I was honored to be asked by GBA to review Green Building Product Certifications, a recent publication of Building Green, Inc. that makes a valiant attempt to demystify the seemingly infinite range of product certifications currently in the marketplace. The first clue that this was not going to be easy was the third line of the table of contents – “Green Labels: A mess, but not as bad as you think.”

称我为怀疑者，但我认为这可能比我想象的要糟糕或更糟糕。在这本书的早期查看这句话：“ Terrachoice 2009年的一项研究发现了98％的消费产品……犯下了他们的七种绿色罪之一。”我喜欢的另一个人：“大多数营销主张，产品规格……是未经独立测试或验证的第一方声明。”一个可怜的男孩要做什么？

他们的优先事项正确

并非出乎意料的是，我们在建筑绿色的朋友们的优先事项是直接的，他们在获得您需要的部分时向设计师发表了这一声明，这是“对于大多数建筑物，其运营对生命周期矮小的环境影响产生的环境影响会产生的生产影响制造的产品。专注于建造高效，耐用，高性能的建筑物。”

我还赞赏他们对地毯行业的分析及其可持续的努力：“地毯是环境认证开发和使用的领导者，但也是最环境问题的地板选择之一 - 通常耐用性，更耐用，能源更大，更困难与其他地板覆盖物相比，清洁并与健康和环境问题有关。”换句话说，无论产生多么可持续性，避免使用地毯。

他们还指出，安装经过认证的产品不会制造更绿色的建筑物，并以高性能设计为代价“永远没有意义”。

Don’t Touch Me!

Once you make it through the approximately twelve page introduction, you get to the meat of the book, which is a review and analysis of (I assume) every labeling and certification program for green building materials in the U.S., plus a few from Europe. All the well-known labels are there – Energy Star, U.S. Energy Guide Label, WaterSense, Greenguard, FSC, SFI, and so on.

At one point, while reading about the new Greenguard Premium label, a developing “comprehensive health-based standard that addresses chemical emissions from products,” I found myself thinking that maybe I shouldn’t touch anything ever again, out of a sudden fear of toxic chemicals in everything.

字母太多

One thing that struck me was the almost absurd number of acronyms used in green certifications: RoHS, CARB, ICC-ES SAVE, SMaRT, BASTA, ATCM, NSF, SCAQMD, BIFMA, and so on. They do a good job of describing the value of each of these (and many, many more) certifications, providing each with their own “quick take,” which includes their honest opinion of the value of each program.

这是一项巨大的消化，尽管大量信息可能会关闭不愿深入研究这么多细节的专业人员，但对于那些想了解更多有关绿色产品的人来说，这是一个令人难以置信的来源。

多大的一团糟？

我花了几个小时在这幅88页的书籍中得出的结论是，在产品认证成为主流之前，我们还有很长的路要走。有一些非常好的程序，一些非常薄弱的​​程序，有一些非常严格但没有市场渗透的程序，而许多只是平均水平。

Building Green makes it pretty clear that some of the best-known certifications, many of which are recognized by most green building programs, are vague, open to gaming, can be outdated, and often don’t measure the important stuff. Their conclusion is that confusion reigns primarily because no single authority has stepped up to provide leadership. Product certification has been dominated by a large group of small organizations, including government agencies, nonprofits, and for-profits, none of which have had the resources or clout to cut through the clutter.

It is possible that UL Environment, which purchased Greenguard after publication, may be that entity that has the power to consolidate. In the meantime, I think I’ll just sit on the sidelines and wait to see what happens.

阅读所有关于它的内容

GBA订户可以在以下链接上以20美元的折扣获得自己的报告副本：http：//tinyurl.com/3b9dmxw。对于对当前状态感兴趣的任何人以及绿色建筑材料认证的未来，都值得阅读。