Your organization focuses on product and what defines “green” products – or what term do you use?

We use the term “sustainable” products – because they have the higher market value.  

What differentiates a sustainable product from a non-sustainable or a regular product?

Simply put, sustainable products are best for the environment, the economy and social equity. It covers the product over the whole global supply chain, which is required by law. In other words, if you say, a product is sustainable, or it's green, or it's environmentally friendly, truth-in-advertising law globally requires you to look at the life cycle. Now if you said this is “low VOC,” you wouldn't have to do that. And the reason is that when the consumer hears the words “sustainable” or “green,” they think "Well, this is environmentally beneficial" or "sustainable in all aspects." And so if you don't look at all aspects, which includes the life cycle, it is misleading, and therefore, unlawful.

If you say your product is a sustainable product, do you have to qualify then what areas it may be weak in, compared to a comparable product?

No, and this is an area in where there is no legal precedent. But the tendency is to look at consensus definitions of this and there are consensus standards for life cycle assessment and there are consensus standards now for sustainable products – the government has adopted those, so that's where folks will look. There are the EPA, EPP guidance directives too, which are consistent with the sustainable product standards. 

Is there a difference between "sustainable" and "green"?  

Yes, "sustainable" adds social equity, "green" just looks at environmental impact. And that's why the label "sustainable" has the higher market value. So, when California adopted their sustainable carpet standard, they consciously decided they didn't want to call it “green” and they didn't want to call it “environmentally preferable.” Now, they can do that because the standard covers social equity as well as environmental. Sustainable is like motherhood and apple pie; green is just environmental, and so it limits interest. Although green buildings have taken off – they're five percent of the new construction market. We're working right now with Wall Street to get them to embrace it. Both terms have positive reception, it's just that "sustainable" means more.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) doesn't evaluate exposure to occupants of products, does it? How do you introduce that factor?

Yes, I think earlier studies did use a factor for indoor air quality (IAQ), but then I think they got rid of it. I don't think the EPA component of LCA — TRACI (Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts)—deals with it. The way we dealt with it in the sustainable products standards is to have specific IAQ components that you can get credit for. One of the things that we do at MTS – The Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability – is use high-leverage activities to change the market. For example, standards, advertising, and capital markets. And education is key. We have twenty-one online education programs, half for green buildings, half for sustainable products. A number of manufacturers' sales reps have taken that training because they're finding that architects are becoming very sophisticated. You know, AIA is really a market leader right now, their members know a lot about this.

Is durability part of the life cycle assessment?

Yes. We had many debates about how to look at that. Part of the issue is churn. You may use durable products, but if you've got churn, it gets thrown into a landfill. Then you have very durable products in a landfill. So we have to take that into account in the durability standards.

Why is it difficult for government to adopt new green or sustainable building codes or regulations?

You're not going to see any state agency or the federal government doing this on their own – it's too political. They will adopt those standards that others like USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council) or MTS adopt, because all the consensus work has been done and political risk is limited.

Do you think an enormous push on public awareness of things such as VOCs would help to affect change?

The most effective approach is where you've got companies or market leaders – and USG is a market leader – who see their business model as congruent with certain nonprofits. Those kind of non-governmental and governmental partnerships, where goals are all aligned and it meets your business model, you're going to be able to promote your sustainable ceilings, we're going to be able to get our standards out there, that is the best way right now to achieve sustainable progress. It's very difficult to get legislation and regulation from the states and the federal government. We've gone through 40 years of regulation with federal and state governments on environmental stuff. We have 30 statutes that they have enacted and thousands of regulations, and they have sort of maxed out their effectiveness. Unlike Europe, which has taken a marketing approach. The last environmental legislation out of Congress was in 1986. So these market-based approaches are historically more effective. When we can align our nonprofit goals with profitability, things move real fast.

In summarizing what you incorporate in defining a sustainable product – you mentioned life cycle, inventory, some factor for indoor environmental quality (IEQ) – are there other aspects, such as disposability or recyclability?

Yes, you have to look at major environmental impacts. There are maybe twelve which we do in our standard and over the whole supply chain. You have to look at raw material extraction, transportation, usage, the impact on the building – and then reuse and reclamation, which our standard covers. So that covers the whole life cycle of the product and then you've got many environmental impacts that have to be evaluated over that whole supply chain. The other thing that's critical for sustainable products is social equity. We didn't invent the social equity standard, we just took the best of what had been done and consolidated it. We used the global reporting initiative social equity indicators, which is an international consensus standard on social equity and we – the state of Wisconsin and our committee – took a look at that and pulled out the most important fifteen social equity indicators, which are things like child labor, human rights, worker protection and conditions and community activities, to create our sustainable products standard. The other issue is credibility in terms of certification and auditing — making sure people don't lie and misuse the system.