CI 2009 MRc4: Recycled Content

You use the lowest percentage and urge the manufacturer to give us all better numbers.

Hi Michelle,

The calculations for MRc4 exclude any reused furniture from both the nominator and denominator, so you can't count them toward recycled content, but they don't count against you either. You should NOT deduct them from your Total Project Cost as a separate operation.

If you download the LEEDuser CI Materials Calculator from the Documentation Toolkit tab, you'll see that it does these adjustments for you automatically. 

No, not usually. It may count as material reuse under MRc3, however.

The line between reclaimed and recycled is fuzzy, and can be crossed pretty readily. If you don't have enough reclaimed materials to earn a point in MRc3 (or if you have extra material, after earning a point), you can count them in MRc4 instead.

Hi Holly, That language is right out of the LEED ID&C Reference Guide (page 245 at the bottom, in my 2009 edition). So I don't see any reason to question it. Yes, it would include freight and state sales tax.

Susie, I am less familiar with CI than NC, but my understanding from the Reference Guide is that MEP is not excluded from CI as it is from BD&C systems—is that correct? If so then this seems to be consistent.

Lauren, if it is purchased separately and you have separate documentation for it, I think making it its own item would be fine. Alternatively, if it is included in the cost of the furniture, then you could treat the furniture as an assembly with an appopriate percentage of compliant material. For more on the assembly approach, see the Checklists tab above.

I'm sure that there must be a MF designation for glass partitions, or the equivalent, no?

Usually glass is in Div 8 (around 08 40 00 area) and it maybe included as part of an assembly.

Elizabeth, the costs should be consistent, yes—provivded I have understood your question properly.

Méabh, you can use this content for MRc4, for only "new wood" is applicable to MRc7, not recycled wood.

Thanks Tristan, but my query is regarding a product(panel) that is made of new wood and steel. The new wood in the panel has FSCIndependent, third-party verification that forest products are produced and sold based on a set of criteria for forest management and chain-of-custody controls developed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international nonprofit organization. FSC criteria for certifying forests around the world address forest management, legal issues, indigenous rights, labor rights, multiple benefits, and environmental impacts.-certified board at its core. The steel casing part of the panel has reycled content in it. Can this product contribute to both credits?
Thanks

Yes but the only the percentage by weight of the wood will count towards MRcc7. See the equation on pg 397 of the Reference Guide.

Thanks for the clarification Susan, my confusion arose from the birds eye view description for this credit where is says "Materials used to earn this credit cannot also be counted for MRc3: Materials Reuse, nor for MRc7: Certified WoodWood from a source that has been determined, through a certification process, to meet stated ecological and other criteria. There are numerous forest certification programs in general use based on several standards, but only the Forest Stewardship Council's standards, which include requirements that the wood be tracked through its chain-of-custody, can be used to qualify wood for a point in the LEED Rating System.,"

Your LEED project boundary will be the complete lease or owned space in any case. If you are keeping walls than you can benefit from that under MR 1.2. If you demo and rebuilt than you probably look for recycled content in the products. In regards to how much you will have to change, there is no official rule that I know i=off. But judging form the new LEED minimum project requirements I would say if 50% of the space or materials get remodeled, changed or refurbished (this includes furniture) than you can probably apply for LEED. I hope that helps to answer your question.

Hi Santhosh, have you been able to make good guesses on these questions? For this forum, it would be great if you can highlight any specific areas of difficulty and note why you are having difficulty, so that we can help you in targeted ways.

Kris, I've never worked with an Owner who wasn't painfully aware of how much money they were spending on a building project. Someone at the company has signed the checks and knows the answer to your first question. Get your PM involved to get you into the right person. For your second question, I would use what is installed at either Substantial Completion or on the first day of Occupancy unless there is a compelling reason to include something that is delayed.

Sandra, any material for which you don't have recycled content or other information would simply be assumed to be noncompliant, so would count toward you total materials cost, but not toward the LEED-compliant portion.

Does that make sense?

It's possible that could make a case for including them if that helps you earn certain credits, but you'd have to work to make that case. I certainly wouldn't say that you "need" to include them.

Yes, they do.

Hi Martin, At first blush I'd say that the salvaged materials approach would apply here, meaning that you should just assign these products a fair market cost. Anyone have any experience suggesting otherwise?

Jason, I would avoid doing this if possible. It will generally make your review go smoother if you are using GBCI's tools, rather than your own tool. It means that the reviewer wouldn not only need to evaluate your data, but also orient themselves to and evaluate your spreadsheet. I think you CAN do it, I would simply avoid it if possible.

The IDC Materials and Resource Calculator (June 2011) which I downloaded from LEED Online has a macro problem when I add a new material line. The macro is not able to copy the formulas to calculate the sustainable Criteria Values as the cells are protected (and of course I can't either.) Thus, the sheet does not calculate the Percent of Total I need to see how we are doing. Has anyone else seen this problem?

Marie, furniture is supposed to be included according to the credit requirements. Can you clarify what you mean about the scope of work? LEED applies to the whole project scope of work, not just the Architect's or Contractor's parts of it.

Hi Michelle,

Valid pre-consumer content includes aluminum scraps from a curtainwall manufacturer, sent back to a smelter to make new aluminum, or waste wood fiber from a sawmill used to make MDFMedium-density fiberboard (MDF): Panel product used in cabinets and furniture; generally made from wood fiber glued together with binder; similar to particleboard, but with finer texture, offering more precise finishing. Most MDF is made with formaldehyde-emitting urea-formaldehyde binder..

