The quest to be sustainable once centered around basic strategies such as recycling content and adhering to a few recognized standards. Now, the quest for sustainability is much more sophisticated and nuanced. Being green is in an evolution as the practices, metrics, and designations become more advanced and meaningful. In this episode of Tile Tech Talk, we speak with William Paddock, a leading expert in this arena and founder/principal of WAP Sustainability. William educates us on the things we in the tile industry need to know about sustainability to be relevant today and into the future. Get ready to learn…and plan to share with your teams, as well.
Video Transcript
Tile Talk Episode 6
Irene:
Welcome to both of you to our Tile Tech Talk.
Noah:
Thanks for having us.
Irene:
… and thank you, William Paddock, for being here, and of course, Noah is always here for our Tile Tech Talks, very grateful for that. But today we’re bringing in our go-to pro to talk sustainability issues. Oh, don’t act humble, you know it’s true, you’re the man. So as we get started, could you just do a little introduction of yourself for the folks watching this who do not know you, sir?
William Paddock:
Sure. So I’m William Paddock, I’m the managing director of WAP Sustainability, we’re a global consultancy that lives at the nexus of the buyer/seller relationship between manufacturers and building owners. So a lot of times there’s a lot of specifications and requirements and green criteria that a manufacturer is being asked to do by the building owner. And we help facilitate that and help make sense of it for the building owner, but also help make sense of it for the building product manufacturer.
Irene:
Awesome. Well, how long have you worked with Crossville? I know you’ve been around a while now.
William Paddock:
Ooh-
Noah:
I’d say it’s maybe five or six-
William Paddock:
I was going to say, more than five, less than 10, somewhere in there-
Noah:
Yeah, that’s more like it.
William Paddock:
… so a good, healthy relationship.
Irene:
Yeah. Well, cool. So as we get started, I really would like this conversation to be a bit of a sustainability 101, because things are evolving and changing, and I know we get new people in our industry all the time. So just out of the gate, if you could give us, from a tile industry perspective, an explanation of sustainability and its relevance to products and processes in this industry? And for those of us who make it, sell it and specify it, what do we really need to know?
William Paddock:
I think what tile needs to know is the same for really any industry, is, there’s impacts across the whole value chain of making a product. And then that product going into whatever its intended use, whether we’re a T-shirt or we’re tile. So everything has got an intended use and then everything has an end-of-life, something happens at the end-of-life. And so those impacts are like a three-part formula, some products have huge end-of-life scenario, some products, most of their footprint happens in the use phase, some products have significant impact associated with the manufacturing and sourcing of all the raw materials of a product. So the challenge for any product manufacturer is really to understand that, is where do the impact happen, and then how can they address those impacts with a variety of different strategies and tactics.
So that fundamental concept resonates into a lot of the different types of programming, is, it’s important for manufacturers and it’s being asked of manufacturers by buyers of products. And this is, again, not specific to just building product industry, this is happening in consumer products with groups like Amazon, and big consumer products companies like Unilever and Procter & Gamble committing to this, is that if you make a product, there’s some obligation to understand those impacts and be doing something about it. One planet mentality, everyone working together and rowing in the same direction. So for tile, obviously we’ve got raw material sourcing and everything that comes with that, we’ve got the manufacturing process and the drying and firing and some energy intensive applications. Tile makes up for that in terms of its durability and use, and so it’s use stage energy is significantly less than comparable functional products, and then tile’s got a great end-of-life story. So managing across those impacts is really important for the tile industry to take to heart, and for each manufacturer to develop their own approach to dealing with those impacts.
Irene:
Yeah. So could you help us with some terminology that gets thrown around quite a bit, like life cycle assessment, product transparency, those are two that come to mind right away. What is some lingo that we can latch onto and make sense of?
William Paddock:
Sure. So the easiest way I’ve found to describe it is, the life cycle assessment is the accounting exercise. So as I talked about those different life cycle stages of a product, to put numbers to those is really an accounting exercise. So the LCA is the act of accounting, and the whole process of accounting for it, but that just leaves you with an Excel document, right? And so that’s the balance sheet financial comparison, right? Just numbers, to then make it pretty and communicatable, that’s where something like an EPD comes into play, is it’s taking the LCA numbers and results and putting it into a standard reporting format so that everyone expects the same thing when they see it.
