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

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Rosi asks: Can a recycled hardwood floor qualify for LEED? We manufacture a hardwood floor from rips leftover after manufacturing of solid hardwood floor and we glue pieces together with non toxic glue than run through for a finished floor does that qualify? Thanks.

Answer: Hi Rosi, this is a very good question. There are several Materials and Resources credits that spring to mind: MRc3 – Materials Reuse, MRc4 – Recycled Content and (if applicable) MRc5 – Regional Materials. We’ll get the easy one out of the way first, MRc5. So if your floor was recovered and manufactured within 500 miles of the project site it could be added into the total quantity of regional materials, based on cost, to total 10-20% of the total project materials value.

The intent of MRc3 is to reuse building materials and products to reduce demand for virgin materials and reduce waste. This can be achieved through use of salvaged, refurbished or reused materials, the sum of which constitutes at least 5% (one point) or 10% (two points), based on cost, of the total value of materials on the project. As I read more into this credit, it turns out to be what I remembered… more or less materials have to be either found on-site or off-site. In summary this credit deals with materials that are already whole and usable (brick, wood flooring, structural timber, stone and pavers.)

So, moving on to MRc4, Recycled Content, if anything your material would be eligible as Pre-consumer recycled content (Post-Industrial), which is the percentage of materials in a product that is recycled from manufacturing waste. Examples include planer shavings, sawdust, bagasse, walnut shells, culls, trimmed materials, over issue publications, and obsolete inventories. Scrap items capable of being reclaimed within the same process that generated them are not eligible. As I typed that last sentence, I wonder if the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) review team would fit your flooring into that category… and there’s only one way to know for sure.

I’d recommend having your project team submit an official Credit Interpretation Request (CIR), which you might also want to offer to pay the $500 fee for, just to get an official answer from GBCI/USGBC. Unfortunately "Effective June 26, 2009, CIRs submitted by any registered project will no longer be vetted by USGBC or its LEED Technical Advisory Groups. So, CIR rulings (the result of a Credit Interpretation Request) will now be applicable only to the project that submitted them.

This means that when you get this question officially answered, the answer will be only known to you (unless you decide to share it) and only be applicable to the project under which it was submitted.