Through its “Best Sustainable Practice” award, the Sustainable Buildings Industry Council (SBIC) recognizes the exceptional contributions its members make to sustainability across the United States.
On January 16, 2008 at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, SBIC awarded first place to the EcoCalculator for Assemblies, recognizing this tool as an important and exceptional move forward in understanding the environmental effects of materials, and enabling designers to minimize these effects. As project manger, Morrison Hershfield developed the EcoCalculator tool with the Athena Institute and the University of Minnesota.

The EcoCalculator is the first tool of this kind in North America: It gives architects, engineers and others access to instant life cycle assessment (LCA) results for hundreds of common building assemblies, and allows designers to make material based decisions to minimize those effects. This information is important and useful in the fight against climate change. LCA allows the impartial comparison of building designs based on measures such as global warming potential.

Further information about the EcoCalculator or the Athena Environmental Impact Estimator Software, visit Morrison Hershfield’s sustainability pages or the Athena^® Institute web site.