Sustainable Development and Society - GSA

Sustainable Development and Society
An open, transparent process is necessary
to ensure that all possible information and
perspectives are considered in defining
leadership criteria for a product category.
Moreover, for major institutions such as
government bodies to adopt an
environmental standard, it has to be
perceived as fair and unbiased. If the
criteria are explicit and transparent,
everyone knows on what basis the standard
defines a product as green or not green. At
a minimum, all standards should be
developed with proper notice; a draft
standard should be proposed to
stakeholders and the public at large for
comment, and any comments received
should be carefully and in good faith
evaluated for any revisions to the proposal
before the standard is finalized. We also
recommend creating a public document
responding to each substantive comment,
showing whether it resulted in a change in
the proposal or why such change was not
accepted. In the best of scenarios, a
consensus can be achieved among
stakeholders on the final standard, but, at
the least, reasonable efforts should be
made to achieve such a consensus. 2
Product environmental standards must also
be life-cycle-based. A product life cycle is
all the material, energy, resource, and
pollutant flows, in and out, associated with
the manufacture, use, and end-of-life of the
product. It looks at the raw materials that
are extracted from the environment and
processed for the product; the
manufacturing process to assemble or
formulate the product; the transportation of
materials associated with extraction,
processing, and manufacturing and of the
finished product to the market; the use of
the product during its productive life; and
the recycling, disassembly, reuse, or
disposal of the product after its useful life.
Formal life-cycle assessment analyzes the
environmental impacts of a product by
creating an inventory of materials, energy,
and pollutants in all the life-cycle stages
and then determining the corresponding
environmental impacts. For an
environmental standard, an evaluation of
the significant environmental impacts at
each important stage in the product's life
cycle ensures that no significant attribute is
neglected (for example, highly toxic
chemicals used in manufacturing an
otherwise acceptable product) and that
environmental impacts are not simply
shifted from one life-cycle stage or
environmental impact to another (for
example, from manufacturing to use; or
from air pollution to water pollution).
Life-cycle-based environmental product
standards take all this information and,
along with an analysis of the environmental
attributes of products in the current market,
set criteria for significant product attributes
– including its manufacturing process or
end-of-life – so that the standards represent
a leadership level in the current market in
that category. This level may vary, but
Green Seal typically strives to capture 15%
to 20% of the top environmental performers
in a given product category in its
environmental standards. Purchasers who
select products that meet these standards
therefore know that they are buying
environmental leadership products and are
helping to reduce the environmental impact
of their own purchasing and activities as
well as encouraging green products in the
market.
For the built environment, using life-cyclebased
environmental standards has the
same positive effect. If the products and
procedures employed in constructing and
maintaining a building meet environmental
standards, the materials will have the least
possible impact on the particular
environments from which they were
extracted; they will have minimal or no
adverse impact on the health of building
occupants and those who operate and
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