mindful MATERIALS at Greenbuild 2026

From Common Ask
to Common Action

Through curated education sessions and unique activations, Mindful Materials has become a mainstay at Greenbuild. Five different discussions bring together industry leaders from every different role in the materials movement, from building owners and operators to architects, designers, manufacturers, technology partners and industry associations. These diverse presenters share insights on how the building industry is moving from a common language for sustainable materials to common actions rooted in shared values.

This year's Mindful Materials Pavilion and Lounge at Greenbuild has a new spin, with a focus on Circularity. Curated by our friends at the Center for Circularity in Interior Design (CCID), the space is reimagined not as another trade-show display, but as a working demonstration of circular interior design in action.

The mM Pavilion:
Circularity in Practice

At the center of the Mindful Materials Pavilion, the Mindful Materials Lounge, curated by The Center for Circularity in Interior Design (CCID), serves as a gathering place for designers, manufacturers, and press alike. The mM Loung is furnished with pieces from local, sustainable, and circular manufacturers, many reclaimed or given a second life. Every element carries its own story: where it came from, why it's here, and where it goes next.

Throughout the lounge, a series of circularity vignettes trace the full lifecycle of a material. From keeping materials in circulation, to designing for longevity, and disassembly, to reuse and remanufacture, experience in real time that circularity isn't a single product attribute, but a system built through collaboration across the industry.

Come sit in the chairs. Meet the brands behind them. Hear the story of how circularity moves from principle to practice.

Featured brands include: Andreu World, Dancker, Flooring Foundations, Humanscale, Steelcase, Shaw Contract, The Good Plastic Company, Benchmark Furniture, Fredericia, ReDu Studios, Interesting Times Gang, Our Carbon, Mushlume, Stickbulb, and Lost City Lighting.

A Wednesday Happy Hour:
The Circular Exchange [NYC]

Wednesday, October 21 | 3:30-5:00 PM
mindful MATERIALS Pavilion | Booth 1363

Building a circular economy takes collaboration across industries, disciplines, and supply chains.

Join mindful MATERIALS and the Center for Circularity in Interior Design (CCID) for an informal gathering during Greenbuild's happy hour, bringing New York's circular businesses and reuse and reclamation specialists together with interior designers, architects, manufacturers, and others working to transform how we design, make, use, and reuse materials.

The goal is simple: connect those developing circular solutions with those who can put them to work. By bringing supply and demand together, we can forge new relationships, unlock opportunities, and move circularity from ambition to action.

No presentations, no formal agenda. Just conversations, connections, and the potential for new collaborations. Because a circular economy takes all of us.

mindful MATERIALS' Education Sessions

Driving Knowledge and Collaboration

Each year, mindful MATERIALS hosts a series of education sessions that bring together industry leaders to share insights, strategies, and innovations driving sustainability in the built environment. With a free expo hall pass, you can gain access to five curated sessions providing valuable insight to the materials movement. Register for your free pass using promo code MM-EXPO

Circular Economy: Every Role Matters. Stop waiting for results and start owning your circular responsibilities

Wednesday 2:30pm – 3:05pm Tech Stage

Featuring:

Nelson Russom, Turner
Sydney Mainster, Durst
Tori Wickard, Perkins Will
Jackson Moran, Shaw
Moderated by Tim Conway, mM

The weight of the linear economy—take, make, waste—is our reality today. But building a circular future depends on more than one person, one product, or one company.

How many pounds of carbon and landfill consumption did you select on your last project? What is your role in the circular economy? Have you ever tried to bring a circular solution to a project only to run into pushback, confusion, or mental barriers that stopped you before you started? Buildings and materials don't become circular on their own; people make them circular. This session isn't about products. It's about people, and defining what each sector must own to design us out of the carbon-intensive linear economy we've inherited. We've assembled voices from manufacturing, architecture & design, commercial real estate, general contracting, and building ownership to answer one shared question: What is your role and responsibility?

Together we'll explore what it looks like when every seat at the table contributes into the circular economy with intention. Whether you're looking for your starting line or ready to define your lane, this is your invitation to collaborate, challenge assumptions, and help make the circular economy the new normal. YOUR ROLE MATTERS.

Moving The Research & Science Into Real Practice: From Harvard to Commercial Real Estate

Wednesday 12:00pm – 12:45pm
Innovation Stage

Featuring:

Heather Henriksen, Harvard
Joseph G. Allen, Harvard
Maya Bliss, 9 Foundations
Zoya Puri, Beacon Capital Partners
Moderated by Tim Conway, mM

The past 15 years have shown measurable strides in understanding what makes our buildings healthy and sustainable.

Metrics and certifications abound to increase transparency and track how our buildings operate. But what truly makes a building, or a building material, healthy? How do we know what to measure, and how to operationalize a healthy materials strategy?

This session addresses key relationships that strengthen the success of healthier materials strategy and implementation. In a market over-saturated with certifications, mindful Materials uses the Common Materials Framework to streamline tools into an actionable ecosystem. Grounded in scientific research on occupant and ecosystem health, and aligned with leaders like Harvard, public health experts from 9 Foundations are empowering mission-aligned real-estate owners to transition healthier materials from idea to action. Join us to learn how 9 Foundations and Beacon Capital Partners are simplifying healthy material optimization within broader healthy building strategies.

