With the building and construction industries anticipating growth over the next several years,7 commensurate growth is to be expected in their use of plastics. Indeed, market trends and projections show a steady increase in polyvinyl chloride (aka vinyl), polystyrene, polyethylene, polyurethanes, and other plastics used in building materials.8

It is, of course, unrealistic to avoid all plastic in building materials at this time, but there are steps we can take to reduce plastic waste, decrease toxic chemical use, and curb the demand for fossil fuels. 

Select Better: Avoid worst-in-class plastics where possible. 

• Where product performance and chemical hazards are similar or better, non-plastic products are preferred.
• Not all plastic products are the same when it comes to impacts. Where plastic products are needed, avoid halogenated plastics or plastics reliant on halogenated chemistry during production – such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC, also known as vinyl) and epoxy-based materials. 
• Where plastic products are needed, avoiding virgin plastic materials reduces demand for oil and gas extraction and ultimately mitigates harmful end of life scenarios for the plastic waste such as incineration or landfilling.

Prioritize Transparency: Prefer products that provide transparency 

• Disclosure of product content including the type of plastic used and any potential additives will allow for healthier materials choices and better material end-of-life planning.
• In the case of products containing recycled plastics, disclosure of where the recycled content originated and any additives that may be present is crucial in selecting healthier products.

Aim for Circularity: Select products designed for recycling.

• Where possible, incorporating recyclable building materials in ways that allow for end-of-life recycling is preferred.
• Prefer products with “take back” programs. Because true plastics recycling rates are abysmal, the most promising recycling programs are those in which manufacturers retain responsibility for their products and provide recycling options. 
• Prefer products that are made with high levels of recycled content that has been screened to avoid toxic tag-alongs and, equally as important, contact manufacturers to recycle any existing product.

With all of these plastic products, our buildings may seem increasingly like Barbie’s DreamHouse and a climate nightmare, but as specifiers, designers, architects, contractors, and owners we can do much to control what products end up in our projects. Starting with the recommendations above, we have the power to influence demand for better and safer materials. In the case of plastics, choosing better materials can lead to less reliance on fossil fuels, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, a decrease in toxic chemical use, and a win for our changing climate.

Simona is a dynamic community of practitioners who help co-create solutions to accelerate the adoption of healthier building materials in affordable housing. She has presented at national conferences, lectures regularly at the University of Minnesota, and currently co-chairs the AIA Minnesota Committee on the Environment (COTE).

Simona was instrumental in the Living Building Challenge Petal Certification of MSR Design’s new downtown Minneapolis headquarters, which achieved the materials, beauty, and equity petals. The project incorporated more than 114 Red List Free materials and achieved a 28 percent reduction of its embodied carbon footprint by using salvaged materials. She also led the development of guidelines around transparency, sustainability, and health for the firm’s materials library, including training materials for staff and external sales reps.

We sat down with Simona to learn why materials have been a focus of her career and to get her perspective on the green building industry today.

The original Charter was created in 2004; at that time, HBN joined a broad coalition of grassroots, labor, health, and environmental justice groups in an extensive process initiated by community organizations in Louisville, KY. Louisville’s “Rubbertown” area hosted 11 industrial facilities that released millions of pounds of toxic air emissions every year. The Charter was named in honor of this city and all of the communities across the nation exposed to toxic chemical contamination—starting with the people who are harmed first and worst. We participated in the 2021 update process, supporting the efforts of the most heavily impacted communities to more explicitly address the chemical industry’s massive contribution to the climate crisis, and the need to advance environmental justice in communities who are disproportionately impacted.

The Louisville Charter is a unifying guide for everyone working to ensure that toxic chemicals are no longer a source of harm, from local and national policy-makers and labor organizers, to health care workers and concerned community members, to committed leaders in the building industry. It is meant to be versatile and used in a wide variety of contexts for one overarching purpose: to overhaul chemical policies in favor of safety, health, equity, and justice, and avoid false solutions that simply shift harms to other people and places.

HBN is proud to be a signatory of the Charter and join this diverse and intersectional community of partners  demanding urgent action to protect, strengthen, and restore our most vulnerable communities.