Irene:
An EPD stands for…
William Paddock:
Environmental Product Declaration.
Irene:
Okay, great.
William Paddock:
Yeah. So those, one’s an accounting exercise, one’s a reporting exercise, is really the best way to, I’ve found, to delineate the two. And product transparency documents is really the act of reporting about your product, so EPDs are a form of product transparency document. We’ll talk, I’m sure, at some point about things like Health Product Declarations or Declare labels, those are other vehicles for product transparency. So it’s this idea that a manufacturer is being transparent with the results of this sort of impact analysis, right? So the LCA results being made transparent is a form of product transparency.
Irene:
Gotcha.
Noah:
So for us, our LCA is in the background, it’s not something we put on the website. The outward-facing documents that’s required by LEED or other things is the EPD, whether it be industry-specific, which we participated in, or the one that we did for ourselves. We post the EPD on the website, the LCA is background work, it’s not a front-facing doc.
William Paddock:
Yeah. A good way to think about it is, an LCA report’s fat, it’s got a lot into it, it’s got a lot of underlying assumptions, it may also have some sensitive or proprietary data, it’s talking about units produced and energy value used. And so originally there was a lot of sensitivity to making those things public, people were afraid, “Oh, somebody could recreate or know my financials,” or all that. “They know where my suppliers are.” Maybe, but to mitigate that fear of disclosure, the EPD was created as that vehicle to protect the confidential and proprietary business information, but do so in a standardized, consistent format so these documents are usable. That’s really the backstory.
Irene:
That’s cool, I actually have never heard that, and I’ve been doing this a long time. So thanks for that clear explanation, filled in some blanks for me.
William Paddock:
Happy to.
Irene:
Awesome. So one thing I’m noticing, because I’ve been in the mix as everyone on this call has for a while, we’ve gone from, in my perception, the discussion of being green, and that just sounds very altruistic and appealing, and then we got more sophisticated and we got into recycled content and LEED points. And now I think, personally, I’m seeing in our industry and across industries even more nuances coming into play with, as you’ve already referenced, EPDs and HPDs. And could you walk us through the progression of sustainability and where we’re at today? It seems we’re on a path and we’re heading somewhere maybe more meaningful, and I’d love to know your take on that.
William Paddock:
So I think we’re learning, right? I’ve been guilty of describing sustainability as this prepubescent, gangly teenager that’s awkward and uncomfortable, and I think we’re coming into our more adult self as an industry, and you learn a lot in that development stage. And so I think taking something like recycled content and vehicle miles, distance from project, that where some of the original “definitions” of what a green product was, and we figured out with data that actually, those are really small percentages of the total impact. So it’s like spending all of your energy around those topics to really only net at maybe a 1% reduction in carbon footprint, and so we realized there was a lot of impact left on the table.
William Paddock:
And so those requirements in the line of thinking matured, to play off my adolescent learning, so I think that’s the big aha of why things are changing. Other things is, sometimes recycled content, as an example, actually doesn’t have a lower carbon footprint, it’s material that doesn’t make it to the landfill and there is a win there. But it depends on what is your North Star, if your North Star is less material in landfill and a bunch of recycled content, and extended producer responsibility programs and things like that are an awesome outcome. If your North Star is preventing catastrophic damage associated with climate change and lower carbon footprint, then you might drive in a different direction as a result of that. And so I think that’s what’s driving a lot of the rhetoric about movement from recycled content and how close is the project to the manufacturer, to more quantitative tools like the EPD or some of the VOC certificates, or some of the transparency documents around material ingredient health.
Irene:
So as this evolution is taking place, how educated do you think our audiences are? Are specifiers really attuned to this progression? And I’m asking for a basic awareness of how we in the industry can help guide the learning, as we learn, how can we convey that to the people who are specifying?
