From LEED to Gensler’s Framework: How Materials Can Help Innovate the Building Sector
The conversation around sustainable design has reached a turning point. The push for low-carbon, circular, and transparent materials isn’t just trending—it’s becoming the standard. For the building sector, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Responsible for 37% of global carbon emissions, the industry also holds some of the biggest opportunities. Accelerating its transition toward lower-impact practices could unlock $1.8 trillion in global economic value, while contributing to healthier, more resilient communities.
Certifications have emerged as a way to standardize, measure, and verify progress. But their impact extends beyond environmental reporting. JLL research shows green-certified buildings command rent premiums of 6–11% in major U.S. markets and tend to maintain higher occupancy rates. Similarly, the World Economic Forum reports that sustainable offices deliver higher rental yields and reduced operational costs, while CBRE has found that environmental features increasingly influence property values and transaction decisions.
These figures reinforce what many in the industry already know: green certifications aren’t just good for the planet, they make good business sense. But unlocking their full potential requires coordination across the value chain. And today, the standards leading the way—LEED®, WELL™, BREEAM®, and increasingly the Gensler Product Sustainability (GPS) Standards—are pushing the industry toward a common destination.
Why Certifications Are Converging
For years, these green-building certifications developed on parallel tracks—each with its own priorities, language, and regional adoption. LEED® was born in the United States, BREEAM® in the UK, WELL™ from a health-first perspective, and Gensler’s GPS Standards as a firm-specific tool. But while their origins are different, their direction of travel is now unmistakably the same.
LEED® v5, released in 2024, places unprecedented weight on embodied carbon, circularity, and multi-attribute material selection. Where earlier versions emphasized operational efficiency (like energy and water use), the latest iteration recognizes that the biggest impacts are often locked into materials before a building even opens. LEED is moving upstream, prioritizing low-carbon, responsibly sourced products and plans for material reuse.
BREEAM® v6 takes a performance-based approach, requiring design teams to model life-cycle impacts and prove the results with documentation. Its focus on responsible sourcing reflects the global demand for transparent supply chains. By linking credits to Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and ethical certifications, BREEAM is attempting to create accountability at every step of the value chain.
WELL™ v2 stands out as the most people-centered of the frameworks. Its categories (Air, Sound, Materials, Mind, Community) are designed to measure how spaces feel and perform for occupants, not just how efficiently they operate. As organizations compete for talent, WELL certification has become a signal that buildings support productivity, well-being, and long-term health.
And there’s Gensler’s GPS Standards v2.0, which takes the logic of certifications down to the product level. Unlike LEED®, WELL™, or BREEAM®, which assess performance at the whole-building scale, GPS acts as a designer’s standard—a material-level screen that translates complex global requirements into clear, firm-wide benchmarks. By drilling into everyday specification decisions, GPS advocates for healthier, lower-carbon, and circular products. This level of granularity gives design teams actionable data, helping them avoid “green claims” that lack substance while streamlining the path to certification. When paired with whole-building certifications, GPS creates a layered framework where every choice—from the material to the masterplan—contributes to a lower-carbon, healthier, and more circular built environment.
This convergence matters because it gives the industry a common language. A product that meets LEED® requirements will also contribute to BREEAM® and WELL™. A material that clears Gensler’s GPS screen is inherently aligned with global frameworks. In short, while the certification names may differ, the expectations are becoming universal: low-carbon, circular, transparent, and centered on human well-being.
A Material Aligned with the Future
When it comes to decarbonizing the built environment, materials are one of the biggest levers we have. Operational energy use has long been a focus, but studies now show that the majority of a building’s lifetime carbon footprint can be locked in before it even opens—through the extraction, processing, and disposal of materials. That makes sourcing choices critical: the products specified today will determine a project’s long-term environmental and performance impact.
It’s exciting to see the industry’s shift toward embracing and championing low-carbon, circular, and transparent materials. For Aquafil, this is a key pillar of our ECO-PLEDGE. Since the 2000s, Aquafil has applied Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) to its processes, building a long-term innovation strategy around measuring and reducing impact at every stage of production. That mindset laid the foundation for the launch of the ECONYL® Regeneration System in 2011, which redefined what synthetic fibers could be. Today, ECONYL® nylon is found across the built environment, from flooring, textiles, and even furniture.
ECONYL® is a regenerated nylon made entirely from waste, from fishing nets to old carpets and industrial plastics. Through chemical recycling, nylon 6 waste is regenerated back to its original building blocks, where we are then able to process it into brand new nylon that has the same quality and performance as standard nylon, without the reliance on fossil fuels.
Unlock Green Building Certifications with ECONYL® Nylon
As a leading circular ingredient with third-party verified data, ECONYL® nylon naturally aligns with the priorities of today’s leading green building standards. From LEED® and BREEAM® to WELL™ and Gensler’s GPS Standards, ECONYL® contributes to multiple credits, helping project teams demonstrate compliance while also delivering measurable impact.
Lower-Carbon by Design
Traditional nylon is one of the most carbon-intensive fibers in the textile industry. By recovering waste materials like fishing nets, old carpets, and discarded textiles, ECONYL® nylon sources its raw material from waste otherwise polluting the earth, instead of the energy-intensive extraction of oil. Independent Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) verify its lower embodied carbon footprint compared to conventional nylon, a key contributor to LEED® v5’s carbon criteria and BREEAM®’s life-cycle assessments.
Circular at Its Core
Unlike materials designed for one life, ECONYL® nylon can be regenerated again and again without losing quality. That makes it not just recycled, but regenerative. Our Born R2R® initiative extends this thinking by working with manufacturing partners to create flooring designed for easy disassembly and material recovery. This means products can be taken back at the end of use and the nylon can be reprocessed into new ECONYL® yarn, keeping valuable resources in play and contributing to Innovation credits under LEED® and BREEAM®.
Transparent and Verified
Certifications are only as strong as the evidence behind them. We understand the importance of transparent and verified reporting, which is why ECONYL® nylon has many third-party credentials including, Cradle to Cradle Material Health certification, VOC emission testing, ISO 14001 certification, CSR reporting, and acoustic performance testing. This level of transparency not only ensures credibility, it also contributes to WELL™ v2’s focus on material health, air quality, and sound performance.
Learn more about how ECONYL® contributes to key criteria in the leading green building certifications:
Beyond Certifications
Yet as powerful as certifications are, they are not the destination. Over-focusing on them risks turning responsible design into a checklist exercise. Certifications can standardize and verify, but they cannot by themselves deliver a circular economy.
Certifications can reduce the risk of greenwashing by holding the industry accountable to measurable criteria, but real progress depends on innovation, transparency, and collaboration across the value chain.
Aquafil’s Born R2R® initiative is an example of how this shift plays out in practice: designing flooring with regeneration in mind, ensuring materials are not just recycled once but built to regenerate again and again. Certifications recognize these innovations, but the true value lies in how they change systems, helping the industry move from “take-make-waste” to circular.
Low-carbon, circular, and transparent is no longer a trend—it’s the baseline. And the only way forward is to build what’s next, together.
Author: Laura Pighi, Chief Program Officer GREENMAP
