The business division of UL (Underwriters Laboratories), UL Environment and its associates has become the first organization to provide the required services, which will assist the building products to become eligible for the recently brought out Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards and qualify as Pilot Credit 43, Certified Products.
The pilot credit released recently, which functions as a test credit system before its official inclusion into the LEED rating system, assists the LEED projects in utilizing quality eco-friendly products. The services such as Environmental Product Declarations, Environmental Claims Validation, and Sustainable Product Certification offered by UL Environment will facilitate producers to qualify for the requisites.
LEED projects that look forward to get the new pilot credit need to prove that leastwise 10% of the non-structured products used in the construction satisfies one of the requisites, including environmental claims validated by a third party evaluator, evidenced as meeting multi-attribute performances criteria set by the third-party or presented along with the third party vouched environmental protection declaration or life cycle assessment report.
The non-structural product varieties that are eligible under the new pilot credit include flooring, tile, carpet, adhesives, caulking, sealants, panel systems used in office furniture, hot water tanks, cooling and heating systems, insulation products, doors and gypsum board. To qualify, these products must meet the EcoLogo or UL Environment sustainability standard. The standards for products such as luminaries and ceiling tiles are presently under the development stage and are anticipated to be issued by the end of this year.
In order to help producers, architects and other members of the LEED project teams to better understand the new pilot credit requirements, UL University, the educational segment of UL has formulated a novel online course and has a proposal to telecast a free webinar in June this year.
Source: http://ul.com/