William Paddock:
I think that’s a wonderful question. I mean, I think we’re still learning, I wouldn’t say by any means we’ve reached any form of mass accumulation of people who understand and can regurgitate quickly. I mean, even within companies who do amazing things, there’s still shadows of their sales force who have no idea that their company even does this stuff, so it’s really a… Yeah, we’re not there yet, is the short answer, it’s still-
Noah:
And I think we’re still trying to figure it out, right? I mean, you asked about this progression from where we were to where we are. I mean, our company’s a 100 years old, at our parent company, but in the last 30 years as a tile manufacturer, we started sustainability effort because it just made sense to us and our process and doing the right thing for the environment. And then it evolved into these things that people were asking us for, recycling content, or how far are you away from… And then the market really started to evolve to ask more questions, and that’s the point where we understood it’s one thing to not do harm, it’s another to do good. And it was evolving the questions that we were getting from the marketplace, so not only what we were doing as a manufacturer needed to evolve, but also what we were able to provide to the people who wanted to buy our tile did.
Noah:
So, I mean, I think that’s where William came in for us, which is, this world is evolving and we could maybe manage the world where it said, “Check this box if you have this document.” But the day that started to evolve into this, like William said, started to evolve into an adult, where somebody actually wanted to say, “Well, what’s in that?” Or more than just check the box, that evolution of where it’s starting now and where it’s going, we are very much trying to figure out how do you navigate it, how do you educate about it, and where do we go in a responsible way. And William’s helped us get there, because it’s a field to navigate.
William Paddock:
Yeah. And then, I think successes also breed new problems, right? So if we go back in time, things like building code and the definition of a green building, as one example, has traditionally been tied to energy efficiency, right? The old adage, “Your old home is leaky, it’s got crummy insulation, you need the weather strip and you need new windows and spray foam insulation.” And all these things that essentially tighten up the building envelope and allow your mechanical systems to run more efficiently, that was the mindset. Well, that’s happened in a lot of cases, and at one point the inefficiency of buildings was really high, and it is, there’s still tons of room there. But for buildings that have performed and have better energy efficiency, a new problem has emerged, is that the energy of the lifetime of that building, whether it be 60 years, 60 years is usage standard, actually is smaller now, because we’ve made buildings so energy efficient, than the carbon spend of all the materials that go into the building.
William Paddock:
So we have this teeter-totter, right? Looking at myself in the window here. At one point, operational carbon associated with energy of a building was super high and materials and all the carbon that went into the building products, meh, it was whatever. But everything lowered, and then the teeter-totter shifted where it’s really more a little balanced, where the embodied carbon emissions of all of the products that go into the building, all the concrete, steel, all the way through finishing, all the stuff behind the wall that you don’t see, that now has a bigger footprint than the 60 year lifespan of the building.
William Paddock:
And so, the other way to think about it is that’s a huge deposit in one year, or whatever the lifetime of the building is. So there’s this whole tide value of carbon idea where that just happens, that’s like a massive deposit in carbon, to just boom at the build, and then the operational carbon just trickles in over 60 years to get back to par. So if we can address that bucket of embodied carbon that I’m illuminating here, that’s a problem that we can now see with data. We’ve got an adult point of view on this thing, and we’re saying, “Geez, there’s a whole lot of opportunities to figure out how to strip carbon out of that initial spend, out of that initial deposit.”
Irene:
Really interesting. So was that just the awareness of carbon accumulation of data over time as we’ve just grown up-
William Paddock:
Yeah.
Irene:
… in our learning? Yeah.
William Paddock:
Yeah, we’ve gotten more intelligent with the data, we have more data and then we’re activating that data for knowledge purposes. There’s a professor that has a… I don’t know, I’m terrible at always being able to regurgitate these things. But it’s a data hierarchy, and creation is the first stage, so we create a bunch of data then we use the data for something, and then knowledge is the third level up, and then wisdom. So we’re literally living in this data hierarchy where we’re traversing that use and knowledge stage, and saying like, “Great, we’re looking at all this data, and, oh man, there’s a whole set of insights, if we can just transfer that knowledge, we could really get somewhere.” And that’s a pretty cool place to be.
Irene:
That’s good business, to get all that deep data and then actually use it, what a concept.
William Paddock:
For sure.
