July 24, 2024

Environmental and Social Justice in Building Materials: Who Bears the True Cost?

ARC Fellow: Qianyi Zhang
Degree Program: Master of Architecture
Faculty Advisors: Catherine De Almeida (Landscape Architecture)
Firm: ZGF
Firm Advisors: Lona Rerick
Project dates: Autumn 2023 – Spring 2024

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More about the project: 

When assessing the sustainability of buildings, the building industry is primarily focused on carbon emissions, material health for occupants, and, most recently, embodied carbon. The environmental and social justice aspects during the product manufacturing phases are often overlooked. The tremendous amount of pollution caused by suppliers and manufacturers affects the surrounding communities’ air, water, and land with irreversible health impacts. The demographics of these fenceline communities are often the most vulnerable and marginalized people. While the building industry is placing more emphasis on social justice as an industry-wide value, the proliferation of environmental injustice in the supply chain has rarely been addressed directly by the building industry or professionals in the built environment. The decisions made by the building industry have consequences on marginal communities, and it will take the whole ecosystem of the built environment to make a paradigm shift. This study aims to develop a more contextualized understanding of the impact of the building materials manufacturing process on fenceline communities through the lens of selected materials.