Assuming that healthier materials always cost more is a common misconception that often stops healthier material initiatives from even being discussed. Here are a few things you can do to start your journey without impacting your budget.

Paints
Paint is one of the easiest categories to start with, as healthier alternatives are readily available with no cost premium. Most paints today have Low or Zero VOC content and emissions and that are free of the endocrine-disrupting chemical APEs (Alkylphenol Ethoxylates), which are also toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms. “Endocrine disrupting” is a fancy way of saying they mimic hormones and send false signals, which cause problems in humans, and are especially problematic to children whose internal systems are nascent and developing. 

Carpets
Avoid the use of carpets with stain repellents or stain treatments. PFAS is the chemical name often cited as a worst-in-class stain and water repellent chemical, and in performance testing, it often falls short of the job it is purported to do and instead, it rubs off and enters our bodies. 

Insulation
Whenever possible, avoid the use of spray foam insulation, which is reacted onsite and can expose installers and building occupants to hazardous ingredients that can cause asthma. Prefer fiberglass, formaldehyde-free mineral wood, or cellulose insulation. 

Use our InformedTM product guidance to quickly and easily find healthier products. 

Antimicrobials
Avoid building products marketed as “antimicrobial” or “containing antibacterials” or similar claims. Some products on the market today include antimicrobials that are added for the purpose of making marketing claims around a product’s potential health benefits. However, there is no evidence that these added chemicals improve human health, and ironically, they can cause harm.

When you shop for a flooring product, what do you consider? Perhaps you think about the look and feel of the product and its durability. You likely also consider the price. The cost of using a material is influenced by the cost to purchase the product itself, the installation cost, maintenance costs, as well as how long the product will last (when you will have to pay to replace it). These are all internalized costs, paid by the building owner. 

These costs alone, however, do not consider the full impacts of materials along their life cycles.  More and more building industry professionals are paying attention to the content of building products and working to avoid hazardous chemicals in an effort to help protect building occupants and installers from health impacts following chemical exposures. To understand the true, full cost of a product, we must look beyond just the monetary cost of purchasing and maintaining a product.

Many of the costs associated with products are more or less hidden when choosing a building material. Just a few of these hidden costs are outlined below.

1. Toxic Chemical Impacts on Human Health: This includes direct medical expenses due to diseases caused or exacerbated by chemical exposures, as well as indirect health-related costs like loss of productivity in work or school and decreased economic productivity in terms of loss of years of life and loss of IQ points. It also includes the immeasurable costs to quality of life and loss of loved ones.
2. Environmental Contamination Costs: Contamination of the environment with toxic chemicals contributes to the human health impacts noted above. In addition, the costs of environmental contamination can include reduced property values in and around contaminated areas, loss of income and food production from the contamination of farms, and the cost of clean up activities (e.g. utilities clean up of water contamination). Less quantifiable costs include damage to wildlife and ecosystems.
3. Climate Change Impacts: Production of chemicals and products is often energy-intensive and based on fossil fuels. Most products contribute to climate change to some extent. Some contribute more than others because of energy use or the release of chemicals with high global warming potential. These greenhouse gas emissions exacerbate climate change, leading to increasingly powerful storms and fires, with increasingly high and recurring costs for recovery. Climate change also magnifies the impacts of toxic chemicals, increasing the human and environmental health costs. 
4. Environmental Injustice: Disproportionately, the health impacts and associated costs throughout the life cycle of products (e.g. during manufacturing and at end of life) fall on  communities of color and low-income communities. The numerical cost of these impacts may not be quantifiable, but the costs to our society are no less clear as a result.

