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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE UL Environment Leads Development of New Sustainability Standards |
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Organization to Create New Green Standards for Building Materials
NORTHBROOK, Ill., September 9 /PRNewswire/ -- (WORLD-WIRE) UL Environment, Inc. (ULE), a global leader in environmental evaluation and certification, announces today that it is leading a collaborative effort to develop sustainability standards for the green marketplace based on an analysis of environmental impacts over a product's entire life cycle. The program will initially develop standards for doors and wallboard, including mineral board, fiberboard, door frames and associated hardware such as hinges, locks and handles. These standards are the first in a series of sustainability standards to be developed across a wide variety of industries, representing a new "green" leadership role for an organization that launched comprehensive environmental claims validation and certification services in January 2009. "UL has a century-long tradition of defining safe product performance. Today UL Environment makes significant movement toward a broader goal of setting comprehensive environmental standards and raising the bar for sustainability across various industries" said Steve Wenc, President, ULE. "We are responding to increased consumer and market demand for 'green' product standards that consumers and businesses can identify and trust." Properly-developed sustainability standards establish the basis for differentiating environmentally superior products and services, allowing businesses and consumers to make environmentally-preferable choices more easily. ULE's new sustainability standards will be designed for the ANSI process and draw on input from UL Environment Standard Technical Panels (STPs) comprised of stakeholders such as manufacturers, government entities, consumer interest groups, product installers, users, distributors and testing organizations. These standards will set minimum environmental requirements and create a progressive and tiered approach allowing sustainability leaders to highlight their achievements. "The new ULE standard will help the architectural design and building community determine what truly makes a product sustainable--based on science, comprehensive testing and expert analysis," said Jerry Heppes CAE, Chief Executive Officer of the Door and Hardware Institute. "Credible environmental standards allow manufacturers to design products, architects to specify products, and building owners to rely upon products that verifiably stand out in the increasingly-crowded green marketplace." ULE is launching this initiative with the full support and expertise of the UL standards development organization, which has been developing standards for more than a century and is actively maintaining more than 1,000 safety standards globally. About UL Environment, Inc. UL Environment (ULE) is helping support the growth and development of sustainable products and services in the global marketplace through standards development and independent third-party assessment and certification. ULE is a wholly owned subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories, a global leader in conformity assessment that has been testing products and writing standards for more than a century. ULE currently offers Environmental Claims Validation™ (ECV), a service testing and verifying manufacturers' self-declared environmental claims and Sustainable Products Certification™ (SPC), a service testing and certifying products to accepted industry standards for environmental sustainability. ULE is developing additional environmental standards, as well as training and advisory services to support organizations in the sustainable products and services industry. CONTACT: Katya Chistik Hantel, GolinHarris, +1-312-729-4219, khantel@golinharris.com, for UL Environment |
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