Green Products: Trends & Innovations
Manufacturers Can "Green" Your Project
The USGBC certifies "green" buildings, but not "green" products. That role falls to certification organizations like Greenguard, Green Seal, Scientific Certification Systems and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
ISO certification ensures that facilities have a published environmental policy, a system of operational procedures in place to protect the environment, measurable environmental goals and trained personnel to carry out an "environmental management plan."
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"We believe ISO 14001 certification is critical," says Graeme A. Hendry, product development manager and environmental specialist for the commercial division of Tarkett.
"The market is changing dramatically today," Hendry says. "There is more awareness today among architects and designers with regard to environmental issues, but not everybody is on the same page as far as what is a sustainable product."
It has been a decade, Hendry says, since European manufacturers began changing processes to reduce environmental impacts and sought environmental audits to ensure that environmental controls were in place. That movement, he says, has been slow to come to the U.S.
"A problem for architects and designers in this country," Hendry says" is finding products with real (green) benefits, as opposed to what you could call ‘greenwash,' marketing jargon that sounds ‘green,' but may be a different color entirely.
"I think manufacturers will, before long, have to produce life-cycle analyses of products, from manufacturer to disposal," Hendry says. "Until that happens, architects, themselves, must ask harder questions when it comes to specifying ‘green' products."
He says it is responsible to specify wood-based products certified in accordance with the Forest Stewardship Council, vinyl and linoleum products with the highest possible recycled content, and materials that have undergone V.O.C.-testing and been found to be low-emitting.