March 28, 2008

PAUL R. BERTRAM Jr. is director of environment and sustainability for the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association in Alexandria, Va. He is a fellow of the Construction Specifications Institute and a past vice president of the institute.

By Paul R. Bertram Jr.
Daily exposure to products that assert an environmental green marketing claim of some sort has created great confusion in the public eye about how such claims should be considered. Are the products actually green, or are they simply unsubstantiated marketing ploys that have become known as greenwash? Criteria for evaluating products for potential purchase has become extremely complex. The extent of such claims has created market confusion that all products are green. An office of the Environmental Protection Agency hosted a meeting of “green” industry stakeholders in Chicago last November in conjunction with the U.S. Green Building Council’s 2007 GreenBuild show. Industry representatives, including stakeholders from green-rating programs, eco-labels, life-cycle assessment specialists, government agencies, environmental groups, associations, manufacturers, research organizations, LEED-accredited professionals, architects/specifiers, retailers, public health advocates and certification testing laboratories, all considered the topic: “What is Green?” The meeting summary by the EPA reported that the immediate next step is to pull together a core group of individuals to generate some conclusions from the discussion and to then examine potential roles for existing organizations and models to develop a new leadership coalition.

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