Perspectives on greener product development and manufacturing from Sustainable Minds, our partners, customers and contributors.

Software & systems

Transparency is the New Green in product selection, specification & procurement: Understanding the NEW carbon estimating tools for early stage building design

By Sustainable Minds on July 12, 2022

Recorded Thu July 12, 2-3pm ET | 11am PT

Meet the people creating the new crop of carbon accounting / assessment / estimating tools for AECOs to make better decisions about projects. If you've been working to reduce embodied carbon impacts, you're probably familiar with the EC3 tool. It includes a database of EPDs and building impact calculator designed for use in material procurement.

These new tools target early stage design when there’s time to investigate, model and make better informed decisions up front. Each is intended for different project types and provides different types of results.

Sustainable Minds Announces Transparency Catalog v3.0: Now with all Declare® labels AND all HPDs and environmental product declarations (EPD) for building products in North America, with even more powerful MasterFormat® filtering

By Sustainable Minds on September 14, 2020

Do even more in 1 click. Now with 1,500+ brands, across 25 CSI MasterFormat® divisions and 800 sections, Transparency Catalog v3.0 provides deeper and more useful integration of partner data plus new tools that make it even easier to work the way you want, to get the best results – fast.

Cambridge, MA, September 14, 2020 – Sustainable Minds today announced the availability of the Transparency Catalog v3.0, continuing the company’s commitment to deliver simple, easy to use and powerful tools. With this release, architecture, engineering, construction professionals and owners (AECOs) can now find all manufacturers and the Declare labels and Living Product certifications for their products in each CSI MasterFormat® division and section – in 1 click.

Ecodesign Challenge: BOAST YOUR TOAST! Reinvent the toaster - Meet the winners!

By Sustainable Minds on August 11, 2020

Recorded Tue, Aug 11, 11–12pm ET

Sustainable Minds and the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) created an ecodesign challenge for its inaugural Sustainability Deep Dive Conference (June, 2020) to engage the industry in an opportunity for hands-on learning. SM provided our Eco-concept + LCA Software along with a well-defined design process and ambitious submission requirements.
There were 52 entries. The results will amaze you!

Join us to meet experts on embodied carbon & EPDs @ our Greenbuild booth talks

By Sustainable Minds on November 18, 2019

We’re excited to be announcing several important new partners. Sign up for booth talks.

Sustainable Minds offers the opportunity for demos and discussion F2F with the people doing the work! If you're in Atlanta, come to Booth #1713 to learn from our partners.
Check out the schedule and RSVP >

Sustainable Minds Announces Transparency Catalog v2.1: Now with all Health Product Declarations® (HPD) AND all environmental product declarations (EPD) for building products in North America, with powerful MasterFormat® filtering

By Sustainable Minds on August 13, 2019

HPDs and EPDs increasingly becoming specification requirements for greener and healthier high-performance buildings

Cambridge, MA, Aug 13, 2019 – Sustainable Minds today announced the availability of the Transparency Catalog v2.1, continuing the company’s commitment to deliver simple, easy to use and powerful tools. With this release, architecture, engineering, construction professionals and owners (AECOs) can now find all manufacturers and the published Health Product Declarations® (HPDs) for their products in each CSI MasterFormat® division and section – in 1 click.

The Transparency Catalog now includes access to all v2.0, 2.1 and 2.1.1 HPDs — a total of 3,175 from 332 manufacturers in 18 MasterFormat (MF) divisions adding ~195 more sections to the Catalog across divisions 03 Concrete, 04 Masonry, 07 Thermal and Moisture Protection, 09 Finishes and 12 Furnishings.

We are extremely proud to be a 2018 Cleantech Open national sponsor.

By Sustainable Minds on July 16, 2018

As an in-kind sponsor, Sustainable Minds is offering a free 6-month subscription to its SM Eco-concept + LCA software for all members of the 2018 CTO cohort.

https://cleantechopen.org/en/page/national-sponsors-en

We kicked things off with the webinar: “Hands-on Training in Life Cycle Thinking & LCA for Cleantech Entrepreneurs.” The webinar provided an introduction to life cycle thinking and LCA and how to use the software in early stage product development to make informed trade-off decisions that can dramatically reduce impacts and drive innovation — in products, business models and systems.

Webcast Replay: Introducing v3.0 - Part 1: What’s New

By Sustainable Minds on June 12, 2013

In this webcast, Terry Swack (Founder & CEO) and Joep Meijer (LCA Technical Expert) introduce SM v3.0. Now Sustainable Minds can partner with manufacturers to get visibility for their brand and make product data available to manufacturers, consultancies, educators & students worldwide – making it easy and cost-effective for raw material and component manufacturers to get ready to meet their customers’ reporting requirements and win business.

Announcing SM v3.0 – New data, your data, Branded Data

By Sustainable Minds on May 14, 2013

Thank you for making Sustainable Minds the #1 Cloud LCA software for greener product innovation – now used in 600 locations in 60 countries. We are excited to bring you SM v3.0.

Sustainable Minds’ easy-to-use, standardized Life Cycle Assessment solution makes it possible for manufacturers across the value chain – large and small – to dynamically evaluate, compare and improve their products' environmental performance by integrating life cycle thinking and LCA into their product development processes. The company has been recognized by Gartner® in its 2013 Cool Vendor Report, in Product Design and Life Cycle Management, as 'innovative, impactful and intriguing.'

Now with SM v3.0, Sustainable Minds can partner with manufacturers to get visibility for your brand and make your product data available to manufacturers, consultancies, educators & students worldwide.

Webcast: Creating Knowledge Workers for the Greener Product Marketplace, Part 3: Integrating Ecodesign & LCA

By Sustainable Minds on September 24, 2012

On August 28th, we held the third in a series of webcasts that feature educators from leading colleges and universities demonstrating how Sustainable Minds is being used in education. Sustainable Minds merges practice and science, ecodesign and LCA. This webcast showcases three educators and practitioners – teaching materials, industrial design and geography – demonstrating their success stories. Educators with different expertise can use Sustainable Minds to teach lifecycle thinking through hands-on experience.