Irene:
And to that end, could you speak to the business side of this? Obviously we want to do right by our planet, and we are very motivated in that way, but what does that mean for us as business people? How does this translate into just being really intelligent about how we’re running our companies?
William Paddock:
Well, the first thing I’ll say from a manufacturing perspective, if you’re tracking your carbon footprint, there’s always a correlation between carbon and cost. So for instance, if you have a high operational footprint inside your company, that’s because you’re spending a lot on utilities, natural gas, propane, energy, electricity. And other than maybe gasoline in the last four or five years, most of those things haven’t decreased in cost. In fact, they’re on a consistent trajectory. So if you’re not flat-lining, you’re increasing, which means your cost of manufacturing, your cost of goods is going up. So there’s a whole equation of, if you can manage the operational carbon footprint of your facilities, it’s a cost control solution. That’s one, so that’s just good business, the product side also has some tie to it in terms of cost, risk, exposure.
William Paddock:
We don’t know the future of where any sort of carbon legislation will come but we’re closer to that now than we were three, four years ago and we’ll see where that all nets out. But within the supply chain and where you have huge pockets of carbon within the supply chain as a manufacturer, that too is risk, exposure, cost, and so that can be mitigated and managed. This is all on just the hard cost, I think there’s a whole business opportunity here for companies to explore. One is, you’ve got buyers who have vocally said that they’re interested in low carbon products, or they want to buy low carbon, they want to decarbonize their buildings and their products that they have themselves.
William Paddock:
So just in the building product industry, I mean, groups like Amazon and Salesforce and MasterCard, LinkedIn, there’s a ton of the tech companies that are working to drive out carbon. And we’re seeing residential commitments for that, like a top 10 residential home builder just announced that they were going to start looking at embodied carbon of products for residential, which is catatonically different than just a commercial space. So there’s a business opportunity within that, just being able to compete in that marketplace. So I think two sides, controlling cost in a new business or preserving of existing business with client relationships that a lot of these manufacturers have.
Irene:
Yeah, that’s great insight, I love that. Thank you for the rundown, very helpful. So to get back to Crossville in some specificity here in talking about how we become transparent with products, I know back in 2018, Retro Active 2.0 was launched and then it earned Living Product Challenge petal certifications. And as we look to potentially progress in participation in this kind of thing, could you explain the value in participating in something… Well, just explain Living Product Challenge for us, and then why it was wise for us to participate and earn that certification?
William Paddock:
Sure. So the Living Product Challenge is a product certification that’s maintained, owned, managed by the International Living Future Institute, so ILFI is the acronym. And so if you’re not familiar with them, you may be familiar with the Living Building Challenge which is their building certification, they also are the entity that owns and operates the Declare label, which is a material ingredient transparency document. They have other programs, but from a built environment side they have a Living Community Challenge, and they have a Living Building Challenge and they have a Living Product Challenge. And so the grand vision is living communities full of living buildings, and those living buildings are packed full of living products, that’s the big picture.
William Paddock:
But a super cool organization based up in Seattle, and so they’ve created this Living Product Challenges like a premiere sustainability multi-attribute certification. So 20 different imperatives that are bucketed under, I think it’s seven different petals, and then you can have full, or petal or just certified products. And it’s been adopted by groups like Mohawk or Owens Corning or Armstrong Flooring, Humanscale, a variety of leading manufacturers that have really leaned into this certification. It’s hard to get, it’s all product-based, which I think is unique as well. And so Crossville went through the certification process with Retro Active 2.0, earned petal certification, which is very challenging to get, it’s not the full certification but it’s definitely up there. [inaudible 00:25:27] the product is a net positive in the waste category and a variety of other features, so it’s a heck of an accomplishment to work through that. I think there’s maybe some plans to expand that to other products that are in the future, know-
Noah:
Yeah. Yeah, I think we’re going to try, obviously it’s a hard certification to get so we’ve got some revamps of a couple of products that really started in a very sustainable way. So we’re looking at if those products are evolving into its next evolution of life, should we also evolve its sustainability story? So we’re hopeful that we might be able to go from one product to a couple of more for the Living Product Challenge.
