What It Really Takes to Build Better
- Jennifer Levisen
- Mar 31
- 3 min read
Inside the 2025 Plan from mindful MATERIALS and the Forums to Align Tools, Data, and People Across the Built Environment
Designing better buildings isn’t just about energy modeling, green roofs, or clean indoor air—it starts with making informed choices about the materials we use. To meet society’s needs now and in the future, we must embed transparency and accountability into every stage of a product’s lifecycle, ensuring that in shaping the spaces around us, we aren’t unintentionally causing harm elsewhere.
In 2025, mindful MATERIALS (mM) and the Forums are focused on building the infrastructure to make that possible at scale—developing shared tools, aligning strategies, and fostering collaborative action so everyone in the built environment can make smarter, more responsible product decisions.
We already have many tools to model operational energy use, assess site impacts, and optimize building performance. What’s often overlooked is the invisible footprint of the products and materials that make up these buildings—and their role in carbon emissions, resource extraction, toxicity, biodiversity, equity, and community impact. That’s where these efforts come in.
To help the industry close this gap, the mM Forums have established three Working Groups focused on data connectivity in workflow, advancing a common language for enhanced and streamlined communication, and delivering actionable market resources:
Common Materials Framework (CMF) Adoption
Technology & Data
Advocacy & Awareness
Each Working Group leads a set of Task Forces, bringing together a cross-functional stakeholder group to co-create resources to tackle persistent barriers.
This work is about more than good intentions—it’s about systems change. By aligning on a shared framework, building connective digital infrastructure, and empowering and educating others in the industry, we’re creating the foundation for real, measurable progress—at scale.
Here’s how.
CMF Adoption: Creating a Clear Path for Sustainable Materials
The CMF is a powerful tool for the industry, but for it to have a real impact, it needs to be widely adopted and seamlessly integrated into decision-making.
The CMF Adoption Working Group is leading efforts to:
Establish priority certifications and the data points within them to fully enable a collective ‘ask’ to building product manufacturers and ensure a streamlined response for manufacturers back.
Develop clear rules for establishing decision-making criteria so owners and design firms can begin to integrate the CMF prioritization into their material requirements consistently, knowing they aren’t reinventing the wheel.
By providing clarity and consistency around the CMF and how it is being adopted throughout the industry, this group is working to make it easier for manufacturers, architects, designers, contractors, engineers, and owners to integrate materials criteria based on an industry-wide shared approach into everyday workflows.
Technology & Data: Enabling a Connected Data Ecosystem
Sustainable materials selection and action are only as strong as the data that supports these decisions. We need seamless data connectivity, standardized reporting, and clear manufacturer guidance to drive accountability and efficiency. mM is facilitating and convening technology partners and ecolabel/standard partners alike to make digitized sustainability data organized in a consistent structure accessible everywhere product and material decisions are made.
The Technology & Data Working Group is addressing these challenges by:
Benchmarking the current state of data digitization and connectivity
Developing a shared data schema to ensure product sustainability data can flow efficiently between platforms.
Supporting manufacturers in data management so they can provide reliable, standardized sustainability information to their customers without spending countless hours responding to redundant requests.
Access to better data allows us to make better decisions, enabling the industry to move beyond broad commitments and into measurable, reportable action.
Advocacy & Awareness: Scaling Knowledge and Adoption
Even the most well-designed frameworks and tools can only create change if people understand them and know how to use them. That’s why the Advocacy & Awareness Working Group is focused on communication, education, and engagement.
Key priorities for 2025 include:
Developing communication resources to align industry messaging and streamline sustainability discussions.
Finalizing education programs to equip professionals with the knowledge to implement sustainable practices effectively.
Showcasing real-world case studies to highlight best practices and provide a roadmap for others to follow.
By creating accessible, practical resources for industry adoption, this group ensures that the CMF is not just a technical tool but an industry-wide movement toward greater building product transparency and optimization that is understood and adopted.
The Road Ahead: A Year of Action and Impact
The 2025 Working Groups and Task Forces focus not on ideas but on execution. Through collaboration, alignment, and strategic action, these groups are shaping a built environment where sustainability is:
Clearly defined
Seamlessly integrated into decision-making
Measurable and reportable
Scalable across the industry
This year is about turning strategy into impact and leveraging technology and data to reduce the negative impacts of the built environment significantly.
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