ICC Launches Sustainability Verification for Products

By Tristan Korthals Altes

The International Code Council (ICC), the leading code-development organization in the U.S., also performs technical evaluations of building products, methods, and materials for code compliance through the ICC Evaluation Service (ICC-ES). In October 2008, the ICC-ES launched a new initiative, the Sustainable Attributes Verification and Evaluation Program (SAVE), which will evaluate building products according to common green criteria.

A voluntary program, SAVE allows manufacturers to submit products for evaluation by ICC-ES. The evaluation is based on sustainability attributes in several categories: recycled content; biobased content; solar reflectance and thermal emittance of roofing; regional manufacturing; volatile organic compound (VOC) content and emissions for paints and coatings, adhesives and sealants, and floorcoverings; formaldehyde emissions; and certified wood content. The evaluation will include verification of appropriate documentation, inspection of production processes, and independent product testing when appropriate.

Products that are successful under the evaluation receive a Verification of Attributes Report and the ability to use a SAVE trademark in their marketing and packaging. Inspection officials, such as those checking for compliance with green building rating systems, can then use an identification number carried with that trademark to reference the report and verify that relevant attributes are present.

SAVE brings a new, but widely trusted, player to the rapidly evolving and often confusing world of green product certifications. Michael Colopy, senior vice-president of marketing and communications for ICC, said that the organization has chosen to “invest its credibility” in combating greenwashing. “This will help standardize across a very large market the concepts of sustainability around some definable values that code officials can really relate to and understand,” he told EBN.

SAVE differs from many other green certifications in that those values, the standards or attributes the product is evaluated against, are chosen by the manufacturer from options given within SAVE’s guidelines. In SAVE’s certified wood evaluation, for example, the manufacturer chooses whether a forest product is evaluated against sustainability standards developed by the Forest Stewardship Council, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the American Tree Farm System, or others, each of which is substantially different. A product meeting any of those standards as well as SAVE’s basic documentation requirements will be able to carry the same SAVE logo. A customer or code official will need to refer to the product’s SAVE report to understand which threshold it meets.

“It is the green building rating systems that are actually setting the thresholds,” explained Steve Thorsell, director of special projects for ICC-ES. “We didn’t want our reports to be only applicable within one rating system.” Thorsell noted that the intention behind SAVE was to provide “one-stop shopping” for code compliance and sustainable attributes.

SAVE has just been introduced to potential customers and no products have been through it yet, said Thorsell. So far, it isn’t clear how SAVE will be used or how it will interact with other established programs. With certified wood, for example, Thorsell wouldn’t specify whether SAVE would compete with existing companies that perform certification or rely on their work, rolling their results into its reports. Thorsell said that SAVE would follow the lead of the manufacturer, with the onus on a company to prove, through relevant documentation, that it complies with a given standard. That could put companies in a position to use SAVE as a self-certification system, something that Thorsell did not rule out.

This article was produced by BuildingGreen, LLC.- www.buildinggreen.com