Toxic Chemical Impacts on Human Health
The US Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that American workers alone suffer more than 190,000 illnesses and 50,000 deaths per year that are related to chemical exposures. These chemical exposures are tied to cancers, as well as other lung, kidney, heart, stomach, brain, and reproductive diseases.1

While some workers may see greater exposures to hazardous chemicals, all of us are impacted. Many of you are likely familiar with PFAS, aka per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS have been used in a wide range of applications, including stain-repellent treatments for carpet and countertop sealers. The widespread use of PFAS has led to extensive contamination of the planet and people. Increasing research and attention to this group of chemicals has led to some quantitative understanding of the costs to society of their use. A recent publication in Environmental Science and Technology outlined some of the true costs of PFAS chemicals. The authors highlight that, “A recent analysis of impacts from PFAS exposure in Europe identified annual direct healthcare expenditures at €52–84 billion. Equivalent health-related costs for the United States, accounting for population size and exchange rate differences, would be $37–59 billion annually.” Importantly, they further call out the fact that, “These costs are not paid by the polluter; they are borne by ordinary people, health care providers, and taxpayers.”2

And this is just the cost of one group of chemicals. Another recent study estimated the cost of US exposures to phthalates, a group of chemicals used to make plastics more flexible, to be approximately $40 billion or more due to loss of economic activity from premature deaths.3 While more research is needed, the scale of these estimated costs is staggering.

Environmental Contamination Costs
The release of PFAS chemicals has contaminated water supplies globally. About two-thirds of the US population receives municipal drinking water that is contaminated with PFAS. Reducing the levels of PFAS in drinking water can be expensive, and none of the methods fully remove PFAS. In the Environmental Science and Technology study mentioned above, the authors note that “following extensive contamination by a PFAS manufacturer in the Cape Fear River watershed, Brunswick County, North Carolina is spending $167.3 million on a reverse osmosis plant and the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority spent $46 million on granular activated carbon filters, with recurring annual costs of $2.9 million. Orange County, California estimates that the infrastructure needed to lower the levels of PFAS in its drinking water to the state’s recommended levels will cost at least $1 billion.” Again, these costs are typically not paid by the polluter but shifted to the public.4

Climate Change Impacts
Chemicals used in the production of some PFAS are ozone depleters and potent greenhouse gases. New research released in September by Toxic-Free Future, Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, and Mind the Store ties the release of one such chemical, HCFC-22, to the production of PFAS used in food packaging. The reported releases of this one chemical from a single facility is equivalent to “emissions from driving 125,000 passenger cars for a year.”5

The costs of climate change impacts are immense. For example, the number of billion-dollar disasters and the total cost of damages due to natural disasters have been skyrocketing. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes how climate change contributes to increasing frequency of some extreme weather events with billion-dollar impacts. They outline the broader context of these extreme weather events saying that, “the total cost of U.S. billion-dollar disasters over the last 5 years (2016-2020) exceeds $600 billion, with a 5-year annual cost average of $121.3 billion, both of which are new records. The U.S. billion-dollar disaster damage costs over the last 10-years (2011-2020) were also historically large: at least $890 billion from 135 separate billion-dollar events. Moreover, the losses over the most recent 15 years (2006-2020) are $1.036 trillion in damages from 173 separate billion-dollar disaster events.”6

Figure 1. Billion-dollar Disasters and Costs (1980-2020)7

Environmental Injustice
In the US, communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental pollutants.8 These communities often face hazardous releases from multiple sources due to high concentrations of manufacturing facilities near their homes. The area along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is known as “Cancer Alley” because of the concentration of industrial activity and the associated elevated cancer risks.9 Figure 2 maps facilities that report to EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) in this area. These are facilities that release or manage hazardous chemicals that require reporting to EPA.  

The city of Geismar, LA is home to 18 TRI facilities. These facilities reported a total of over 15 million pounds of on-site releases of hazardous chemicals to air, water, and land in 2019.10 Several of these facilities produce chemicals used in the building product supply chain. Two facilities produce chlorine for internal or external production of PVC, which can be used to make pipes, siding, windows, flooring, and other building products.11 Two other facilities manufacture a key ingredient of spray foam insulation, MDI. Some of these facilities have a history of noncompliance with EPA regulations, one having significant violations for eight of the last twelve quarters and another having significant violations for all twelve of the last twelve quarters.12 Surrounding communities are impacted by regular toxic releases from these facilities and are vulnerable to accidents involving toxic chemicals. For example, an explosion and fire at the vinyl plant in 2012 released thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals, led to a community shelter in place order, and shut down roads and a section of the Mississippi River.13

