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

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Jessica asks: Re: LEED MR Credit 6: Rapidly Renewable Materials
As a product manufacturer, can you contribute to this credit with a product/material that has rapidly renewable content in a percentage (not all) of the product? Similar to how recycled content is calculated... Or does the product have to be entirely composed of rapidly renewable materials?

Answer: Hi Jessica, I don’t believe that the product must be 100% composed of rapidly renewable materials to qualify for this credit.

The intent of the Materials and Resources Credit 6 is to reduce the use and depletion of finite raw materials and long-cycle renewable materials by replacing them with rapidly renewable materials. To earn this credit a project must utilize rapidly renewable building materials and products for 2.5% of the total value of all building materials and products used on the project (based on cost).

Materials that qualify as rapidly renewable are those made from plants that are typically harvested within a 10-year or shorter cycle. If you look at the credit calculations noted in the Green Building Design and Construction Reference Guide, there’s a sub-heading called ‘Assembly Rapidly Renewable Content’. It goes on to describe that assemblies are products made of multiple materials, and therefore contain only a percentage of rapidly renewable material. So to count these materials for credit documentation the fraction (percentage) of the assembly that is considered rapidly renewable is to be determined by weight. That fraction should then be multiplied by the material’s cost to determine the quantity of material that is applicable for this credit.

So for example, let’s say your project is utilizing a particle board contains a renewable fiber such as wheat at a percentage level based on weight of 25% and the total value of particleboard for the project is $20,000. So therefore the cost to be included in the credit calculation for rapidly renewable material would be $20,000 * 0.25 = $5,000. Hope that helps!