NORTHBROOK, IL — Underwriters Laboratories, the venerable product safety testing service, today is launching an environmental claims verification service, UL Environment Inc. The new unit was created to help companies and the public make sense of green claims and provide manufacturers with transparency and credibility in the marketplace.
UL Environment Inc.’s services include two new offerings, beginning this month with a claims verification service. In late 2009, the organization plans to expand with additional services.
The idea for the service began about five years ago, according to Chris Nelson, Director, Global Commercial Development at UL Environment, when a UL employee submitted a new business development opportunity to the company relating to the creation of services for environmentally sustainable products. "This idea percolated in the company for a couple years and by 2007 UL began to see green products and environmental product claims proliferating in the marketplace," says Nelson. Around the same time, UL customers and environmentally sustainable product manufacturers began asking UL to provide services in this space due to the increasing demand for transparency in, and support of, the credibility of sustainability claims.
UL, a 115 year-old organization whose "UL" certification logo is ubiquitous on electric and other products, has a long history as a leading product safety testing organization. As company officials viewed the proliferation of eco-labels and certification marks, they saw an opportunity to bring order to the chaos.
The Environmental Claims Validation, launching this month, is aimed at providing validation for environmentally sustainable product claims by means of independent testing and assessments. Through this program, UL Environment will audit and test environmental attribute claims made by manufacturers to ensure accuracy and truthfulness of these claims. UL will also launch a program in the coming months to certify products to industry accepted environmental standards, such as those promulgated by ASTM, BIFMA, IEEE, NSF, and other standard-setting organizations.
Nelson considers the two new programs UL has developed, which are to launch in the North America and Europe with plans to expand to Asia late this year, "a logical extension for the organization and a key growth strategy as businesses increasingly tout the eco-friendliness of their operations and their products -- and the public grows increasingly wary of greenwashing."
Technology Verification
The US EPA has a program called the Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) Program www.epa.gov/etv. The program develops quality-assured testing procedures and verifies the performance of innovative technologies that have the potential to improve protection of human health and the environment. Results of the verification are posted on the ETV web site. The program was created in 1995 to help accelerate the entrance of new environmental technologies into the domestic and international marketplaces. To date the ETV program has verified over 400 technologies and developed more than 90 protocols. Fact Sheet: http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/std/etv/pubs/600f08012.pdf
More of a crime lab than a sheriff...
We welcome UL Environment to the scene. Their systematic, engineering-based approach is something that's been missing on the standards and compliance side of the green product/business world.
But standards and compliance organizations - particularly for-profit companies that are paid by the companies whose products they test - are more akin to an (outsourced) crime lab than a sheriff.
We believe that the real greenwashing "sheriff" combines good old fashioned investigative reporting with online communities like the one we've built ( www.vanno.com ). Together, they bring the scrutiny of all stakeholders - customers, employees, investors, journalists and concerned citizens - on the claims companies make about their products and business operations.
NAHB and ICC-ES are also in the green approval business
The NAHB Research Center has also launched a Green Approved Product Program for their ANSI-approved residential green building standard. Several manufacturers have already been approved. See www.nahbgreen.org
ICC-ES has also launched a similar program entitled SAVE www.icc-es.org/save that evaluates nine categories of sustainable attributes.
The advantage of the NAHB and ICC-ES programs is that when the provisions of the green building standards evolve into building codes, these organizations are already involved in evaluating the structural characteristics of building products, so it is a natural fit to add green attributes to their existing programs.
Will be interesting to see what fees UL is charging...
This is great news.
This is great news. Consumers--and businesses--are bombarded with environmental claims, many of which are inaccurate or at least unsubstantiated. Looks like UL is going to do for products what CSA is doing for carbon inventory reporting (see www.csa.ca/carbonperformance). Verification by an independent, objective organization well known for stringent standards will take us a big step forward on the mission to eradicate greenwash.
Transparency
I hope that they have transparency in their review. There are many organizations trying to crack this "holy grail" of sustainable products, and the more transparency in the criteria, the better.
UL labs certifying Green business
I have many years of electronics industry experience in a previous life, so I offer my perspective on UL. You provide them with your test results with an exorbitant fee (because it is an electronics industry requirement) and you are Certified! Rubber stamped based upon their previously-defined qualification criteria.
How would that model translate to the dynamic and extremely diverse eco-business climate? Would standards be flexible enough for innovation?
Another model is to bring together interested and knowledgeable constituents, both public and private, without the bias of a profit motive, to develop standards using already-accepted methodologies.
An example of this is the process used by various committees of the CCX (Chicago Climate Exchange) to establish "protocols" for use by verifiers when an entity wants to sell carbon credits on the exchange. With significant investment sums at stake, they seek to establish a trustworthy valuation mechanism necessary for the proper functioning of markets.
In my opinion, a similar approach would be a more valuable, transparent, and flexible method to evaluate eco-friendly claims.
-Mike Chadima, Treemaxx
UL Labs and More Green Labels
I don't doubt that Underwriter Laboratories sees a business opportunity in creating its own label. But I'm not sure they'll really be doing much to bring order to the current chaos that exists among the hundreds of other labels in the marketplace. What we really need are federal standards, developed jointly by government, industry, and consumers, to set meaningful performance requirements for green claims. The USDA-backed organic label - even though it's not perfect - remains the gold standard for what other labels should aspire to.