Collaborative For High Performance Schools & Sustainable Minds partner to promote product transparency in healthy, high-performance schools

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Green building organization for K-12 schools retiring its High Performance Products Database and introducing the SM Transparency Catalog in its place.

January 19, 2017 – The Collaborative for High Performances Schools (CHPS) and Sustainable Minds® (SM) have partnered to promote the use of products with environmental and material health disclosures in K-12 educational facilities. CHPS is a leading national organization working to improve student performance by building the best possible schools, incorporating integrated design, sustainable products, and leadingconstruction practices. Sustainable Minds is the first cloud software solutions provider and program operator to deliver simple, understandable and meaningful product environmental reporting.

October 2016 saw the release of the SM Product Transparency Catalog™, a simple, cloud-based catalog for AEC professionals to easily find products with product transparency information that qualify for the CHPS Criteria and other green building systems. In 2013, the CHPS Criteria incorporated credits for both EPDs (MW 7.1) and material health reporting (MW 10.1), in recognition of the importance of product transparency in helping to create sustainable, healthy school environments.

“CHPS does extremely valuable work through its mission of building sustainable, environmentally-friendly schools. It is truly an honor to help achieve their vision by making it easy for schools and school districts to find the best products,” said Terry Swack, CEO and founder of Sustainable Minds.

This joint effort will make it easier for the AEC community to find products that meet the CHPS Criteria“Environmental Product Declaration” (EPD) and “Material Health Reporting” credit requirements, and for manufacturers to communicate the availability of their compliant products. “CHPS is proud to partner with Sustainable Minds to encourage the use of the SM Transparency Catalog to identify transparent, high performance building products,” said Dr. Stephany Mason, Technical Director of CHPS.

This partnership is a key component in a renewed focus on the CHPS Core Mission – providing all children with the best possible educational environment. To be able to allocate more resources to their Core Mission, CHPS will be retiring its High Performance Products Database in the fall of 2017. This decision led CHPS to the partnership with Sustainable Minds and the SM Transparency Catalog, owing to its low-cost, high-value approach that provides a great user experience while making it easy to find products with transparency information. Aligning with the CHPS mission, the SM Transparency Catalog includes “all brands making credibly greener & healthier products built for the environment.”

To help make transparent products for K-12 projects easier to find, the partnership is providing encouragement to manufacturers to list their products in the SM Transparency Catalog by providing a discount to CHPS Member organizations. Manufacturers benefit from the catalog by gaining greater exposure to their products with transparency information and their product transparency stories, which creates preference for their brand and drives purchasing decisions.

“At Ecore, we transform reclaimed waste into performance surfaces that make people's lives better. Sustainability and transparency are inherent values for us. We love our participation with organizations like CHPS and Sustainable Minds that allow people who value sustainability, as we do, to easily find our products and related certifications,” said Dana Davis, Ecore’s Marketing Coordinator. “CHPS has been a valuable resource in the education market for years, bringing us plenty of leads. I am excited that CHPS and Sustainable Minds are teaming up on the Transparency Catalog. With the addition of CHPS, I think the Transparency Catalog will be an invaluable resource to users looking to specify sustainable and healthy products for schools.

”Learn more about the CHPS/Sustainable Minds partnership, Ecore’s product transparency efforts and their SM Transparency Catalog listing. Webinar: Thu, Feb 2, 2017 2 – 3:00 PM EST Register now>  [2]

About the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS)
The Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, created the nation’s first green building rating program developed especially for school learning environments. The mission of CHPS is to make every school an ideal place to learn. A mission to nationally foster well-designed, constructed, operated, and maintained K-12 educational facilities that enhance student performance; positively impact student, teacher, and staff health and wellness; make education more enjoyable and rewarding; and promote positive environmental stewardship. That is why CHPS works with schools and experts to make changes to ensure that every child has thebest possible learning environment with the smallest impact on the planet. To date, over three hundred CHPS Verified schools have been built nationwide. For more information visit our website at www.chps.net [3].
Contact:
Stephany Mason, Technical Director
415-957-9888, ext. 104; smason@chps.net [4]

About Sustainable Minds®
Sustainable Minds is a B2B cloud provider of environmental product transparency applications, data, and services to help product manufacturers across the value chain design and market greener products. The company is the first cloud software provider and program operator to focus on simplified and understandable environmental reporting. Sustainable Minds is dedicated to operationalizing environmental performance in mainstream product development and manufacturing in an understandable, empowering, and credible way. Its easy-to-use standardized solutions make it possible for manufacturers large and small to drive revenue and growth through greener product innovation. www.sustainableminds.com [5], www.transparencycatalog.com [6].
Contact:
Terry Swack, CEO
617-877-5416; terry@sustainableminds.com [7]