certified, that's actually, it's kind of a trick question, right? Because USGBC, the LEED program, they don't certify products. They certify buildings.
But the industry is full of suppliers and contractors that don't really know that. So they'll say, they'll promote their products as being LEED certified. What they really mean is that the product is approved for use in a LEED certified building. And that's a big distinction because there are thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of products that are certified for use in a LEED building.
It doesn't mean you should use them. It really comes down to, again, what that degree of green is it trying to achieve. The other thing is that, as you alluded to before, even with the latest iteration of the LEED program, they do have more components dealing with human health issues. Unfortunately, they don't require third party certification.
The manufacturers basically, giving information that they want you to have, they'll even do what are called health product declarations to break apart all the different components of the materials, but they don't have to be 100% honest. They can just leave out things that they don't want to tell you. So, again, it's a good start. It's not perfect.
I'll say this. There is no perfect construction method. There's no perfect certification system or even product. Those who have known me for years, I like to use the phrase that if you're trying to strive for perfection, you're going to either drive yourself to the poor house or the not house.
You can want them to because it's impossible to achieve perfection. Yeah. I just want to interject here because you're making me think that, as I was saying earlier, as a product manufacturer, I think more often this is going to shift our discussion here a little bit, but what people are asking is, are you green guard certified? Are you using the Declare program?
Are you scientific certification system certified? It becomes a very product focused discussion. Kind of dip into that right now and just talk about it because I think this maybe is going to cut to the chase of what people are really going to want to understand. What about those other product certification protocols?
When consumers are asking about products being lead certified, really what they're probably trying to ask is, have the products been tested by a third party organization like scientific certification systems, green guard, green seal, the Algian Asthma Foundation, Carbon Rug Institute, there is a variety of these third party certifiers that we like to affectionately call them the gatekeepers. The third party certifiers that basically say thumbs up or thumbs down, they meet a certain set of criteria. Now, I'll put some more information on the blog post so you can read about those different certifications. When this podcast comes out, you can refer to the blog and look at all of the different building certifications we talked about today as well as the third party certifiers.
But you have a lot of experience working with one in particular scientific certification systems and then also just the green guard certification and the green seal certification. The gold standard of a paint manufacturer for years. And basically what that said was that a manufacturer had to have a reduction or elimination of volatile organic compounds. And that's it.
And so it gets back to what are the certifications actually trying to show you and achieve? And it doesn't really relate to human health concerns or is it just sort of a rehashing of the same metrics that don't really pertain to human health, but it's the only metric we got and it's the only one that we can actually test for. So we're going to use that as a certification. The scientific certification systems, as I understand it, was actually probably a little more diligent in doing the analysis.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they were doing actual chamber testing. Companies would submit their products for a chamber test analysis and then according to how the review standards were established, scientific certifications would make an award to that particular company. They're indoor air advantage gold being the highest standard you could achieve. Right.
And AFM safe coat really was the pioneer with that. I mean, before you all started working with scientific certifications systems, they had no standard for paint. And you know, the problem with a certification, unfortunately, is you get lumped in with everybody else who's got that certification. And what I mean by that is if there are 50 manufacturers of paint that are all green guard, green CLSC certified, well, even though the safe coat product is actually free of health hazards, toxins, HAPs, doctor recommended, so on and so forth, people just look at the certification and go, oh, okay, well, you're certified too.
So I guess it's all the same. So I know that was a very challenging situation for AFM because they didn't want to get certified just like everybody else because unfortunately, then people then look at everything the same. And so it was very telling that SCS actually had to create a standard just for AFM because of the higher levels and the health and safety of the product. Now, as of today, most of these paint certifications now do chamber testing.
They do some longer cure tests after two weeks, four weeks. Now the detail of that we can probably get into in a quick take down the road, but what they don't test for are chemical off-gassing at the minimum levels. And so while that's important to point out, most people don't necessarily notice those types of chemical off-gassing levels, people with chemical sensitivity, people with depressed immune systems, they can. And why this is very important that there's a differentiation between materials.
Now I hope that sort of touches on the third-party certification for product. And again, this pertains to third-party certification of building systems like lead and energy star. And the third one I want to talk about is the national home building standards, what's called the National Green Building Standard. It's actually a standard that was adopted, I would say actually created by the NEHB, which is the National Association of Home Builders.
Now where this one has its, you know, it's positive, is that the National Home Builders Association actually put their stamp approval on it. And home builders are a little bit slower to adopt regulations and standards unless it's a life safety issue, they jump right on it. But they're slower to adopt because of the financial impact that the industry has when you throw a bunch of regulations on a new home construction and it hasn't been proven yet. So they were slower to adopt these and now that they actually started doing this back in the mid-2000s and they've had several iterations of the Green Building Standards.
