Red List

Often toxic materials come in the things you least expect. Of the more than 40,000 chemicals used in consumer products in the US, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, less than 1% have been rigorously tested for human safety. Due to this, when collecting materials for spaces, the Living Building Challenge has laid out standards for fostering a transparent materials economy, free of toxins and harmful chemicals. This is extremely important as it affects every facet of every living being's life.

Over 75% of the land area on earth is degraded. According to this evidence-based assessment, land pollution is almost everywhere. This land degradation assessment took more than 100 leading experts on land pollution from 45 countries and three years to complete. Urban planning, green infrastructure development, replanting with native species, and remediation of contaminated and sealed soils are a few proven approaches to reverse this worrying development.

With all of this in mind, our class wanted to personally vet each item that we were purchasing to make sure none of the toxins that are outlined by the Red List were not contained in its making. The first thing of concern for us was the wood we wanted to purchase for the project. Although not commonly realized, wood often has many harmful chemicals that are not known by the average consumer. We were initially going to use pressure treated wood from a typical box hardware store however, once we found out that all the wood sold was treated with dangerous chemicals, we instead for a local source for wood that treats the wood for weather protection and rot. By doing this, we are not only making sure that we are protecting ourselves and the environment, we are supporting a local, small business and not funding a chain store that prioritizes money over sustainability.

Because the red list imperative allows us to use materials with chemicals on the red list if they are inexpensive, we have been able to find many materials to up-cycle for our project. We are taking old flower beds that have been donated and re-purposing them as hive boxes, and because they are free we are able to still follow the red list imperatives. We also have the ability to get wood from a wood-shop that uses tornado ruins to make our furniture at the HIVE. For the materials such as nails that we are unable to find without contaminants of the red list, we are able to purchase inexpensive ones so that we can still pass the imperative. Less than 10% of our total budget can be on the red list, which is where the nails come into play. Our other goal is to have the wood-shop class create seating for us from reclaimed wood from the tornado. This will positively affect us because the wood will not be treated with the chemicals on the red list, and if it does end up being treated, since we are not paying for it, we can still use all those materials.