As many facility managers who have been through the LEED certification process know, projects that use locally sourced materials can earn LEED points.The goal of course, is to reduce the environmental impact of construction materials — which are often large and bulky — when they are shipped long distances to a project site.LEED-NC V3 allows up to two points for projects that use regionally sourced materials. LEED defines regional materials as those that have been extracted, harvested, recovered and manufactured within 500 miles of the project site. For facility managers, establishing whether a product meets that threshold isn't always the easiest task in the world. It may require working with manufactures and consulting firms to establish the best local choices that don't also drive up project cost.Now, MIT has created a new open source tool that could someday make that process much easier. It's called Sourcemap.The goal of the project is to help consumers better understand the impact of their purchasing decisions by documenting the supply chain of everyday products they buy. Here's how it works: Sourcemap takes a product and breaks it down by all the parts used in the product. By adding up the impact and location of all the separate parts, the site estimates the carbon footprint of the product throughout its life cycle (embodied, manufacturing, shipping, use and end-of-life). Because the site is open source, anyone can add a new product to the site once they register. What's interesting is how the information is displayed: The sourcemap of a CFL, for example, shows how the supply chain crosses the globe, from the clear virgin glass made in China to the virgin Copper made in Chile. Sourcemap is clearly in the Beta stages. But by tapping the power of the open source community — anyone can contribute — it could become a very powerful tool to better establish the carbon footprint of everyday products.
Hello - great artcile. My team and I would like to begin tracking our carbon foot print for our new green initiative - do you know of other resources we could use for this?