But keep in mind it's still builders. You know, there's still kind of, you know, lack of a better say if the inmates running the asylum, right? These are the builders creating their own standards to achieve and the third-party certification is the home builders themselves. Yes, and you know, in any industry that's entrenched in the history of the way they've always done things, it's a little bit of a slower path because of the resistance they may feel because they've done something in a certain way for a long, long time successfully.
We touched on that when we did our earlier podcast on working with contractors and I think at the higher level like in a NHB, I think there's a similar kind of mindset. So it takes time for adoption but I think it's getting better all the time. It is. And so I do believe that this is going to be even in the future, the program that probably will be more widely accepted.
And again, it's a great start. They are adopting new technologies quicker these days. So I do see some great potential there. You know, this particular standard has the same sort of point value procedure as the USGBC's lead program where they give you different points for site development, resource efficiency, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, so on and so forth.
So it says that same type of scoring tool system. Do you think that, I've thought about this often, do you think that actual building code requirements will start to incorporate some of these ideas where you'll have to, you won't be able to get a permit unless you do certain things? Yes. And I think it's happening at the state levels where states are adopting the university universal building code and other building codes from a life safety issue, fire safety issue and energy efficiency.
You know, up here in the upper Midwest, states like Wisconsin and Minnesota have been kind of leading the way nationally because of the environment that we're in, where it's 20 below zero in the middle of winter. And then, you know, 95 degrees with 80% relative humidity in the summer, the building system needs to be able to react to that and hold up to all those highs and lows and still maintain efficiencies. So building code is starting to change across the country to reflect technology improvements as well as necessary changes in our methods of construction that actually make a difference not only from energy efficiency but ultimately from the health of the occupants. Now, we'll talk about that a little bit with the building biology method.
I was going to ask you about that. Yeah. So a couple others I want to touch on that aren't as well known. One is the passive house standards.
The passive house standard was developed in Germany back in the early 90s as well. You can see a lot of this brain building movement started about the same time. The passive house standard is all about energy efficiency. Without a doubt, energy efficiency.
I used to tell clients who are interested in passive house that if a home was built to passive house standards, a 2000 square foot home could be heated with a hairdryer, which is amazing. So what we're doing is we're putting a lot of effort into the engineering and construction of the actual wall assembly. We're putting a lot of focus on doors and windows because let's face it, the most efficient window is no window at all because the last has such a low insulation value and our value compared to a wall assembly. So you're putting a lot of money into making sure the windows are energy efficient, the doors are energy efficient.
You eliminate the need for these very expensive high profile alternative energy sources. Right now with green building across the country, folks like to look at things like solar power, geothermal systems, which they're all very efficient, but they're a very expensive starting point to get into it. And if you build a home that requires a $55,000 or $60,000 geothermal system, it could take decades for you to actually get a payback on that before it becomes worthwhile with a passive house project. You're really taking that $50,000 worth of HVAC upgrades and you're just making a, you're using that money for better wall assembly, better windows and you could use the smallest HVAC system out there to heat and cool the entire home.
Of course, what we worry about when we went with all of this focus on energy efficiency and closing things up, guess what that leads to? You've got a box that's not, the air quality in there can be very challenged because there's no place for anything to go or anywhere to go. So we deal with that with polluted homes, indoor air pollution. And we're talking about that being potentially much more damaging in outdoor air pollution.
And I think this reminds me of that story about the EPA building that was built some years ago and they followed all of the energy ideas to the nth degree and once the occupants got back in there and there was no where for the bad air to go, all these people started having reactions to the poor indoor air quality and they had to basically shut the building down for a while to make the correction necessary so those occupants could get back in there. So I think there's a flip side, people think, oh yeah, energy efficiency, that's excellent, yeah, we want to save money on that and it makes a good sense just on a planetary scale. But then we start to look more closely at the ramifications of what it can do to the indoor air quality and we have to back up a little bit, okay, we got to balance this out in a meaningful way. That's a fantastic point because ever since homes started to be built tighter, you know, back in the 70s and 80s, what we've been doing is basically forcing homeowners to live in a toxic box.
So a healthy home has all of these attributes to it, you know, toxin free materials, fantastic air circulation and purification systems. A healthy home has to have many, many air exchanges in the home per day, you know, bringing fresh air in, expelling, stale air out, homes being built today without having some method of bringing that fresh air can't rely on leakage through doors and windows because the homes are being tightened up so greatly in order to achieve these energy-starring lead certifications that they forget about the occupants, they forget about, hey, people actually need to breathe, you know, that old adage that a home needs to breathe is actually kind of false, the house could care less but the occupants need to breathe. So you are right, you know, people are striving for these energy efficient, environmentally friendly buildings and forgetting that, oh yeah, people actually need to live inside of here. So, you know, we always advocate for purification for heat exchange systems, so on and so forth in order to get that pure air back into the house.
