HPDC Summer Newsletter 2025: Building a Sustainable Future Together

Hi to all, and Happy Summer!

HPDC is entering into some new territory this year. I want to take a bit of extra time in this newsletter to share some of our thoughts about the future – and why your support for HPDC’s work – by being or becoming an HPDC member – is more important than ever.

A New Chapter for HPDC

For the first time since our founding, our member organization is fully on its own financially. We have benefitted greatly during our startup phase from generous grant support – first from the Google Foundation and then, for the past 10 years, from the JPB Foundation. These grants enabled us to build a strong foundation of transparency for the building industry.

Progress is significant. Thanks to an unprecedented level of industry-wide collaboration, it is now commonplace for building products across many categories to have HPDs. The HPD Open Standard and HPD reports have succeeded in creating a standardized, low-cost method for disclosing material health information. We have reached a high level of voluntary transparent disclosure by manufacturers, with over 14,000 HPD reports published by almost 1,000 manufacturers, representing over 40,000 building products. More than 6,000 project teams use material health disclosures, many with HPDs, to earn the LEED v4.1 Material Ingredients credit.

Looking to the Future

As we look to the future, we are energized by continued growth and new opportunities in the creation and use of HPDs, and the positive impacts of this transparency on improving the health and safety of building products and projects. With the concept of “health product data” expanding to include more information such as social equity and circularity, we intend to double down on our strengths in gathering, storing, and sharing this knowledge to meet the evolving needs of our community. A few examples:

• Our strategic partnership with USGBC is focused on ensuring the smooth integration of information to support the new LEED v5 MRc4, Building Product Selection and Procurement Credit.
• Our Social Equity Technical Subgroup was established in 2021 and is addressing transparent disclosure needs in this essential impact area.
• We work closely with our many ecosystem partners to address new areas where transparent disclosure is essential to informed decision making – such as for the Common Materials Framework.
• Our recent work with the Cradle-to-Cradle Product Innovation Institute is creating a transparent disclosure pathway using HPDs to inform their new Circularity certification.

Your Support Matters

Financially, these results – and the many capabilities that HPDC provides to project teams, manufacturers and ecosystem partners every day – will be made possible, going forward, by funding coming primarily from HPDC membership dues and sponsorships.

I want to ask you today, If you are not already an HPDC member, to please consider becoming one this year. If that’s not possible, add it to your budget planning for the coming year. If you can consider a sponsorship – or know of such possibilities – please contact us. To the over 350 leading building industry companies and practitioners who are already supporting HPDC as members and sponsors – thank you!

Transparent disclosure enables well-informed, better decisions to be made – providing free access to essential information to everyone. HPDC was established as a member-driven organization in 2012 by champions within the A&D community who wanted to bring about a future where transparent disclosure becomes the norm. Today, far more of our community use HPDs than support HPDC through membership. With the early, grant-funded phase of HPDC’s life coming to a close, our continued success relies on financial support for our work from more of you. Dues for a company membership start at just $69 per month. If everyone who values transparent disclosure – and the healthy and just future that depends on it – can chip in just that little bit, the strong foundation of transparent disclosure that we have built will be an enduring one for the building industry. We will also be able to support the evolving needs for transparent disclosure in emerging areas, such as social equity and circularity. Working together, we will create the healthier and safer buildings that benefit us all.

Wendy Vittori, Executive Director

Not yet an HPDC member?

If you’ve come to rely on HPD reports to bring you the full, transparent information on material health, we encourage you to support our work by becoming a member today.

Help us make public transparency the norm for building materials – Donate Today!

Your tax-deductible gift makes information on healthier and safer products available to everyone.

HPDC Leadership Announcement

The Health Product Declaration Collaborative (HPDC) has announced its expanded 2025 Board of Directors and Technical Committee. New board members include Gregory Arcangeli (City of Austin), Don Haynes (Florim USA), and Eileen Gohr (HDR Inc.), while the Technical Committee welcomes Alivia Green (Brightworks Sustainability), Charlotte Jolly (ZGF Architects), and Rebecca Backer (Verico LLC).

Upcoming Webinar: How to Use HPDs and Rating Systems like LEED and WELL

Join us on Tuesday, July 22, 2025 at 2:30 PM ET for a live session exploring how HPDs connect with leading building certification systems like LEED and WELL. Whether you’re new to HPDs or already familiar with rating systems, this session will provide clear guidance and insights to help you make the most of both.

On-Demand Webinar: Navigating New Build America, Buy America Rules

The BlueGreen Alliance, along with co-sponsors Ecomedes and the Health Product Declaration Collaborative (HPDC), recently hosted a webinar exploring the new Build America, Buy America (BABA) rules and their impact on manufacturers and specifiers. For those who missed the live discussion, the recording is now available on the BGA YouTube Channel.

Additional resources include the BlueGreen Alliance’s “Making BABA Work for American Manufacturers” user guide and access to BuildingClean.org’s searchable database of BABA and Buy American Act (BAA) compliant products. Building Clean’s Ecomedes portal helps identify building products with sustainability and health attributes that are made in the U.S., union made, and compliant with federal procurement requirements.

1:1 Material Health Consultation

Connect with our Material Health Technical Expert for a free 30-minute consultation to:

• Learn how HPD PreChecks and Dashboards can streamline your material health assessment process
• Discover best practices for implementing these tools in your workflow
• Get answers to your specific questions about material health evaluation

MEMBERS CORNER

HPDC Board Chair, Mike Manzi

Thoughts from the Chair: Spring 2025

Reading Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari has me thinking deeply about the nature of truth, especially in our work. At HPDC, we aim to uncover and share the full truth about product health impacts, even when it’s complex or uncomfortable. Human health is at the heart of sustainability, and we can’t afford to ignore the parts of the story that are harder to quantify. But pursuing this truth takes resources and commitment. As grant funding wanes, our progress now depends on strong engagement from the design community…

New HPDC Member Portal

If you are the Primary Representative of your company’s HPDC membership, it is essential that you activate your account to manage your membership and company roster going forward.

For those who have not activated your accounts yet, please send an e-mail to membership@hpd-collaborative.org to request a password reset e-mail. Upon receipt of the password reset e-mail, please make sure you sign in, update your password and privacy settings, review your profile, and set your correct time zone.

INNOVATION SPOTLIGHT

Indrayudh Mondal:

At our fifth Material Health Open Innovation Symposium, Indrayudh Mondal presented research on formaldehyde exposure in U.S. homes. Using HPD data from 6,000+ products, his team found an average of 240 grams of formaldehyde per household.

Thanks to the following 199 Manufacturers who published 1643 HPDs since February 26th