William Paddock:
I was going to add that part of the fun of Living Product Challenge is, it definitely is a badge of honor to carry with products, but then it’s specified in LEED as, those products are an exemplary elite credit and the material ingredient reporting credit under the… There’s an optimization criteria that’s associated with that, so for specifiers looking for products that contribute highly into LEED, that’s a good solution. The others, Living Building Challenge in their 4.0 certification started to include the requirement to purchase a certain number of Living products as part of LBC builds. And so there’s a series of projects, LEED projects and Living Building Challenge products that would love to know about Retro Active 2.0, because it would certainly help them and their certification process to know about it, to spec it, to use it in the build.
Irene:
Is Living Building commercial or residential or both in its focus?
William Paddock:
It’s most in its focus, I think there’s a lot of commitments right now around commercial projects, which is pretty fun. But both, there are both.
Irene:
Okay, great. Yeah. Yeah. You illuminated some key points, because I was going to say for those who sell tile, what do we need to know to highlight when getting people information about product, but I think you really… Especially in addressing the points in LEED, that was really, really helpful.
William Paddock:
Okay, good.
Noah:
Living Product Challenge for us was one of those ones where we’re trying to find the balance between a program that was just doing the right thing and what the market was asking us for. So I would say that and the embodied carbon conversation that we’re starting to deal with in both arenas are being driven by both us wanting to be leaders in the sustainability field, and as well as the questions that are now coming from the marketplace. From the A&D, large firms that we work with, they’re asking for these things, so in both respects we’re trying to provide both when we can.
William Paddock:
Sure.
Irene:
How saturated is the market in terms of organizations that offer certifications? Just curious. Yeah, obviously we went with this one and we entrusted your guidance to vet and select, but just out of curiosity, how many players are out there trying to put a stamp on things?
William Paddock:
Yeah, probably too many is the real answer. I mean, I think manufacturers really have to be judicious in figuring out why, what’s the reason, and what’s the motivation. Obviously in this space the customer makes a big difference, if a customer wants you to have X certification and they’re going to buy so many millions of dollars worth of product as a result of that certification, if I’m a manufacturer, I’m probably jumping through that Hulu. But we are always cautiously advising our clients what certifications to pursue, making sure that there’s credibility and good processes behind each certification. Last thing we want to do is drive a client into a certification and then have that thing not survive, then be the only certified company under that certification scheme. And we’ve seen that, and we just don’t want to be affiliated with that kind of stuff. So yeah, I think every manufacturer needs to be a little judicious about really figuring that out.
And then probably the other thing I’ll mention is, a lot of the certification have similar attributes, and so nobody gets up out of bed every day and just loves to read standards, but we actually do have people that love to read standards and figure out what’s the commonalities, what’s the differences, “How do I move from one standard to another standard and do just a little bit more work that cover both standards?” So sometimes there’s a way to shoot one shot and hit two different targets at the same time. Maybe there’s a little Davy Crockett, Tennessee reference in that. But figuring out ways to make this least painful for manufacturers is really something I think we bring to the table and try to help our clients navigate that, plus, not getting into something they probably shouldn’t get into, or it will just be a great waste of money for them.
Noah:
Right.
Noah:
There’s a little crystal ball to it, there’s a little bit of a “Okay, who’s going to get traction? You can be asked once, but are you going to get asked twice or 10 times?” So there’s a little bit of trying to figure out which is the right direction to go. I would say the number of real players of attraction maybe could number in the five, 10, 15, 20, but the number of, “Hey, have you heard about this?” is a new one every day.
Irene:
Right, and there’s so much resource that is poured into these things internally to meet the certification or…
William Paddock:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Noah:
Yeah.
Irene:
So, yeah, we only have so many people and so much time, it needs to be beneficial.
William Paddock:
And you want to stay focused too, because sometimes the market reacts to different things based on societal pressures, and while that’s important, manufacturers are still trying to deal with the last shiny object that came through. So I think when we work with standards groups or other groups like ILFI or LEED or other things, I mean, that’s a position we’re trying to take too, is to say, “Hey, let’s focus on what’s important, ignore the shiny objects and keep driving in the direction.” Otherwise, manufacturers are mixed-messaged to death and we have no cumulative impact. We just have just a scattered shot of random acts of greenness with no, I’m getting back to that North Star analogy, with no North Star, and that can be really problematic.