And so, organizations like Living Building Challenge in their program, they have actually looked at that and they are looking at everything as it relates to the built environment, of course the site and water use and energy use, but now they are also looking at healthy documents. Now, Living Building Challenge, in my opinion, is really the first certification program that made human health really a top line issue for its users. Now, the downside to Living Building Challenge, very difficult to get approvals, very difficult from financial standpoints is a very expensive process. And the reason for that is, well, it is a high level, it is trying to achieve what no other building standard has achieved before, all the way down to, you know, the miniscule ingredients used in the products.
And so, I mentioned this system, not because it is widely used and widely accepted, but because when we say that other systems are a good start, well, now this has answered that challenge to being now the next iteration. I think that Living Building Challenge has the potential to push all the other standards to a higher level. I agree with that. I am looking at their website right now.
And they have, their hierarchy starts with place, so this would be footprint, you know, limited growth, urban agriculture, habitat impact. Next under that is water, then energy, and then health, and I think it is interesting, health and happiness is part of their matrix, health and happiness. Fabulous. And that includes a healthy interior environment and biofilic.
We are going to kind of get into that with biobiology, but the bio, maybe it is an introduction to the biobiology. And the biofilic environment is a part of the health and happiness metric. So, why don't you talk about biobiology right now since I brought it up? The last sort of building standard I want to talk about, and certainly not the least, it is actually not even a building standard.
It is actually a set of guidelines. As you may know, I sit on the board of directors of an organization called the International Institute for Building Biology and Ecology. Building Biologists, or Biobiology, is a study of the built environment and how humans actually relate and live within the built environment. And there are certified building biologists all over North America, all over the world.
These are inter-air quality scientists and specialists to start with, and then they go through a series of seminars, hands-on ultra-high level testing to become certified building biologists. And in the future, we will actually talk to a couple and listen to what is all involved in becoming a biobiology expert. But the International Institute for Building Biology and Ecology has come out with what they call their 25 principles of biobiology. Now these principles were developed by some fairly well-known people in our industry.
Just like on Paula Baker-Laport, who is just an absolute expert in natural construction. She is a wealth of information. She's a fellow in the American Institute of Architects, and she has helped to create this 25-point list. Christopher Bell, who has been a building biologist in Iowa for years, Larry Gus, who was an electrical engineer and an absolute genius in electricity, along with Spark Burmaster from here in Wisconsin.
These folks have been just pillars of the building biology community for years. And February of this year, they actually launched the latest version, version 1.6 of this list of 25. And I will, again, post this on our website. But they look at things such as verify that the site is free of naturally occurring in all man-made health hazards.
Well, wow, that's pretty bold to say that on the site that you put your house on. Forget how you build the home. But if the site itself is not free of health hazards, whether it's pesticides previously used by the farmer who owned that land before you, or electromagnetic fields caused by local cell towers or high-tension power lines, all the way down to occupant health and well-being, natural and man-made electromagnetic radiation safety, environmental protection, social responsibility, energy efficiency. Folks, I think this is a set of guidelines to strive for.
This is not a point value. It's not a pass fail. But it's a set of guidelines to strive for. And why I love this so much, Jay, is I've always told my clients over the years, it's not a competition.
It shouldn't be a competition. So, green should not be something that you have to pay dearly just to have somebody say, okay, yes, it's green. Green should be common sense. Green should be do the best you can.
Sometimes, you have to take a step backwards to take a step forwards. You've got to use common sense. You have to use what's available to you. You have to do what you can afford.
And the building biology guideline, that 25-point guideline really is that it is, here, this is what we'd like you to do ultimately for optimal indoor air quality energy efficiency and healthy living. So, this is a guideline. You won't fail if you didn't get all 25. It's an excellent list.
And you're right. It gives you something to aspire to. You may not be able to do all of them or maybe even a small amount of them. But at least you've got some reference point to get started with and open up discussions with everybody that's involved.
All of the stakeholders, whether that be your family or contract or your architect, your interior designer, it's a nice way to have everyone get on the same page quickly. And I know that the work you've done with the degree of green adds another very important layer to the analysis. It really doesn't. And it's interesting how the degree of green program folds right into the building biology 25 recommendations because, again, it's all about what you're trying to achieve for you and your family based upon what your needs and what your abilities are.
So I believe that this is a pretty good synopsis of all the different building standards that are being used today. Obviously, we couldn't go into much detail, really specific deal about each one. And if you do have questions about one or all of those building standards, please reach out. Andy, at degree of green is my email.
Come to our blog post and take a look at some of the details that we put together for you about these systems, about the third-party certifications of products, and as well as the 25 points guidelines from the Building Biology Institute. And Jay, I'd like to thank you for your time again this week. Great conversation, Andy. I'm sure the listeners are going to enjoy everything we talked about and be able to reference all of the points you've just made.
So thank you. It's always great. Excellent. And then, as always, folks, please follow our blog at degreeofgreen.com.
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And with that, that's the end of our show today. Thank you very much for listening, and we'll be back with you soon. So long, folks.