LEED Recycled Content
LEED 2009 Materials & Resources MR4 - Recycled content (1-2 points)
Requirements
- Levels of achievement:
o Recycled content by weight:-
- sum (post consumer + half pre-consumer)= greater than or equal to 10% of the cost of the total value of materials in the project (1 point)
- sum (post consumer + half pre-consumer)= greater than or equal to 20% of the cost of the total value of materials in the project (2 points)
- sum (post consumer + half pre-consumer)= greater than or equal to 30% of the cost of the total value of materials in the project (2 points + 1 additional innovation point)
- Recycled content shall be defined in accordance with ISO 14021 - Environmental labels and declarations - self declared environmental claims (Type II environmental labelling) and the recycled content shall be determined by weight.
- Furniture is generally not included but can be, providing it is included consistently in MR 3-7
- Mechanical, electrical and plumbing components and speciality items such as lifts shall not be included
- Only include materials which are permanently installed in the project
Answer:-
- Particleboard manufactured by WPIF members will contain recycled content. The recycled content as a proportion of the total wood content is on average approximately 70% but could be as much as 95% and a minimum of approximately 30%. This will be a mixture of post and pre-consumer. When calculated according to ISO 14021 the atmospheric moisture in the wood and the resin weight will also need to be accounted for in order to make up the total weight of the product. For example if the resin content is 10% and the equilibrium moisture content is also 10% this will leave 80% for wood. Therefore if the recycled wood content was 50% of the total wood content, according to ISO 14021 the recycled content of the product would be 40%.
- A manufacturer's declaration should be sought as to the amount of each type of recycled content.
- Once the recycled content has been calculated for the wood based panel this needs to be added to that for all the other materials in the building project and the cost calculated.
