Three companies and a non-profit — Flux, Google, Thinkstep and Healthy Building Network — launched a huge database of 100 commonly used building materials and chemicals with the aim of encouraging the use of environmentally friendly and non-toxic building materials.
Quartz, their open source database, lists items by their category name, such as cement, with no brand names listed to make it a broadly valuable tool in the early stages of building design.
In this video, Vivian Dien of Flux, project manager of Quartz, explains how until this database was created, there "was a huge barrier" to helping contractors and building owners choose healthy, environmentally friendly materials because data on materials was scattered across many types of certifications, labels and standards.