The Pharos Project is a project of the Healthy Building Network. HBN is:

In Vermont:
Melissa Coffin, Bill Walsh

In California:
Tom Lent

In Washington, DC:
Larry Kilroy, Sarah Gilberg, Sarah Pickell, Susan Sabella

In Maine:
Jim Vallette

IS PHAROS THE WIKILEAKS FOR BUILDING MATERIALS?

 

The word of the year 2010 is transparency.   Credit its prominence to the modern James Bondian figure Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks divulgence of state secrets.  But WikiLeaks’ efforts have done as much to cloud the debate over transparency as they have to shed light on matters that impact our daily lives. 

What the Pharos Project shares with WikiLeaks is being a transformative platform for transparency.  But we do not use shadowy tactics to achieve this goal. We do not play geopolitical games. We’re encouraging voluntary disclosure by manufacturers, and we’re empowering consumers to make informed choices. 

There are important distinctions between types of transparency,  data collection tactics, and information dissemination.  There are state secrets, and then there are marketplace secrets.  There are data dumps, and then there are contextualized fact-based evaluations.  

There is now a healthy debate about the role full transparency has in global affairs -- does it encumber authoritarianism (as Assange argues) or engender anarchy?  It is hard to judge where the release of state secrets falls -- does it hurt or help people to satisfy basic human needs, and protect human rights?  It shakes up the status quo, but what is end game of this chaos strategy?

In the marketplace, the role of transparency is clear.  As consumers who want a healthier planet, we have the power to demand to know what we are buying.  We are in a position of strength, though some corporations try to flip the equation through black-box certifications and greenwash. 

The Pharos Project has had some positive results in obtaining fully transparent information from manufacturers.  Many companies are clearly committed. Others are much more reluctant to say even where their products are made.    If we (and you) want to know, it is our choice to buy only from companies that are transparent.

In Pharos, when manufacturers refrain from disclosing, we are still able to fill the information gap by finding publicly available documents. We don't hack -- even though companies are often surprised by how much we can figure out without their participation.  Shipping records, industry process flow charts, toxicological studies, and patent information are already out there in the data universe. 

Competitors pretty much know what's in each other’s products and how their supply chains work.  We endeavor to make sure Pharos users do too. The Pharos research team gathers this information and provides it in usable form through our product evaluations.   Rather than dumping conflicting, confusing, raw, and unsourced data, we collect, synthesize, and display this information into a macro-level view, the product profile, from which users can drill as deeply as they choose. 

And our system identifies, through the choices made by companies to participate or not, those manufacturers that respect our users’ collective demand for full disclosure.

So, no, we are not the WikiLeaks of green building. Pharos is the future of materials evaluation.  Marketplace transparency is a core value on the path to sustainability.
 

Sarah Gilberg is the information systems associate for the Pharos Project and the Healthy Building Network. Jim Vallette is a researcher with the Pharos Project and the Healthy Building Network.

Comments

There are 2 comments.

  
What I hope the Pharos Project will offer is information on products that will assist us in designing projects that can be built and accepted in Suburbia, USA without the tactics of an Assange type attack. We don't need to attack the buidling suppliers with harpoons, what we need is honest disclosure about the content of the products we specify. "Green Building" should not even exist as a subject of discussion, it sould be a way of life for architects as they design projects. This should be one of the distinguishing characteristics that seperate architects from the rest of the field.

  
Excellent article; thanks! Looking forward to more. I am going to start building in Guatemala with recycled tires, rammed earth, plastic bottles filled with sand, dirt or adobe. What else can we do to "go green?"

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