Environmental Justice and Building Materials
Many AEC professionals may not be aware that the building products they specify can have environmental justice impacts.
Building product manufacturing often involves the use and release of toxic chemicals, impacting human and environmental health and contributing to environmental injustice.
While we are all impacted by chemical pollution, communities located near polluting facilities—including chemical plants, landfills, and incinerators—bear a greater burden. These are disproportionately Indigenous, low-wealth, and communities of color.
Habitable’s Chemical and Environmental Justice Impacts Methodology creates a framework for evaluating environmental justice impacts of chemicals in the building product supply chain.
Habitable's Materials Research
Like many products, building materials are not made of one substance, but engineered from complex combinations of chemicals and materials.
Similar to baking, product manufacturers combine distinct ingredients to create a single product.
The materials below are commonly used ingredients in building products like flooring, insulation, pipes, and cladding.
In order to better understand their environmental justice impacts, Habitable researched these plastics, minerals, and biological materials.
View detailed results of our research in the reports below.
Generally, we found that biological materials tend to have the least chemical and environmental justice impacts during manufacturing and plastic materials the most. Mineral-based materials tend to have intermediate impacts.
Facilities Researched
This research considered facilities that manufacture these materials in the United States, although similar facilities may exist all over the world.
You can view facility locations in the map below:
Select Healthier Products
Habitable‘s Informed™ Product Guidance considers chemical impacts across the life cycle of finished products. You can use Informed™ to find and select building product types that reduce human and environmental health impacts for all.
Resources
Discover more of our research on the environmental justice impacts of building products.