2023 Summer Issue of Urban Land - 78

at AGI Avant Group, an ESG purpose-driven
real estate investment and development firm
based in San Jose, California. " Over time, we
can advance a toxic-free future. "
Strategies for Reducing Embodied
Carbon and Improving Material Health
Stakeholders across the industry are advancing
innovative solutions that make it easier
to build with green materials. Incremental
changes throughout the development process
can have outsized impacts on the health and
sustainability of the final project.
Project visioning and predesign. A project
team should begin by asking if reusing an
existing building could meet future programming
needs. Adaptive use is the single most
effective way to drive down carbon and avoid
pollution from chemical production-next to
not building anything at all.
As an example, Gensler repurposed a
12-story, 230,000-square-foot (21,400 sq m)
vacant telecom building in downtown Denver
and reduced embodied carbon emissions by
68 percent. Preserving the original building's
steel and concrete structure, which contained
the highest concentration of embodied emissions,
led to the project's success.
After the building was complete, Gensler
leveraged Tally, a life-cycle assessment tool, to
quantify its embodied carbon achievement.
When reuse isn't an option, teams should
explore reworking systems to improve structural
efficiency and use fewer materials,
or consider low-carbon alternatives like
mass timber.
Design and material specification. This
stage of development is about details. Finding,
evaluating, specifying, and procuring products
Strategies for Reducing Embodied Carbon
Project Visioning
and Predesign
Consider adaptive use
instead of building new.
Improve structural efficiency
and use fewer materials.
Consider alternative structural
systems like mass timber.
Design and
Material Specification
Specify recycled or salvaged
materials.
Request carbon and health
information from product
manufacturers.
Leverage product databases
and material libraries to make
more informed choices.
78
URBAN LAND SUMMER 2023
Construction
and Operations
Look for ways to reduce
construction site emissions.
Work with tenants to minimize
carbon and chemicals
for fit-outs and equipment
replacements.
are best driven by the project's goals and
informed by transparent product information.
From there, understanding the materials
and products that are likely to have high
embodied carbon and potentially toxic chemicals
is a useful place to start. High-embodiedcarbon
materials include concrete, steel, flat
glass, and asphalt. Potentially unhealthy materials
include anything plastic based and certain
kinds of carpet, adhesives, coatings, paints,
finishes, and furniture.
While selecting and procuring materials can
feel daunting at times, it is important not to
get discouraged when products do not check
all the boxes.
" Perfection is an enemy of progress, " says
Amanda Kaminsky, director of sustainable
construction-Americas, for Lendlease, a $10
billion multinational construction and property
company based in Sydney, Australia.
" I don't know of a perfect material, " she
explains. " However, purchasing materials with
transparent, publicly posted, product-specific
documentation of incremental human and
environmental health improvements that
matter to you/your organization can result
in impactful benefits for tenants, contractors,
manufacturing communities, and our climate
and resources. "
While there is likely no such thing as a
perfect material, innovations in material science
have given rise to new products that are
designed with sustainability in mind.
In the concrete space, CarbonCure Technologies,
a company based in Halifax, Nova
Scotia, created a process that collects carbon
dioxide emissions from the atmosphere and
injects them into concrete during the mixing
process. The emissions are then transformed
2023 Summer Issue of Urban Land

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