Green building product resource ecospecifier has launched a new website with free access to display its new GreenTag GreenRate GBCA recognised product certification.
The website will be publicly launched at the Green Cities Conference in Melbourne on 27 February.
The new site is targeted to green building professionals, DIY renovators and others looking to simplify their green building product research.
The site also lists the company’s Verified Product Program,which ensures a product has been third party verified as an eco-preferred, healthy product and subjected to the same highly detailed health and ecotoxicity screen as GreenTag certified products.
An intention of ecospecifier founders, David Baggs and Mary-Lou Kelly, was delivering robust, third party verified green building product information, ‘greenwash’ and cost free into the public domain.
The GreenTag program is less than a year old, but according to Baggs, the CEO, it has about 200 products under certification.
“Its success has given us the confidence to take the site free-to-air so that everyone can access information at whatever level of detail they need, from product summaries and GreenTag Rating Scorecards, to Green Star Certification and highly detailed ISO 14005 compliant Environmental Product Declarations.
Baggs said: “GreenTag is Australia’s most third party certified product certification system with audits undertaken not only of our quality system but also of our assessments and compliance to no less than five international and Australian standards.”
Examples of products certified under the Green Tag system include Polyflor, Laminex, Dunlop Underlays and Tontine Insulation.
At the end of 2010, the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) confirmed that ecospecifier's GreenTag GreenRate Certification is recognised as evidence of compliance with VOC and formaldehyde credits in all Green Star tools.
The company launched GreenTag at last year’s Green Cities conference.
Development of the label occurred over three years with input sourced globally from advisors in eco-labeling standards, green building and green product development.
Processes of GreenTag include: LCARate Certification, which use life cycle assessment, building information modelling (BIM), and simulation processes to rate a product against a Business as Usual (BAU) comparison product.
Baggs claims in Australia, GreenTag will become the guarantee for green products vying for selection in buildings to be approved by the Green Stars system, awarded by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA).
The GreenRate Certification component of the GreenTag assessment process has been officially approved as the third party certification for materials used in Green Star rated buildings by the GBCA, which officially enforces a GreenRate Certification process on all green products for Green Star rated buildings.
The GreenRate Certification process can assess products against other green building schemes around Australia including NABERS, BASIX, BCA and the globe including LEED, BREEAM, Estidama Pearl, Green Building Index and Green Mark.
It is expected that this feature of the GreenTag certification system will see the label used by building industry specifiers and product buyers around the globe and most importantly, enable green manufacturers to position -accurately- their green products against multiple building schemes and thus expand their world market potential.
Baggs comments: “We have designed GreenTag to be an efficient one-stop solution for the whole industry to benefit - for green manufacturers and suppliers and for building industry professionals who require a label of this kind to speed up product research and planning processes in the specification and purchase of green building products”.
