Hi, Just to let your readers know that our database of ecolabels (www.ecolabelling.org) is global, free and comprehensive. Anastasia
Blog Post
Other's efforts to bring clarity to product certifications
- Behind the Logos: Understanding Green Product Certifications, from EBN in January 2008
- GreenStandard's EcoLibraryTM Matrix provides one quick-view
- Green Building Alliance's Green Product Labeling Grid provides another
- PharosWiki's Labels and Standards portal has a great in-depth analysis of IAQ and other standards – using the Pharos Lens as an analysis tool – but not a quick 'comprehensive' summary like the two above
- Ecolabeling's wiki-like database of now 301 labels across the board. It's a bit clunky, and not made for comparison, but it exists, and they're open to suggestions
- Consumer Reports Eco-labels center from their greenerchoices.org website provides a consumer reports take on things, but they don't really cover building products (other than wood). I haven't made up my mind whether we should try to convince them they should – or not.
Published November 26, 2008 Permalink Citation
(2008, November 26). Other's efforts to bring clarity to product certifications. Retrieved from https://www.buildinggreen.com/blog/others-efforts-bring-clarity-product-certifications
Comments
Does anyone know good resourc
Does anyone know good resources to find regional materials in the United Arab Emirates?
Anne, The graphs I showed wer
Anne, The graphs I showed were from a 2004 dissertation "The Environmental Impact of an Office Building Throughout its Life Cycle" http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2004/isbn9512272857/, which was suggested to me by a colleague as one of the best available efforts at really covering the whole life cycle of a building. I hope that I'll discover soon a more recent effort that is as good but with additional detail on specific issues of concern. The main point I was trying to get across was that the relevance of building materials depends (1) on the environmental impact you are concerned with and (2) on the product type. For example, with (1), Building materials by themselves may play a small role in climate impacts over the building's lifecycle but play a larger role in chemical exposure and IAQ concerns, and for (2),some product types are likely to have Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxins (PBTs) while for other product types it isn't a concern. After that I showed a chart for what to pay the most attention to for different product types. For example, with building envelope materials and things like windows - the biggest environmental issue is how well the product contributes to an efficient building - whereas for furnishings and finishes it really is the emissions, embodied impact, and end-of-life of the product itself that matter most.
I attended that session at at
I attended that session at at the end you showed a graph of how a variety materials affect space over time or a comparison of LCA for different building materials. I believe the context was to make sure that people make educated decisions about materials relative to their impact over time. Could you share that as well? When people are making decisions on where to spend their money it would be helpful to show them the impact of their decisions.
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