Irene:
Absolutely.
Noah:
Yeah, that’s common though, I think, from what we found. And that’s where we started, I think, a few years ago, which is, “Let’s put all these pieces of the puzzle into something that can allow us to focus in the right direction,” and not just be grabbing it, juggling balls that are in the air.
William Paddock:
Well, it just gets too muddy. I’ve watched a full shift from single attribute to multi-attribute because a single attribute like recycled content and road miles wasn’t enough, so now we need to go multi-attribute. Then you saw a proliferation of multi-attribute standards, like tile with Green Squared, NSF 140, BIFMA level, NSF 332. I mean, every industry associated multi-attribute because the industry was asking for multi-attribute, “Oh, gee, is multi-attributes too confusing?” “There’s too much stuff in there, it’s a certificate, I have questions about single attribute information.” “All right, let’s split that out. I’m curious about carbon footprint, give me an EPD. I’m curious about ingredients, give me a Declare label. I’m curious about VOC content, give me a GREENGUARD certificate. Oh, I’m curious about social equity in the supply chain, give me a Just Label.”
Irene:
Wow.
Noah:
It’s tough, but I think, to a little bit allude to what William was saying before, we’re better poised now to respond to any of those things because we’ve started with trying to build a foundation of, what ingredients do we have, what is our impact on the environment? And the things that can then come out of that are a little bit easier to respond to because you’ve done the infrastructure work on the back end that we’ve been doing with William for the last couple of years.
William Paddock:
Yeah.
Irene:
Yeah. Sounds like when the foundation is there, filling in the blanks for whatever attribution-
Noah:
It’s easier, for sure.
Irene:
… is requested a lot easier than just reactively, “Oh, let’s figure this out.” Yeah, and that’s something I’ve always appreciated about Crossville, is the forethought, not just a reactive action. Yeah.
William Paddock:
Yeah. Don’t buy the trend, buy the purpose.
Irene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely. So as we look ahead, I know you’ve addressed quite a bit of this, but just maybe a closing, put-a-bow-on-the-package thought of what should we be apprised of? I’m hearing the mention of embodied carbon quite a bit in this conversation, and where should our radars go up in terms of this topic?
Noah:
We’re early, so don’t get too far on the…
Irene:
Sure. Oh yes, yes, but-
Noah:
We’re in the knowledge hierarchy of data there,…
Irene:
Right, just where things are headed, and if we want to be intelligent about how we approach this just as people in the industry. No promises made thus far.
William Paddock:
Well, I think for tile in particular, there’s a project that’s been going on for a while that we were part of with TCNA around a material ingredient, a guide. And the project was to assess the most commonly used ingredients in tile and cementitious grouts and mortars using this method called the GreenScreen For Safer Chemicals assessment. And so that project, basically, it evaluated substances at a pretty detailed level and acknowledged that the most material issue for tile manufacturers is really focusing on their stains and glazes and being transparent about that. That’s the most useful information that can be conveyed to architects and designers looking to specify tile. The rest of the body, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t carry a ton of risk and sensitivities. And we’re seeing that play out in groups like the Health Product Declaration Collaborative who’s got some special conditions and looking at form-specific hazards.
So some of those concerns are mitigated, but still some opportunity around stains and glazes. But by and large, it’s netted out that tile, compared to other flooring products, if you’re looking for something safe and low hazard, low risk, it’s a great option for you. So that has minimized that as a huge barrier for the tile industry to focus on. So there’s that, the second piece would be carbon, and I think this really has a lot of opportunity. One, the description of the teeter-totter and operational carbon versus embodied carbon in buildings, that’s a big piece. Tile has a huge story there related to durability and longevity, you get tired of looking at it before it wears out, but if that message can be conveyed into that embodied carbon ecosystem, I think that plays well.
