Double Dipping for LEED Materials Credits

There is an agricultural co-op in Texas that has 20 years experience growing organic
cotton. My company makes various textiles exclusively from this U.S cotton. They need
support. We are entirely chemical free on the agricultural side , and in the fabric finishing.
These farmers need our support. My competitors are Chines, Indian, Pakistani and Turkish.
All CO2 emitters all the way through even if their certification is as exhaustive as the Texas
farmer co-op. So here we are cotton textiles from a farmer owned farmer run co-op> A 100 year old Mexican mill that is run by water power and is worker owned and worker operated. And our family textile business going on 30 years of effort to be clean.

Very good points on the downside of agricultural renewables. Not only is the direct toxic chemical & water usage high and ecosystem diversity low in standard industrial ag as previously noted, but energy use and soil loss also can be significant. In Pharos, we've decided to call this out by only giving partial credit for agricultural renewables that aren't certified organic, with increasing weight to the highest certification levels (e.g., increased weight to an offset program, highest weight to full CoC organic).

Suresh, MRc7: Certified Wood (MRc6 for CS projects) only counts "new" wood, so recycled-content wood, even if FSC-certified, does not contribute. It would, of course, contribute to MRc4.

If you have FSC Certified Pure with recycled content, can you claim the full value of the FSC and also the recycled content?

At least minus one (-1) point for using cotton in the first place. My understanding it is an intense crop that requires a large amount of pesticides, water, monoculture crop with little if no seed diversity, etc. For example 1/3 Pound of agricultural chemicals are typically used in the production of a single cotton T-shirt. The United States is the second largest cotton producer, behind China. With that logic I bet a lot of this cotton comes from China, aweful large carbon trail. As an Architect and a USGBC member for many years, I find this collection of LEED points more disturbing by the day. Just spending five minutes I'd say this cotton use should be at least minus three (-3) points.

You guys raise some great issues. I tend to agree with you that cotton products shouldn't be allowed to earn points, at least not if its virgin cotton. There have been proposals in the LEED committees to restrict the Rapidly Renewable Materials credit to materials that have been certified under a sustainable management program, such as organic cotton--I think that those proposal will now gain some traction.

In the case of cotton insulation, however, we're talking about waste from blue-jean manufacturing. As long as some of us wear jeans there will be fabric waste, and this seems a pretty good use of it. So I wouldn't blame LEED for encouraging use of that.

Finally, on the question of double-dipping in general, we struggled with that many years during my time on the committee. On one hand, there is the simple accounting argument that each item should only be able to count once, or your baseline loses integrity. On the other hand, if something is beneficial in multiple ways it seems right to get more credit for using it than for something that only has one type of benefit. This, too, is something that may be worked out with a more sophisticated approach in a future version of LEED.

I would have to agree with Lawrence, as his points hit the bullseye. Doubledipping LEED...I thought this was a joke. This is exactly the kind of mentality that has driven us into financial and environmental jeopardy. Something for nothing. The goal should be a net zero effect on the environment as a result of human endeavour.