The Aluminum Association announced the release of Aluminum in Green Buildings – A Guide to Environmental Declarations at the GreenBuild 2016 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, C.A. The Guide, which is a part of a series of guidelines being developed by the Aluminum Association for the building and construction market sector, is now available both online as well as at the Associations booth #2426 at GreenBuild 2016.
The new Aluminum in Green Buildings Guide is designed in order to help all stakeholders in the aluminium value chain including aluminium producers, end-users, architects, designers, engineers and others – understand how to conduct environmental assessments for aluminium building products in an appropriate manner and make environmental declarations based on that. Environmental product declaration (EPD) is increasingly becoming an important component of US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™) V4 program. So much so, the traditional recycled aluminium method for material credit mentioned in the previous versions of LEED is being replaced by EPD.
“Our industry is dedicated to advancing sustainability efforts in building and construction through the use of light weight, recyclable aluminum,” said Heidi Brock, President & CEO of the Aluminum Association. “This new guide will help building and construction end-users and other stakeholders make educated assessments when developing environmental declarations.”
The Aluminum Association aims at guiding aluminium building product users in the inherent characteristics of the light metal, proper environmental assessment methods, and reliable sources of data and information on the aluminium product EPDs. This is essential because of the highly technical nature of EPD.
The Association released the first of the guideline series in 2015, at Greenbuild in Washington DC. That edition titled Aluminum in Green Buildings – A Guide to Green Building Development and Certification with Aluminum Products, was focused on guiding aluminium industry stakeholders to better utilize the unique material properties and life cycle characteristics of aluminium to help reap maximum benefits of the green building credits.
