How do I earn the BPDO credits?

There are three credits, with a total of six points available, for the BPDO credits. 

First, it’s essential you are using LEED v4.1 for these credits so make sure to opt-in. You can do so just by toggling in the upper-right-hand corner. I’m not even going to talk about v4 since it makes absolutely no sense to use v4 for these credits. 

Environmental product declarations (EPDs) have two options: option one is to use 20 products for new construction, or 10 for commercial/interiors/core & shell/warehouse, products that have EPDs. You can use a dollar of those products or ten million, doesn’t matter, they all count the same. Once you hit that threshold of 10 or 20 products, you will be earning the point. 

Option two is simply 5 products that have an optimized EPD, which shows a reduction in the global warming potential of those products. There are not that many out there, but you do only need five of them to earn that credit. Sourcing raw materials is one credit, there are two point thresholds: one is at 15% by cost, for products that have things like recycled content and FSC certified wood. There is a second point available at 30%. That number is based off of your total materials cost for divisions 3-10, materials only, not labor. In this case, that’s $4.5 million. So 15% of that number is $700k. I would need $700k of compliant product to earn the sourcing credit.

The material ingredients credit has the same thresholds as EPDs. You need 20 products with transparency documentation for their ingredients on new construction, 10 products on commercial interiors/core & shell/warehouse, and 5 products that have an EPD on ingredient optimization. 

What does that look like? Where is all that documentation? Green Badger is here for you as well. Go to our website, under “resources” at getgreenbadger.com, you will find “The Ultimate Guide to LEED Construction”, which will take you through credit-by-credit. We also provide ebooks that go in detail for every one of those credits, with examples of what is compliant documentation, how you read it, and where should you look to find those products. So if you need some additional information, go to getgreenbadger.com and find our resources, you will have access to all these ebooks which will help you fully understand what you need to do to find compliant products for all your EPDO credits.