More than 5,000 people live within three miles of one or more of these four facilities. This community is disproportionately Black — 35% of the population compared to 12% in the US overall. Thirty percent of the population is children, with about 1500 kids under the age of 18. This community has a higher estimated risk of cancer from toxics in the air than most places in the US — almost four times the national average.14

The message we hope you take away from this article is that we must move beyond discussions based purely on the material costs or up-front costs of products. We must all work together to acknowledge and shed light on the true costs that toxic chemicals have within our society and on specific communities. The impacts of hazardous chemicals are, of course, not just monetary –people’s lives are significantly impacted in multiple ways. The current system subsidizes cheap products by robbing individuals of the opportunity for healthy lives and for children to play, and grow up, and enjoy a full and normal life.

Unfortunately, there is not currently enough information available to make detailed cost accounting broadly possible, and no framework exists for accounting for and comparing the full extent of product costs. Transparency about what is in a product, how the product is made, and hazardous emissions – beyond those required to be reported by law – is critical. Programs that place extended responsibility on manufacturers to manage materials at their end of life (as part of extended producer responsibility or EPR)15 can be a starting point for conversations about the full life cycle impacts of products and can help hold manufacturers accountable for a broader array of costs, once they are better understood.

In the meantime, Habitable works to incorporate a life cycle chemical perspective into our safer material recommendations like our Informed™ product guidance and Pharos database. These tools are a work in progress initially focused on avoiding hazardous chemicals in a product’s content. As a starting point, this helps protect not only building occupants and installers, but also others impacted by those hazardous chemicals throughout the supply chain. When hazardous chemicals are used, it is likely that someone throughout the supply chain is impacted. Informed™ can help you choose safer building products based on the information that we have today as we work to expand our incorporation of life cycle chemical impacts into our research and to provide guidance on a broader range of materials.

Habitable looks forward to continuing to identify and provide the critical data needed  to assist in decision making with a more comprehensive view of the true costs of materials, and to developing resources to help communicate the collective return on investment seen by a society where all people and the planet thrive.

Additives (which may be toxic), fillers, adhesives used in installation, and products made with multiple layers of different types of materials all make recycling of plastic building materials technically difficult. Lack of infrastructure to collect, sort, and recycle these materials contributes to the challenge of recycling building materials into high-value, safe new materials.

Manufacturers have continued to invest in products that are technically challenging to reuse or recycle – initially cheaper due to existing infrastructure – instead of innovating in new, circular-focused solutions. Additionally, their investment in plastics recycling has been paltry. In 2019 BASF, Dow, ExxonMobill, Shell and numerous other manufacturers formed the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) and pledged to invest $1.5 billion over the next five years into research and development of plastic waste management technologies. Compare that to the over $180 billion invested by these same firms in new plastic manufacturing facilities since 2010.5

Globally, regulations that discourage or ban landfilling of plastics have, unfortunately, not led to more recycling overall. Instead, burning takes the place of landfilling as the eventual end of life for most plastics.

Confusing rhetoric around plastic end of life options can make this story seem more complicated than it is.6 

• “incineration” or “waste to energy” burns plastic for energy.
• “Plastic-to-fuel” or “gasification” or “pyrolysis” generates fuel. This output is rarely used for anything but burning due to the additional processing required to use for any other purpose.
• “Chemical recycling” could, in theory, lead to new plastic products. This technology is unproven and currently not a scalable solution. The outputs are often burned due to low quality.

Plastic waste burning, regardless of the euphemism employed, is a well established environmental health and justice concern.

Burning plastics creates global pollution and has environmental justice impacts.

In its exhaustive 2019 report, the independent, nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law (CEIL) documents how burning plastic wastes increases unhealthy toxic exposures at every stage of the process. Increased truck traffic elevates air pollution, as do the emissions from the burner itself. Burned plastic produces toxic ash and residue at approximately one fifth the volume of the original waste, creating new disposal challenges and new vectors of exposure to additional communities that receive these wastes.7

In the US, eight out of every 10 solid waste incinerators are located in low-income neighborhoods and/or communities of color.8 This means, in some cases, the same communities that are disproportionately burdened with the pollution and toxic chemical releases related to the manufacture of virgin plastics are again burdened with its carbon and chemical releases when it is inevitably burned at the end of its life.

