Comments on: What’s the Greenest Product of All? http://www.greenstrides.com/2008/10/08/whats-the-greenest-product-of-all/ going green one step at a time Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:28:21 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3 By: Lloyd Alter http://www.greenstrides.com/2008/10/08/whats-the-greenest-product-of-all/comment-page-1/#comment-3901 Lloyd Alter Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:47:15 +0000 http://www.greenstrides.com/?p=1082#comment-3901 I used this post to teach my class in Sustainable Design at Ryerson University in Toronto because I think there is an important point. I think there is a real danger when people rely on 3rd party standards but don't really know what they mean. The two examples that I think stand out are energy star and SCS. I toss in my lecture notes: 1: Energy Star for energy efficient appliances, computers, entertainment equipement, lighting, and more. Energy Star requires you to prove that you are 20% more efficient than the average product. If you are a computer, your case can be made with poisonous fire retardants and your components can be full of lead, cadmium and a host of dangerous chemicals, but if you are efficient, you get energy star. A much better standard, EPEAT, looks at everything. A far worse example is an Energy Star rated home. It could be built out of formaldehyde impregated particle board, insulated with ureaformaldehyde foam and clad inside and out with vinyl, while heated by an unshielded block of semicritical plutonium, but if it is 20% more efficient then it gets the label. In fact, the best way to get an efficient house is to seal it tightly, but it is not required that an Energy Star house have a heat recovery ventilator to bring in fresh air, so an energy star house could in fact be toxic. Relying on a standard that looks at only one thing is dangerous. Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) for office furniture systems, building materials, carpet and rug, hard surface flooring, paints, finishes, wood products, and cleaning products, and more. SCS does their job well- if you tell them your claim, they verify it. I suspect that if I told them I was an axe murderer, and it was true, I could get a certificate. My best example of this is LG Eden, a countertop that claims it is green because it is made from 12% pre-consumer waste. They explain that this is from their shavings, their offcuts and their mistakes; they are blending their own production inefficiencies back into their product and calling it green and proudly displaying the SCS certification that says, yes, they plough 12% of their own garbage back into their product. Does this make them green? I don't think so. I used this post to teach my class in Sustainable Design at Ryerson University in Toronto because I think there is an important point. I think there is a real danger when people rely on 3rd party standards but don’t really know what they mean. The two examples that I think stand out are energy star and SCS. I toss in my lecture notes:

1: Energy Star for energy efficient appliances, computers, entertainment equipement, lighting, and more.

Energy Star requires you to prove that you are 20% more efficient than the average product. If you are a computer, your case can be made with poisonous fire retardants and your components can be full of lead, cadmium and a host of dangerous chemicals, but if you are efficient, you get energy star. A much better standard, EPEAT, looks at everything.

A far worse example is an Energy Star rated home. It could be built out of formaldehyde impregated particle board, insulated with ureaformaldehyde foam and clad inside and out with vinyl, while heated by an unshielded block of semicritical plutonium, but if it is 20% more efficient then it gets the label. In fact, the best way to get an efficient house is to seal it tightly, but it is not required that an Energy Star house have a heat recovery ventilator to bring in fresh air, so an energy star house could in fact be toxic. Relying on a standard that looks at only one thing is dangerous.

Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) for office furniture systems, building materials, carpet and rug, hard surface flooring, paints, finishes, wood products, and cleaning products, and more.

SCS does their job well- if you tell them your claim, they verify it. I suspect that if I told them I was an axe murderer, and it was true, I could get a certificate. My best example of this is LG Eden, a countertop that claims it is green because it is made from 12% pre-consumer waste. They explain that this is from their shavings, their offcuts and their mistakes; they are blending their own production inefficiencies back into their product and calling it green and proudly displaying the SCS certification that says, yes, they plough 12% of their own garbage back into their product. Does this make them green? I don’t think so.

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