Five ways Cradle to Cradle Certified® Gold products enable better green buildings
At Mosa, we want to let our world thrive by making products that have a positive impact on people and planet. And as demand for building space escalates, our goal has never been more urgent.
Each year, the world’s 250 billion m2 of building space grows by around 5.5 billion m2. Today, the building and construction industry is responsible for 36% of the global final energy consumption, and 39% of energy-related carbon emissions. Our world cannot continue to sustain the way we currently design and build the spaces we need.
Design without compromise
Healthy, circular materials are a powerful way to rapidly transform the impact of our built environment into a positive for our world. More than ten years ago, Mosa adopted Cradle to Cradle principles to do just that: enable people to design, build, live and work in spaces that support their wellbeing and that of our planet.
Today, 99% of our ceramic tile products have reached Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold – one of the most rigorous levels of certification. When you choose Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold Mosa tiles, you’re choosing products made to have a positive impact on people and planet. In other words, you’re choosing products that are as sustainable as they are beautiful.
Based on the Cradle to Cradle Certified Product Standard, Cradle to Cradle Certified is an independently verified third-party product sustainability certification used to assess a particular product’s safety, circularity, and responsibility.
Sustainable materials build sustainable spaces
Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold products meet some of the world’s most rigorous science-based requirements for Material Health, Material Reuse, Renewable Energy and Carbon Management, Water Stewardship, and Social Fairness.
Mosa tiles have earned a Gold level performance rating in all five certification categories, which means they are made to help you achieve an array of design objectives for healthy, circular, sustainable buildings without compromising your own sustainability objectives, from green building standards to fully circular spaces.
Here are five ways Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold products can benefit your next project.
1 Materials that don’t compromise wellbeing
Naturally present in abundance, clay and sand are the main raw materials used for Mosa tiles. Around 85% of these materials are found within 200Km of our manufacturing operations in Maastricht. In addition to being VOC-free, Red List free and anti-allergen, Mosa tiles have a Gold level Cradle to Cradle Certified Material Health rating. To reach a Gold level Material Health rating, a complete inventory of every chemical used in our tiles was screened against leading global lists for problematic chemicals. The chemicals were then assessed according to 21 human health and environmental impact points to ensure their safety for people and planet.
2 Design that enables waste-free systems – and spaces
Designing and making products that meet Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold performance standards means creating products that eliminate the concept of waste throughout all phases of the product lifecycle. For Mosa, that means designing our tiles with disassembly in mind, ensuring that they can be detached from their environment at the end of their useful lives, and returned for reuse in the generation of new building materials. It also means enabling systems to support waste-free spaces. That’s why Mosa is currently piloting the Mosa Take Back programme, a project made to take back cutting waste (offcuts) from building sites for use in the generation of new Mosa tiles – another step towards enabling circular spaces – and a circular world.
3 Products made with clean air and climate protection in mind
Gold level Cradle to Cradle certification requires a total accounting of the embodied greenhouse gas emissions associated with the certified product. And it requires a percentage of these emissions to be offset. In addition to optimizing our manufacturing processes to reduce fine dust particles and CO2 emissions, Mosa also sources all electrical energy from suppliers of European wind energy for most of our production. We also reuse excess heat from the production process elsewhere in our operations. Next, we are tackling the challenge of how to achieve the very high temperatures our ovens require by using energy from renewable sources.
4 People prioritizing people (as well as our planet)
Mosa believes doing good for our planet begins with doing good for people. In alignment with our commitment to creating products and spaces with a positive impact on people and planet, our Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold products have been independently verified for socially responsible and fair business practices.
5 The building block of greener buildings
Green building standards support the design and construction of sustainable buildings and cities by offering valuable guidelines for manufacturers, designers, developers and building owners. Most green building standards offer country or region-specific standards, with the shared vision of enabling the generation of buildings that are safe, circular and made for a positive impact on humans and our environment.
Globally recognized product sustainability certifications like Cradle to Cradle Certified can help ensure the products used in a building project are themselves safe, circular and made for a positive impact.Gold level Cradle to Cradle product certification adds value to a wide range of green building labels, including:
LEED and WELL
Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold products are currently recognized by the LEED and WELL building schemes. In addition to contributing to all LEED credits recognized at the Silver level, Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold products also contribute to the LEED pilot credit for Circular Products, Designed for Circularity and to the pilot credit for Social Equity with the Supply Chain (Option 1).
AIA Architecture & Design Materials Pledge
Cradle to Cradle Certified products also enable architects and designers to uphold the AIA (American Institute of Architects) Architecture & Design Materials Pledge to support human health, ecosystem healthy, climate health, a circular economy, and social health & equity.
BREAMM, DGNB and GREENSTAR
Formal recognition of Cradle to Cradle Certified products from BREEAM, DGNB and greenstar standards is in progress.
LCAs, EPDs + C2C Certified: A Win-Win
The environmental and human impact of a product over its lifecycle can be measured through a Lifecycle Assessment, or LCA. Conducted according to international standards and verified by independent external parties, this LCA data is often visualized or shared through an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD).
The improvements Mosa has made to our products and processes to achieve Cradle to Cradle Certified have helped increase the positive environmental impacts of our products – as measured by increases in our LCA scores.
That means Cradle to Cradle certification can help a product contribute directly to a green building standard and the process of more specific and detailed data from an LCA and/or EPD can help a Cradle to Cradle Certified product contribute even more points towards an overall green building standard score.
To ensure we supply the right data in the most accessible way, Mosa publishes our LCA and EPD data on third-party sustainable product databases such as mindful MATERIALS, HPDs, DECLARE, and the Nationale Milieu Database (National Environment Database). For more information, and to see the full list of databases, visit mosa.com.
The improvements we have made in order to achieve Cradle to Cradle Certified have helped increase the positive environmental impacts of our products, which is measured by increases in our LCA scores and visualised through our Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). Would you like to know more about the impact of our tiles over its lifetime and learn more about their environmental profiles?
> Request our digital EPD's now
