Advice provided by: Sarah Gudeman, LEED AP, EIT, Morrissey Engineering, Inc.

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Sigurdis asks: I wanted to know what are the steps in getting a “cradle-to-cradle” certification. Will the USGBC make an inspection at the production facility or is a product specification and fabrication procedures sufficient. We are supplying Quartz material with recycled class from China and have come across a few projects where Leed Certification is required. I just wanted to know if indeed we could get our product certified since all the fabrication is performed overseas.

Answer: Sigurdis, you’re really asking two separate questions… if not more. If I’m incorrect, I apologize in advance, but from what I’m interpreting you work for a company that supplies Quartz materials with recycled glass and your company has worked on projects that are required to pursue LEED certification. Therefore, your question is essentially, is your Quartz material product applicable for these LEED building projects?

First and foremost though, cradle-to-cradle is not referenced in the USGBC’s LEED Reference Guides (which describe the requirements for documenting credits to earn LEED certification on a project) for New Construction, Existing Buildings or Interior Design. The only reference is to the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) which addresses active and future facilities and gives the EPA authority to control hazardous wastes from cradle to grave. Therefore, in other words, neither the USGBC nor the LEED rating system certifies products. Only building projects may be certified under the LEED rating system, which is managed by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Cradle-to-cradle certification (or C2C Certification) is a protected term of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, LLC and “provides a company with a means to tangibly, credibly measure achievement in environmentally-intelligent design and helps customers purchase and specify products that are pursuing a broader definition of quality”, more information is available at http://www.c2ccertified.com/.

Although C2C Certification doesn’t directly impact the LEED rating system, your product may still be applicable for use on a project pursuing LEED certification. Since it’s manufactured overseas, it’s unfortunately not eligible for Materials & Resources (MR) credit 5, Regional Materials, but it may be applicable for MRc4, Recycled Content.

The intent of this credit is to increase demand for building products that incorporate recycled content materials, thereby reducing impacts resulting from extraction and processing of virgin materials. There are two possible points associated with this credit, one for project in which the sum of the postconsumer recycled content plus ½ of the preconsumer content constitutes at least 10%, based on cost, of the total value of the materials in the project and another point if the calculated total is 20%.

So I’d recommend you have the manufacturing facility provide some background information on this product that you can then, in turn, provide to the design team. This information should include product name, manufacturer’s name, cost, percentage postconsumer content, and percentage preconsumer content.

The manufacturer should also provide a letter to document the listed products’ recycled content. Also it’s important to note that the definition of preconsumer material is ‘material diverted from the waste stream during the manufacturing process’. The LEED Reference Guide goes on to say that ‘re-utilization of materials (i.e., rework, regrind or scrap generated in a process and capable of being reclaimed within the same process that generated it) is excluded’ and postconsumer material is waste material generated by households or by commercial, industrial and institutional facilities in their role as end-users of the product.

Hope this helps and good luck!