The add-on to that is that we’re starting to see, and we’ll know more in the next really month or two, as part of the Biden CLEAN Futures Act, there’s some embodied carbon legislation from a procurement standpoint that’s being looked at from a federal government perspective. So we may see it in buildings, that there’s a requirement around thresholds for embodied carbon in specific categories, it may live just with more infrastructure related products. We’ll see what’s sticky and what hangs around in the bill. Regardless of the federal level, we are seeing by clean legislation happen in different states, like California, just in four categories, doesn’t impact tile, setting limits for carbon footprint or products. And we’re seeing that legislation now, I think it’s 28 states and municipalities that have some form of a bill either in-session or being written.
So I think it feels sticky because it’s getting written into policy, so I don’t think that topic’s going to go away. There’s also incentives around some of the low carbon materials, or getting all the way to a point where products and materials actually sequester, they have a negative carbon number. So I think that’s becoming a big opportunity for tile, and forecasting into the future, I think we’re at a point in time with all of the… I mean, I’m in Nashville, so same with you, I mean, we’ve had tornadoes, we’ve had derochos, which I didn’t even know were a thing, we just had a hail storm come through that tore up my roof. We’ve had a ridiculous amount of weather in a period of time and a lot of that’s getting attributed to some of the impacts of climate change. And that’s just my little ecosystem, worldwide there’s all sorts of crazy. So anyway, I think the climate change, the carbon focus-
Noah:
The legislature, I think the legislature.
William Paddock:
Yeah.
Noah:
I mean, that for sure creates a need that isn’t there before, you go from, “Does that sound like a good idea?” To, “Somebody wants that,” to, “That got legislated.” Then you’re talking about different amounts of energy and focus that you’re putting into it for whatever reason.
William Paddock:
No doubt. And financial markets, I mean, lord, the Larry Fink’s at BlackRock and others are putting downward pressure into company and saying, “I need more clarity on your sustainability ESG performance,” and required reporting popping up in parts of Europe and New Zealand, it’s got wind in its sails. And figuring out what’s a company’s role in the climate change conversation has gone from really a boutique, childish type play to, “We’re graduating high school and things are getting real.”
Irene:
There’s a lot going on.
Noah:
Yeah. And the customers that we sell to, from a commercial A&D standpoint, are the large A&D firms leading this conversation, so there’s no doubt about it that our customers are helping the momentum…
William Paddock:
There’s a stat I use from time to time that, I think, it’s 85% of building projects over $20 million tend to use a green building certification program, and that puts them in this discussion. They’re not your 7,500 square foot strip malls, historically it hasn’t even been in the residential marketplace, but I think that is right on the razor edge of starting to teeter-totter. And COVID hadn’t helped that either with the work from home mentality. I kid about this, is that with all these green building certifications and commercial office space, the idea was like, “Come to our office space, we have healthy materials, these are safe places for you to spend 60% of your day, with ingredients that aren’t going to kill you and give you cancer. But go home to whatever you got at home, sleep in whenever you’re sleeping in.” But now it’s like you’re living at work, you’re working from home, there’s no control or view over the… The same principles that were used for commercial buildings don’t exist in most people’s homes, and that’s going to be a rhumb. And I think people are going to solution against that and carry those same principles for commercial buildings into the residential marketplace.
Noah:
Yeah, I agree.
Irene:
Wow, there is truly so much going on. I love that you had so much to say on that last question, what a bow on the package. Great information, seriously. Well, we so appreciate your time, I know you’re busy and we’re very grateful that you carved some moments for us. Because I think there’s some really good learning in this conversation.
Noah:
Yeah, and I think you’ll-
William Paddock:
Yeah, I’m happy to-
Noah:
I’m sorry, go ahead.
William Paddock:
I was just going to say happy to have the conversation.
Noah:
Yeah. Yeah, thanks for so much for your time. I think you’ll see more coming from us, Irene, from the Living Product Challenge side and just the embodied carbon conversation. And then continuing to make sure we’re trying to be leaders in the subject and give the market what it wants, so more to come. I think for some of this we’re in the beginning stages.
Irene:
Excellent. Well, thank you guys both.
Noah:
All right, have a good rest of your week.
Irene:
Yeah.
William Paddock:
See you.
