Page 53 - Green Builder Magazine March-April 2019 Issue
P. 53
The Align Project:
Align Your Future
It’s time to rethink where we live, what we buy and how we can
help ourselves go with green.
BY JULIET GRABLE
N THE ONE HAND: climate change
disasters, species extinction, geo-
political upheavals and population
growth. On the other: renewable
energy, zero-carbon transportation,
O protein substitutes and smart tech. CREDIT: MUNTAKA CHUSANT¢WIKIMEDIA
When thinking about the future, it’s easy to vacillate
between hope and despair. Throughout The Align
Project, we’ve been reexamining how we live. Now
Cleaning up our mess. Not only will bioplastics take the place of petroleum,
it’s time to look ahead and question our assumptions plastic garbage will be harvested and turned into useful products.
about the future. responsible manufacturing. Product certications and transparency
If you’re involved with green building, you already labels such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Cradle-to-Cradle,
understand that we need to radically revamp our and Declare, along with transparency documents [Health Product
buildings. You may also believe we need to rethink Declarations (HPDs) and Environmental Product Declarations
what we purchase, what we eat, how we get from (EPDs)] can help speciers and citizens alike make responsible
choices. Though homeowners are less likely to read an HPD, they’ll
A to B, how we age and even how we die. It’s a more often choose products with labels like Declare, GREENGUARD
revolution that, in many ways, has already begun. or SCS Indoor Advantage, which identify them as free of toxins.
The hope is that in the future, we won’t need those labels, because
THE MATERIAL REVOLUTION all products and materials will be non-toxic and biorenewable. In
Let’s start with something familiar: our homes. Buildings consume the meantime, anyone can demand change. If enough people climb
resources during construction and occupancy. The relationship aboard, it works. Trader Joe’s is a recent case in point: Responding to
between a material’s environmental impact and its contribution to a consumer petition [https://bit.ly/2W4GST9], the grocery franchise
energy eciency and comfort often sets up a conict; for example, nally announced it would phase out wasteful plastic packaging,
the manufacture of closed-cell spray foam insulation produces including plastic produce bags and those annoying plastic containers
greenhouse gas emissions, yet spray foam helps a building save used to encase apples and tomatoes.
COURTESY OF KASITA showing a preference for materials with good sustainability pedigrees, next-generation blowing agents with lower global warming potential.
Another case in point: Spray foam manufacturers are embracing
energy over its lifetime.
Building professionals have a real opportunity to eect change by
It takes time, but this is an area where consumers—who are actually
citizens with purchasing power—can make a dierence.
and rewarding companies that have embraced transparency and
www.greenbuildermedia.com March/April 2019 GREEN BUILDER 51
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