Multiple Sources, One Truth: How the CMF Translates Impact Data Across Platforms

Thursday 10:35am - 11:20am Tech Stage

Featuring:

Terry Swack, Sustainable Minds
Tommy Linstroth, Green Badger
Rebecca Best, Material Bank
Andre Baros, Acelab
Barbra Batshalom, Building Ease
Kathleen Egan, Ecomedes
Laurel Chądzyński, mindful Materials
Melanie De Cola, AIA

Sustainability data doesn't live in one place — it's scattered across HPDs, EPDs, Declare labels, and a dozen different platforms, each speaking its own dialect. mindful MATERIALS' 2025 Data Ecosystem Report laid out a vision for connecting these dots: manufacturers as "Givers" of product data, technology platforms as "Receivers," and the Common Materials Framework (CMF) as the shared language in between.

This session moves that vision from paper to practice. Six leading technology platforms join mM to unpack a newly developed, CMF-aligned common data schema that connects product impact data down to the individual datapoint level.

The session will also spotlight what a connected data ecosystem makes possible for reporting: streamlined compliance with programs like the AIA Materials Pledge. Hear highlights from the latest AIA Materials Pledge Reporting, publicly releasing the week before Greenbuild. Panelists will discuss how CMF-aligned data flowing through their platforms simplifies and accelerates Materials Pledge reporting for firms — reducing manual tracking and giving teams a clearer, faster path to measuring progress against their commitments.

Attendees will leave with a clear picture of how this pilot works in practice, what the newest Materials Pledge numbers reveal about industry progress, and what it means for anyone trying to streamline reporting and make faster, better-informed material decisions — regardless of which platform they use.

The Mindful Materials Common Material Framework: Getting to the Easy Button

Thursday 1:20pm – 2:05pm Tech Stage

Featuring:

Nick Reber Kohler
Brent Trenga Kingspan
Mary Dickensen Perkins Will
David Brifel Gensler

For 25 years, LEED has pushed manufacturers and design professionals to make better choices in building material selection. The progress has been real — but the complexity hasn't gone away. Sustainability attributes remain fragmented, inconsistent, and difficult to navigate, leaving our industry without a shared language or a clear path forward.Mindful Materials is changing that.

The Common Material Framework (CMF) has done something our industry has long needed — it has brought the entire ecosystem to the same table. Manufacturers, design professionals, owners, and operators are now working from a unified framework, one built to simplify the complexity of material sustainability and move us closer to what everyone has been asking for: the materials easy button.

This session will give you an honest look at where the CMF stands today and where it is headed. You'll hear directly from the voices who are building it and using it — manufacturers integrating the framework into their product strategies, design professionals applying it in project specifications, and owners demanding it in their procurement standards.If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the volume of certifications, declarations, and sustainability claims competing for your attention, this session is for you. The CMF isn't just a tool — it's a shared commitment from our industry to stop making sustainability harder than it has to be.

Have you filled up a bucket today? How the Common Material Framework Translates to a Common Material Language

Thursday 2:20pm – 3:05pm Tech Stage

Featuring:

Eric Corey Freed, Cannon
Christine Vandover, HOK
Gordon Boggis, Carnegie
Tim Conway, mM

We have the science. We have the certifications. We have the data. So why hasn't our industry scaled?

The honest question at the heart of this session is whether the complexity we've built around sustainability is actually changing human behavior — or whether it's slowing us down. As our industry works to address human health, climate health, circular economy, social responsibility, and ecosystem health through the building materials we specify and procure, are we getting closer to scale? Or are we still speaking a language that only a few people in the room can understand?

Mindful Materials developed the Common Material Framework to bring our entire ecosystem manufacturers, design professionals, owners, and operators onto the same page. The CMF organizes these critical impact areas into a shared structure, with the goal of developing programs that simplify this work across every sector. But programs only work when people can translate them into stories that empower others to participate, act, and lead.

That translation is the next frontier. It's called the Common Material Language.This session will explore how mindful materials members are doing exactly that, taking the rigor of the CMF and turning it into clear, compelling, human language that moves people to act. You'll hear from manufacturers, design professionals, and owners who are developing their own common material language and using it to grow our ecosystem, deepen engagement, and make sustainability something everyone can find themselves in.

If science alone hasn't been enough, language might be the answer. Come learn how we get there together.The framework is built. Now let's learn how to speak it.

Education Session Details –

mindful MATERIALS' Greenbuild Calendar

Don’t miss a session: your Greenbuild 2026 calendar

We have a lot planned in New York, and we don’t want you to miss any of it. Use our live calendar to see every mM session, event, and education opportunity during Greenbuild week.

View it live: Use the toggle to jump straight to Greenbuild week (October 20-23).
Download it: Save our sessions to your own calendar so they show up on your phone and your schedule.
Share it: Send the link to your team so everyone knows where to be.

Add your favorite sessions now, and we’ll see you at the Javits Center!