ILFI Launches Living Product Challenge

by Jonathan McGaha | April 1, 2015 12:00 am

The International Living Future Institute[1] has expanded beyond certification of buildings to create a certification program for materials and products called the Living Product Challenge[2]. The goal of the Living Product Challenge is to inspire manufacturers to re-think the design, manufacturing and use of all products to function as elegantly and efficiently as anything found in the natural world. Informed by how nature solves design challenges, Living Products are to be made from locally sourced, healthy materials and manufactured by processes powered only by renewable energy within the water balance of the places they are made.

“The Living Product Challenge is envisioned as a program to give clarity to manufacturers and consumers alike as to where the future is for all product innovations to be truly good for people and the planet,” said Institute CEO Jason F. McLennan. “It is intended as a beacon to guide the manufacturing of all the thousands of things we surround ourselves with on a daily basis, and to give direction and support to those who make the goods we use.”

The Living Product Challenge, similar to the Living Building Challenge[3]-the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard, is comprised of seven performance categories, or “Petals”: Place, Water, Energy, Health and Happiness, Materials, Equity and Beauty. The program is the world’s first multi-attribute, third party evaluated materials standard that also focuses on complete disclosure of environmental and social performance.

The Living Product Challenge urges companies to reduce a product’s footprints-carbon, water, energy and others-and create measurable positive impact through a new process being pioneered by the program called “handprinting[4]” that accounts for the positive actions a company takes to better the world. The Institute believes that it can have the same transformative impact on how building materials, consumer products and other materials are made as it has with changing the way buildings are designed.

For more information on the Living Product Challenge and to read the Standard in its entirety, please visit living-future.org/lpc[5].

Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/news/industry-news/ilfi-launches-living-product-challenge/

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