Untangling the Complex Web of Chemicals: BIFMA’s 2015 Chemicals Summit

As wellbeing continues to earn increasing attention in interior design and architecture, the list of standards geared toward achieving it also grows. LEED, C2C, HPDs, Facts, level, Reach, Declare, California Prop 65, Pharos, WELL, GreenScreen – it’s no wonder architects and interior designers take caution in their practices when attempting to adopt these standards.

Also important to note is that things are complicated for a very good reason; alignment of these standards is tough because each standard measures something unique, while also forming overlap. LEED measures energy and environmental components in buildings, while the WELL Building Standard measures human wellness within the built environment. BIFMA’s level standard measures sustainability in furniture products, while GreenScreen and Health Product Declarations (HPDs) focus on the root level of direct chemical hazard assessment, and so on. Each measure requires differing components related to its focus, but overlap exists due to obvious connections in the elements being measured.

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Tom Reardon, executive director of BIFMA

The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) recently hosted its second, and hopefully final, Chemicals Summit to guide the involved industries’ strategy in chemicals transparency and how it relates to building and product standards. During the summit, on April 21-22, 75 attendees participated in two days of presentations and facilitated information sessions at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago.

Bookended by opening and closing remarks from BIFMA Executive Director Tom Reardon was also a selection of keynote speakers intended to provide viewpoints from all key stakeholders. And the thing is, there are many, many stakeholders in the chemicals transparency issue. Suppliers, manufacturers, architects, interior designers and end user clients all have a stake in this matter, which contributes even more complexity to the nature of the issue.

In his comments, Mr. Reardon pointed to the many moving parts involved in furniture creation, lack of an efficient system in place to gather and house data, and legitimate supplier concerns about disclosing confidential information, as inspiration for reaching concrete decision points.

“A lot of people have spent a lot of time thinking about this issue,” said Mr. Reardon. “Calls for transparency and development of healthy materials are not going to stop. But, furniture is a fairly complex product, and the supply chain is very deep, as you all know well. We intend to make a decision on how we’re going to manage our data, and how to disclose it. We must act collaboratively in order to move ahead faster, and whatever we decide to do will not be a one-and-done; the solution will need to continue to evolve.”

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The Harmonization Task Group, funded by a Google grant, aims to accelerate the adoption of material ingredients credits.

The conversation around chemical transparency first came into focus at BIFMA seven or eight years ago when it began crafting the level standard for sustainability in furniture. Outside of BIFMA, a big push for chemicals knowledge was also occurring in standards across multiple industries. In the fall of 2012, Declare launched, HPD launched, Cradle to Cradle v3 was published, and LEED v4 launched with new material ingredients credits.

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A comparison in standards: each standard includes a unique makeup of measurements, some of which overlap.

USGBC also received a Google grant to accelerate the adoption of material health credits. The grant funded a Harmonization Task Group, which includes reps from GreenScreen, Cradle to Cradle, Pharos, HPD, and Living Building Challenge. The group aimed to first compare its members’ product content inventories, list screening analyses, hazard assessments and states of alignment. The second phase of the Harmonization Task Group would focus on developing solutions for one inventory format, one list screen protocol, and one hazard assessment methodology.

In April 2013, BIFMA hosted its first Chemicals Summit, where ideas came more into focus, and eventually led to BIFMA’s joining the Harmonization Task Group in 2014.

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Roger McFadden, VP and senior scientist at Staples and HPD Collaborative board member, stressed the importance of incremental improvement in the chemicals transparency effort. On left, from L to R: Panel moderator Denise Van Valkenburg, DFE/sustainability engineer at Herman Miller and BIFMA rep in Harmonization Task Group; James Connelly, International Living Future Institute (ILFI) director of Living Product Challenge; and Sara Cederberg, technical director, LEED, USGBC.
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Machell Apple, director of New Development Initiatives at Victor Group, spoke about Victor Group’s participation in the Material IQ (MiQ) Textiles Pilot program.

As part of the groups goals, BIFMA partnered with sustainable materials nonprofit GreenBlue to create a potential solution for information sharing in complex supply chains. The resulting program, called the Material IQ (MiQ) Pilot intends to help manufacturers:

  • Manage chemicals in their supply chains
  • Identify opportunities to optimize products and manufacturing processes.

15+ suppliers and 8 OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)/brands participated in the BIFMA-funded pilot project, representing materials and companies of varying complexity, diversity and level of commitment. A few early observations of the pilot program included:

  • Clear benefits of a shared data collection platform
  • Question of chemistry and transparency as a differentiator
  • Each supplier approaches transparency differently
  • Reluctance to share hazards with (or without) context of exposure and risk
  • Executive and legal teams contribute to slow progress, and have the power to stop all progress
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Steve Kooy
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James Ewell

Steve Kooy, global sustainability manager at Haworth, and James Ewell, sustainable materials director at GreenBlue, presented an overview of the Material IQ (MiQ) Textiles Pilot project with James Ewell, sustainable materials director at GreenBlue.

