Kelly: (00:06 )
Welcome to buildings and beyond.

Robb: (00:09 )
a podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment.

Kelly: (00:13 )
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health.

Robb: (00:18 )
I’m Robb Aldrich.

Kelly: (00:19 )
and I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb: (00:22 )
This episode is part two of my interview with Charley Stevenson from integrated ECO strategy. And we continue our conversation about sustainable materials and healthy materials. We got into a little more detail about specific building products and approaches to selecting those products and also prioritizing what systems to look at first, which has a bigger impact. So here’s part two of my chat with Charley Stevenson.

Robb: (00:54 )
People that are not ready to, as you said, dive into LBC. What are some of the lightest lists? What are some of the lowest hanging fruit to really get the most bang for their buck or their time and their effort to get more sustainable materials into their projects?

Charley: (01:12 )
I have two thoughts in mind. If my practice had a mascot, it would be a ratchet. And the notion is you do a little bit of work and you get a click and then it’s clicked. You’ve, you’ve, you’ve made a change and it’s clicked. And then when you’re ready, you can do a little bit more work and get another click. And sometimes it’s really hard to get a click. Sometimes you gets some really easy clicks. But you know, that approach is, is half half of the answer here too, to think about places where in your practice, whatever it may be, you use the same product or product type again and again. And again, I don’t know of a building that doesn’t have drywall. So Rather than think of this as a problem that needs to be solved all at once, we can just say, let’s make sure we’re using drywall we feel good about because we always use it and we often use a lot of it. So we’ve reduced the hundreds of products that we’re worried about to that single one. And then we ask the question, well, what’s the right drywall to use? And if we can figure that out for a single family residence and we can figure that out for a commercial retrofit, chances are we’ve covered 90% of the market. And then anybody who has that answer, any design team that’s incorporated that and developed confidence in whatever that product may be, can simply make that their standard or could make three good walls, their standard and exclude from future work products about which they don’t know as much. Then it’s onto the next the next segment. What are, what are the concerns with drywall? Well, a reason to focus on drywall and I’m going to get to your answer in just a second, Is that we use a lot of it. So you know, if you were to prioritize where changes in a material Palette should take place. I think about what arrives by train car, what arrives by, by tractor trailer, what arrives in small cartons in the back of a pickup truck. So, you know, drywall is not coming in the back of the pickup truck by and large. So there’s a lot of it when you’re in a building, it has it been, presents a lot of surface area to occupants. So if it’s good, it could be really good and if it’s bad it could be really bad. So sort of starting with the inside skin that is presented to occupants in working out you know, deeper into wall assemblies as is, is one approach. Thinking about volumes you procured is another way to prioritize. And then, you know, back to thinking about mastics, wet applied products are different because the curing happens in the space. So whatever, whatever solvents or whatever chemical reaction makes it cure that’s happening live in the space that you, you care about. So to the specific question, there are excellent dry walls and many commodity dry walls are, are fully disclosed, are tested for offgassing and pass with flying colors. So, you know, you can, you can go to the major manufacturers, USG, national gypsum, certainteed, and you can ask and receive a red list, free or Red List compliant drywall. Excellent. paints are another good example. You know, it, it, first of all, there’s often a lot of them in a project and they’re wet applied. So what they have for chemical activity can be significant.

Charley: (05:45 )
It’s nice that paints had been the subject of LEED scrutiny for a couple of decades. So it’s a pretty mature market, at least as far as volatile organic compounds are concerned. You can add the question of whether it’s red list free. So I think to a major manufac