Building product manufacturers have been working to make their products more sustainable over the last several years. But it is no longer enough to call a product “green” and leave it at that.
In today’s built environment, architects, engineers, contractors and building owners want to know what is behind the claim of more environmentally sound manufactured products. They want to know how much carbon went into making the product. They want to know what materials are in it and where they came from. And now more than ever, they want to know what happens to the product when its useful life is over.
The latest version of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED program reflects that shift. LEED v5 was released in April 2025 with a much stronger focus on carbon, including the emissions in making and using building materials.
For manufacturers, that means having good information about a product’s carbon footprint can become an important part of doing business.
Documentation is Key
Under LEED v5’s Materials and Resources requirements, projects can use Environmental Product Declarations, or EPDs, to compare the carbon of building materials. LEED Platinum projects also must demonstrate a 20% reduction in embodied carbon for major structural, enclosure and hardscape materials.
An EPD serves as a product report card. It gives building teams information they can use to compare products based on their environmental impact. USGBC’s guidance for product manufacturers points manufacturers toward EPDs and other documentation that can help their products contribute to LEED projects.
This doesn’t mean that manufacturers have to reinvent their products or give anything a complete overhaul. It means that those industry leaders may increasingly need to measure, document and explain what they are already doing.
Transparency Matters, Too
Aside from carbon, building teams are also paying more attention to what products are made of, where raw materials come from and whether products can be reused or recycled. USGBC’s Building Product Sustainability Performance Program offers guidance for this, taking a look at product sustainability that includes factors such as climate, human health, social impacts and the economy. This provides useful information about manufacturers that building project teams can use to evaluate them.
According to the USGBC, LEED does not certify individual products, but rather buildings and spaces. However, products can affect a project’s ability to meet certain requirements.
Indiana Manufacturers Are Working on It
Hoosier manufacturers are already investing in ways to lower the carbon impact of building materials.
In East Chicago, Ozinga is developing a large-scale cement mill designed to produce about1 million tons of low-carbon cement materials each year. And Heidelberg Materials has also converted its Clark County facility into a slag grinding operation. Slag can be used as a replacement for some traditional cement in concreate, reducing the carbon impact of the finished material.
Both projects demonstrate the shift manufacturers are making in sustainability. It is a move that can turn environmental data into information that their building customers want to see before they decide on a product.