“We need to create a space where suppliers understand why they need to disclose these chemicals, and establish a safe way for them to do it,” said James Ewell, sustainable materials director at GreenBlue, who provided an overview of MiQ Pilot at the summit along with Steve Kooy, global sustainability manager at Haworth.

Setting aside environmental concerns and customer requirements, one big reason suppliers and manufacturers are embracing chemicals transparency early on (Read: now) is competitive advantage. As customers view health and wellness in the built environment as an increasingly higher priority, the number of companies who pay attention to those concerns will also increase.

2015/2015.0504.BIFMA2015ChemicalsSummit12.AudienceAndMichelleMoore.jpgMichelle Moore, senior VP of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), spoke to summit attendees about IWBI’s vision and the many organizational intersections involved in wellbeing and well building.

Kickoff keynote speaker Michelle Moore, senior VP of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), sparked discussion around this point when speaking about the WELL Building Standard’s focus.

“We want to change health and wellness into a decision-swaying position in specifying that will inspire more upfront investment,” said Ms. Moore. “The opportunity for health and wellness as a set of performance standards to help build the market bigger is huge.”

But roadblocks exist in the form of knowledge gaps at all levels of the supply chain. Perhaps one of the most significant knowledge gaps in the chemicals transparency effort currently exists in the processes that both furniture manufacturers and providers go through to gather materials chemistry data.

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Pat Young
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Jon Smieja

Jon Smieja, environmental chemist at Steelcase, and Pat Young, director of strategic accounts at Byrne Electrical Specialists, Inc., each mapped out the complex process for materials chemistry data collection.

In a “Mapping the Complexity” session, Jon Smieja, environmental chemist at Steelcase, and Pat Young, director of strategic accounts at Byrne Electrical Specialists, each outlined their processes for materials chemistry data collection. In short, the evolution of figuring out what is in each product or part is extremely complex. Manufacturers must field a seemingly unlimited range of customer requests and then engage with suppliers that also range from sophisticated corporations, to mom-and-pop shops, public and private.

“Our initial goal was to find out where chemicals of concern live in our products and how we could eliminate and replace them with safer alternatives,” said Mr. Smieja. “Recently, the market requests the OEMs receive have become more and more complex and varied in nature. We need to make those requests more palatable for the people who need to fill them.”

A final panel, “The Suppliers’ Perspective” featured a Q&A with suppliers that showed an optimistic but cautious outlook. Many suppliers are participating in the discourse and are open to working toward full disclosure but concerned about being penalized.

“We have experience with the “big bads” like formaldehyde, but we’re now faced with many smaller-range bad chemicals,” said panel member Paul Davis, of Columbia Forest Products.

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Cheryl Durst

Although the panelists reported that the Material IQ Pilot process was cumbersome to work through in this first version, they supported the third-party review feature so as to have confidence in the data. They also voiced concerns about the sophistication of data coming from overseas, particularly East Asia. In addition, the panelists said that suppliers are looking to the manufacturer for direction in what materials they approve and want to work with.

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Paula McEvoy

Although the large majority of summit attendees are from the furniture manufacturer/supplier wheelhouse, keynote speakers Paula McEvoy, associate principal at Perkins+Will and sustainable design co-director at AIA, and Cheryl Durst, IIDA executive VP and CEO, represented the interior designer and architect’s point of view.

“Interiors are so driven by “the new,” said Ms. McEvoy. “We’re always looking for the new thing, but those things also tend to lack the science and documentation behind them. We need to make architects feel more comfortable asking for materials information by promoting transparency, establishing policy, and then establishing contract language and making any necessary adjustments.”

Ms. Durst supported Ms. McEvoy’s statements, noting that designers want not only more transparency and more disclosure, but also access to a lexicon that allows them to explain the information to clients.

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James Connelly
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Brendan Owens

“They want to know what’s relevant and meaningful in each particular product, organized in a clear database of some sort and in a language that connects with every member of the design team and with clients,” said Ms. Durst.

Rather than provide an expected overview of LEED v4, the newest version of LEED, final keynote speaker Brendan Owens, chief of engineering at USGBC, chose to discuss USGBC’s as yet undisclosed intentions to take on a larger role in connecting the bridge between healthy buildings and healthy people.

“LEED has always been great at connecting the building with the place in which its directly located,” said Mr. Owens. “Where we’re not as strong is in developing standards that create buildings which plug into our [humans’] overall structure well. We want to have a system of systems that work together and collaborate on purpose. It can’t be just about the buildings. We need to optimize and pull all of these things together, and we [USGBC] realize we play a critical role in this evolving regulatory environment.”

BIFMA’s Chemicals Summit is another encouraging step in the path toward better knowledge, and standard processes in chemicals transparency.