Classic examples of internally reused scrap that does NOT qualify as pre-consumer recycled content are:

• steel manufacturering scraps generated within a steel mill and remelted to make new steel within that same mill (as opposed to scraps generated at a factory that makes steel studs, sent back to the steel mill--those WOULD qualify);
• float glass (used to make windows) that comes off the end of a line off-spec or otherwise imperfect, and is remelted in that factory to make new glass.

If you're a BuildingGreen Suite member or subscriber to Environmental Building News you can find a lot more details on this in the article "Recycled Content:
What is it and What is it Worth?"

Yes, I would say that's fine. I would just keep the other info handy in case the  reviewer asks for it.

Reclaimed wood falls under MRc3.2, since it is reused but not recycled through a manufacturing process.

Doesn't it matter what the wood was reclaimed from? For example, if it came from piece of wood left behind after logging, wouldn't this be reclaimed since the 'logging' is a process that's part of wood manufacturing? But, if a tree fell over in a storm and that was used in a table, that wouldn't be considered recycled because it never went through a process of any sort. I don't understand where the line is drawn.

Hi Sara, You're right, it does matter where the wood came from. And the terminology is a bit tricky, especially when it comes to wood. 

The forest products industry sometimes uses the term "reclaimed" wood for logging leftovers, but LEED doesn't consider that reused or recycled. It's important to leave some "slash" in the forest for ecological reasons, so if that were allowed it would be hard to know where to draw the line. 

And, as you suggest, storm-cleanup wood also doesn't count as reused or recycled. For wood fiber to count as recycled  it has to come from and end-use (post-consumerWaste material generated by households or by commercial, industrial and institutional facilities in their role as end-users of the product, which can no longer be used for its intended purpose. This includes returns of materials from the distribution chain (source: ISO 14021). Examples of this category include construction and demolition debris, materials collected through curbside and drop-off recycling programs, broken pallets (if from a pallet refurbishing company, not a pallet-making company), discarded products (e.g., furniture, cabinetry and decking) and urban maintenance waste (e.g., leaves, grass clippings, tree trimmings, etc.).) or a manufacturing process that is further along the chain than the harvesting step (pre-consumer). 

For wood to count as reused for MR credit 3, it has to be in pretty much it's original form (some resurfacing is allowed) and from material that was previously used as a product or building.

There is more about this in the details on this credit available to LEEDuser members.

Lucy, this line is another way of saying "Total."

In other words, all the MRc4–7 "sustainable criteria" are entered together on that same table. The bottom row totals each one of them up.

Ryan, you may already be on top of this, but I think it's important to reframe this question a little bit. There is no such thing as a product that meets the MRc4 criteria. What you are looking for is for your materials budget as a whole to have enough recycled content to meet the credit thresholds. It's possible and likely that many purchases will have zero verifiable recycled content, but they're balanced by purchases that do. If you read our advice above under the Bird's Eye View and Checklists tabs, we have some tips on how to do this—focusing on big-ticket items, for example.

That being said, I can't recommend specific blinds that have high recycled content. From a  Google search for "recycled content blinds," however, it looks like there are a bunch out there.

Is this helpful?

Hi Kevin,
This a great question- at first I assumed that fire extinguisher cabinets would be included in CSI division 21 "Fire Suppression." As it turns out- your contractor is right, and fire extinguishers and cabinets do fall under CSI division 10 "Specialties".
Thus, the cost of both the portable extinguishers and cabinets must be included in the MRc3-7 calculations.

Just checking the obvious—you're using LEED Online v3, for a LEED 2009 project?

I haven't had this problem, but could check around.

Yes, LEED CI 2009 project on the new leedonline.com.
The MR credit forms I'm referring to have "BETA" written across the bottom of them.

Our contractor brought the issue to our attention (after getting really frustrated). To verify the problem, I tried inputting some numbers on MRc4, saved the form, and went to MRc5,6 and 7. Sure enough, none of the material information I had entered appeared on these forms. Went back to MRc4 and the data was still there, though.

Has the materials data transferred properly between MR credits for others?

Patrick, the MR forms were updated as recently as May 2010, and are no longer in Beta. Use the feedback form on LEED Online to ask USGBC to update your project's forms. Hopefully this will fix the problem.

Hopefully the LEED Online people will tell you that any data that has been entered on the forms when they are updated will be deleted with the update. What they won't tell you is the re-entry process is extremely slow as the data populates the other forms.

You have to do the update if you are submitting for the Recycled Content credits because the Beta form doesn't calculate properly.

Also, unless there has been another update in the past month, you need to put a number in every box in the column for MRc4. If there is no recycled content in a line item you still need to put a zero or the form won't calculate. The delay in data entry makes this particularly painful. Fortunately, this seems to be the only of the linked credits that requires the zeros.

I've been looking for this everywhere and I can't find the answer.

What types of products or materials are you concerned about? MasterFormat 2004, which is the framework that defines the Divisions, doesn't use Divisions 15-19.

Division 14 is mostly "appliances and equipment", which are excluded per the Reference Guide.

If you're thinking of Divisions 15 (plumbing and mechanical) and 16 (electrical) from the old MasterFormat 1995, all that is excluded as well.

LEED CI 2009 template is asking us to divide the material cost of the project into two CSI Master format 03-10, 31 & 32; & CSI Master format 12. Could anyone explain me the foll:
1. Is it right to include the wood consumed for making the cabinets in Master format 12?
2.Which list to include flooring (wood, stone, tile & carpet)
3. Which to include glass?
4. Project has used cement, sand & gravel for interior finishes, which list to include this?
5. In which list to include paints, adhesives, sealants?

Thanks for your time.