BEYOND“ USE LESS”
THE EVOLUTION OF SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION
Fifteen years ago, sustainable construction largely centered on one question: How can we use less? Using frameworks such as LEED, project teams considered how to achieve reductions in energy, water, and waste. Teams focused on locating projects near transportation hubs and using materials with recycled content or low VOCs. The American Institute of Architects’( AIA) 2030 Commitment Strategy, launched in 2005 and dedicated to achieve carbonneutral buildings, was gaining signatories, heightening the industry’ s attention to energy reduction and efficiency.
Today, sustainable construction is far more complex. With LEED v5 and more buildings pursuing the performance-based Living Building Challenge( LBC), sustainable construction isn’ t just about energy and efficiency; it’ s about creating buildings that have a positive effect that ripples beyond the project boundary.
For Lisa Carey Moore, a consultant in the regenerative buildings movement, the biggest transformation in the last decade has been project teams’ expectations about building materials.
Fifteen years ago when Carey Moore got her start on her first LBC project, materials were largely being evaluated by project teams for their performance characteristics and aesthetics. Now, teams are asking where materials come from, what chemicals they contain, how much carbon they generate before they ever reach the jobsite, whether they can be reused at the end of a building’ s life, and even what labor was employed during manufacturing.
The industry’ s definition of sustainability has expanded well beyond a building’ s resource use to include the environmental, social, and health impacts of every material that goes into it.
For Carey Moore, this evolution has been remarkable to watch.“ When I became involved with my first Living Building Challenge project around 2012, it was still novel to look beyond VOC compliance,”
Richard A. & Susan F. Smith Campus Center / Photos courtesy of Bruner Cott Architects
Carey Moore said.“ Then we started asking,‘ What’ s actually in this product? How was it made?’” She notes that, with few exceptions, manufacturers generally were unprepared( if not uncomfortable) to hand over formulas or component ingredients, but those questions marked the beginning of a much broader shift.
Frameworks associated with the Living Building Challenge and Living Product Challenge encouraged architects, engineers, contractors, and manufacturers to look beyond basic product specifications and consider chemical ingredients, manufacturing processes, environmental impacts, labor practices, and what would happen to products when they were no longer usable.
“ It’ s no longer just about the ingredients,” Carey Moore explained.“ We’ re focused on the entire lifecycle of the product, from the workers who manufacture it to the communities affected by manufacturing, ecosystem health, and the circular economy.”
As manufacturers responded with greater transparency through initiatives such as Declare Labels and Health Product Declarations, designers suddenly had access to far more information than ever before. But having more information also raised new questions, especially about embodied carbon.
Unlike operational carbon, which comes from the energy a building consumes throughout its life, embodied carbon is the greenhouse gas emissions that result from manufacturing, transporting, and installing building materials. The work of The Carbon Leadership Forum and other researchers drove the industry to recognize that many of a building’ s environmental impacts occur long before the lights are ever switched on.
This realization sparked another wave of innovation in the building materials sector. Companies began developing lower-carbon alternatives to traditional materials, while researchers and software developers created
14 GREEN STUDENT EDITION 2026