LEED and Sustainability Documentation

• Recycled-content letters by product
• Extraction and manufacturing location, for the 100-mile sourcing valuation
• Environmental Product Declarations and Health Product Declarations where the manufacturer publishes them
• VOC content for compounds, sealants, and coatings

It was MR 5 under LEED 2009, at a 500-mile radius. In LEED v4 and v4.1 it is not a credit at all — it is a valuation factor inside Sourcing of Raw Materials. Products that are extracted, manufactured and purchased within 100 miles of the project site count at 200% of their cost toward that credit.

Three things changed and all three make it harder: the radius dropped from 500 miles to 100, all three locations have to qualify rather than just the manufacturer, and it stopped being a point you could chase on its own.

The leg most people forget is purchased. Extraction and manufacturing are fixed by the product, but the purchase and distribution location is the branch — and that is the one a distributor controls. A supplier shipping every order out of one Front Range warehouse puts most of the Western Slope outside 100 miles before the material has left the building. Five yards means the distribution leg is satisfiable across most of the state.

The clearest case is board on a Vail or Eagle job. American Gypsum's wallboard plant is at 740 Highway 6 in Gypsum, Colorado — about eight miles from our Eagle yard. Extraction, manufacture and purchase all sit comfortably inside 100 miles of most of the Vail Valley.

Other Colorado-made lines worth knowing before the spec is written: Johns Manville, headquartered in Denver with Colorado manufacturing; Bron Tapes, Denver; St. Vrain Block, Colorado-made. Send us the project address and we will tell you which products clear 100 miles from it and which do not.