The issue is global in scale. A recent report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) found that “plastic waste incineration has resulted in disproportionately dangerous impacts in Global South countries and communities.” The Global Alliance for Incineration Alternatives (GAIA), a worldwide alliance of more than 800 groups in over 90 countries, has been working for more than 20 years to defeat efforts to massively expand incineration, especially in the Global South. GAIA members have identified incineration not only as an immediate and significant health threat in their communities, but also a major obstacle to resource conservation, sustainable economic development, and environmental justice.

1. Minimize production of virgin plastic. This should be the main focus of any plastic waste reduction plan and part of any comprehensive climate change initiative. Policies banning single use plastics or banning the construction of new plastic production facilities or facility expansions are two example solutions cited by GAIA.9 Less plastic means less waste and less material to incinerate. 
2. Invest in true circular economy initiatives. These may include, for example: extended producer responsibility programs, materials passports, materials disclosure, elimination of toxic chemical additives, product as a service models, and recycling facilities that support upcycling. By shifting industry investments toward circular economy infrastructure  – instead of the nearly $200 billion investments in increased manufacturing and burning capacity – the plastic industry could start to be part of the solution of reducing plastic waste.
3. When evaluating the “expense” of recycling and circularity vs business-as-usual, a fair calculation for the latter needs to include all costs associated with the production, use, and end of life impacts of plastics. That “cheap” vinyl floor is no longer so inexpensive when the full costs of global pollution and the health burdens of people of color and low income communities are included in the math. Externalities must be a part of the equation.

Virtually every building product we use today contains a petrochemical component that originates from heavily polluted communities, frequently home to people of color. As the green building movement searches for ways to enhance diversity, inclusion and equity, how might it address the legacies of injustice that are tied to the products and materials we use every day?

Architect, Zena Howard, FAIA, offered insight in her 2019 J. Max Bond Lecture, Planning to Stay, keynoting the National Organization of Minority Architects national conference. Howard, known for her work on the design team for the breathtaking Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, most often works with people in communities whose culture and heritage were “erased” by urban renewal in the 1960’s. In Greenville, North Carolina, she looked to people from the historically African American Downtown Greenville community and Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church Congregation to guide the planning and design process for a new town common and gateway plaza. The goal was not to “replicate” the lost community, but to bring its history and present day aspirations to life in the new design. In Vancouver, British Columbia, the development plan for a neighborhood founded by African Canadian railroad porters included an unprecedented chapter on “reconciliation and cultural redress.” The key to such efforts, according to Howard is co-creation and meaningful collaboration, whose Greek roots, she notes, mean “to labor together.”

How might we labor together to address environmental injustice when evaluating the overall healthfulness and equity of our building materials? The precedent of “insetting” suggests an approach.

Insetting has been pioneered by companies whose supply chains rely upon agricultural communities across the globe. According to Ceres, insetting is “a type of carbon emissions offset, but it’s about much more than sequestering carbon: It’s also about companies building resiliency in their supply chains and restoring the ecosystems on which their growers depend.” 

In previous columns, I’ve addressed concerns about the social in industrial communities, e.g., proposals that perpetuate disproportionate pollution impacts when buying offsets rather than addressing emissions from a specific facility. Applying the “insetting” approach we might ask our materials manufacturers—and the communities that are home to the building materials industries—what steps can we take to encourage manufacturers to “labor with” communities seeking environmental justice, such as those along the Mississippi River? Can we, together, resurrect and restore their history, reconcile and redress historical wrongs, and build a healthier future for all?

To learn more about the history and present day conditions of Cancer Alley, see these excellent articles from The Guardian and Pro Publica: https://www.ehn.org/search/?q=cancer+alley

You can watch to Zena Howard’s J. Max Bond lecture, Planning to Stay, here: https://vimeo.com/378622662

You can learn more about the River Road African American History Museum here: https://africanamericanmuseum.org/