An open-source database of 100 common building materials, which is now available to the public free of charge, lists the materials’ ingredients and their potential harmful threat to human health and the environment.
Flux, a San Francisco technology company that came out of Google X labs, officially announced the Quartz database of building materials at Verge 2015, a sustainability conference that was held from Oct. 26-29 in San Jose, Calif. Flux’s aim is to provide the product database not only for the public but also for builders and occupants, says Jim Vallette, research director, Healthy Building Network (HBN), Washington, D.C. To create Quartz, the non-profit HBN partnered with Flux, Google Inc. and Thinkstep, a sustainability software developer based in Stuttgart, Germany.