mM Common Materials Framework: Mapping the Materials Landscape
This is Part 2 of a four-part series on the Common Materials Framework. In our first post, Aligning Momentum, we introduced the Materials Pledges, and laid out a case for developing a Common Materials Framework to channel the demand they create into forward industry momentum.
establishing the NORTH STAR(s)
The recent and dramatic growth of materials pledges for each stakeholder group in the built environment has inspired unprecedented industry alignment around the North Star(s) of building material sustainability. Signatories — from contractors, to designers, to manufacturers — are publicly committing to manufacturing and using products that support the same “5 buckets” of Health first outlined in the AIA Materials Pledge: Human Health, Climate Health, Ecosystem Health, Social Health + Equity, and Circularity.
Pledges inspire industry alignment by all stakeholders on the “North Star(s)” of material sustainability.
There are already hundreds of signatures on that suite of pledges, representing an incredible volume of manufacturing and purchasing power. They are already bought-in on material sustainability and eager for next steps and accountability.
Beyond that inner circle are countless design firms, manufacturers, owners and contractors aware they must start prioritizing sustainability in their work, but unsure where or how to start. They need a clear and consistent message about how to start and confidence that their work will impact decision-making by specifiers.
“Hi I’m new here, just wondering where the water fountain is?”
The path of prioritizing and implementing sustainability strategies will necessarily be unique to every company, but the knowledge that underpins that path must be consistent across the industry.
Beyond the huge issue of splintering if we all create our own definitions and data points to reference, it’s also just a hugely inefficient use of time and resources. Most sustainability teams are still relatively small (often just 1 person!). Imagine, instead of having to constantly keep tabs on the nuanced differences between standards or translating the conflicting demands of customers your outputs, those companies can focus their efforts on outcomes and impact. Plus, pledge creators can focus their time on cross-functional collaboration, establishing meaningful metrics and setting up systems for accountability and reporting.
“Oh that? Our last sustainability manager, Bob, was just doing some light reading on different energy certs. Let us know what you find out.”
Pledges gave us the North Stars to name the outcomes we want, but what we really need now is a map with a consistent set of landmarks that we can all reference to find our way.
That map is the Common Materials Framework.
a neutral space for collaboration
As a certification-agnostic group of stakeholders that represent all cross sections of the built environment, mindfulMATERIALS has always served as an industry-led neutral hub for collaboration. Convening the industry to solve common challenges together rather than individually, the mM community builds tools and resources that make it easier and faster for designers and material purchasers broadly to make sustainability-informed decisions.
The work of harmonization and alignment required to build the common materials framework is certainly not new, nor is it limited to the efforts of mindful MATERIALS. For years, key organizations have been building awareness and consensus around specific areas of impact - from the Health Product Declaration Collaborative's work standardizing ingredient transparency and harmonizing program data points, to the Carbon Leadership Forum's efforts to establish and drive decision-making around embodied carbon benchmarks, to name a couple.
Our unique opportunity at mindful MATERIALS, then, is to convene and collect all of that work in one place and connect holistic material sustainability information to product decisions on every project. We get to shine a light on the incredible work being done across the industry and amplify it.
“Thanks LPC, stay net positive! Up next we’re talking to the Green Science Policy Institute, about their successes driving awareness and policy changes, followed by HPDC and their work to make transparency a standard practice.”
So when the pledges each emerged from different corners of the industry, mindful MATERIALS saw an exciting opportunity to highlight their overlap and weave together a broader narrative about their powerful alignment, encouraging cross-stakeholder collaboration on messaging and next steps.
We also quickly observed eagerness from signatories to understand how to take action after signing on — and the same frustration with a lack of clear and aligned ‘ask’ that inspired the mindful MATERIALS movement and its early working groups in the first place (more background on our history here). Now, as then, we knew that a solution couldn’t be successfully built by a single entity. The framework would have to be built by industry, for industry — by all of us— to be successful.
MAPPING THE MATERIALS LANDSCAPE
To really drag out this metaphor, if the pledges gave us our North Stars, and mM is building an industry map, we needed to assemble a group of cross-sector material sustainability experts to be our cartographers. Leveraging our existing working group model and industry partnerships, mM convened a cross-sector Content Advisory Board (CAB) in 2021 to begin building the framework, and expanded our Content Working Group (CWG) to review and approve content (more on these groups, their members and their work in our next post).
Working bucket by bucket, engaging industry partners and experts, they’re building a picture of the materials landscape as it is. That information will be captured in the framework, a central resource that we can all reference. Over time, as the landscape shifts, this map will evolve to keep us all moving forward, towards a future where building materials that holistically support health are the norm, not the exception.
“Honestly, this is kind of embarassing but I always thought that VOCs were located in New York*, not in Human Health.”
In our next post we’ll make this work really tangible and show what the framework looks like, plus answer important questions like “how much work can this really be?” (hint: a lot) or “what does any of this have to do with TACOs?!”
p.s. Here is a real poodle in legwarmers that the illustrator saw the other day. On the right, re-imagined as an 80s flashdancer.
* This is not a jab at New York, one author is from there.
AUTHORS (AND ILLUSTRATORS):
Jack Dinning, Brightworks Sustainability, mM Content Advisory Board (CAB) Member
Alex Muller, mindful MATERIALS
