Earlier this week I made my way up VC Hill to attend MassMEDIC’s Envirofoum. The two presenters, Robert B. Pojasek of Capaccio Engineering and Kevin Johnson of Siemens did a fantastic job, but one of the topics perked my ears up a little more than the rest: the recent rise of UL Environment.
what is UL Environment?
First, what UL means: Underwriters Laboratories. UL is one of the most prominent product testing firms in the world. Essentially, their job is to ensure that the products on the market (at least the ones that are UL-listed) meet their standards for safety and compliance.
UL pulls off being the “thumbs up/thumbs down” guys by having a rock-solid reputation. They’ve been around forever and are as synonymous with product testing as Coke is with soda. That gravitas is what makes UL Environment, their new sustainable compliance arm, so exciting.
why it’s exciting
Green marking is big business that is only going to get bigger. Wal-Mart demands sustainability of it’s suppliers, Kaiser Permanente is doing the same thing in the medical space, and let’s not forget the U.S. Government.
Over the past few years, there have been several companies that have taken a shot at becoming the sustainability label. The likes of MBDC’s Cradle to Cradle (my favorite) and EcoLogo have done an admirable job, but don’t seem to have broken through to the mainstream.
UL Environment has the potential to do just that, so I spent some time digging through their offerings.
what products will they certify? not much…yet
I’ll admit thatAs you might expect from the fledgling sustainability arm, they are attacking the low-hanging fruit first. In UL-world that means coming up with tests to meet other standards:
What products can UL Environment Certify?
Carpeting to meet NSF 140, resilient flooring to meet NSF 332, information technology equipment to meet IEEE 1680 and commercial office furniture to meet the BIFMA E3 Level standard.
Kind of a bummer. They do mention that they will “develop additional standards as needed” and that their are “other [products] to follow”, but mention no timelines or product categories.
what claims will they validate? quite a few
I feel like I’m splitting hairs when I start talking about the difference between “certification” and “validation”. In this case however, it’s not so bad. It breaks down like this: UL can certify your product if it meets or exceeds a the appropriate requirements. On the other hand, UL will also do a sort of a la carte approach, where it just validates the specific claims you make about the product.
Or to put it another way, Sustainable Product Certification is like graduating college, and Environmental Claims Validation is like passing a class.
That’s not to diminish ECV, just check out some of the claims that UL Environment is already ready to validate
- Recycled content
- Rapidly renewable materials
- Regional materials
- Volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions
- Volatile organic compound (VOC) content
- Energy efficiency
- Water efficiency
- Hazardous or toxic substances
- Reclamation program
- Mold resistance
- Manufacturing energy audits
- Degradability
- Compostability
It will be interested to see where the bulk of UL’s business comes from, SPC or ECV. I imagine it will be the latter in the next few years while manufacturers are only looking for a competitive marketing edge. Beyond that I fully expect legislation (or even the megaliths mentioned above) to demand a more formal, comprehensive audit.
Closing thought: I like the name UL Environment, it’s just stodgy enough to garner respect (sorry Cradle to Cradle and EcoLogo) from the still large group of top dogs that haven’t bought into sustainability.
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