Following Jacob’s post on cement, I’m doing some research on green building schemes – specifically Built Green. I don’t mean to pick on them – but it’s a classic example of the state of ecolabels.

It’s a messy family tree – there are a lot of children running around, but it’s not obvious who the parents are. Build Green Washington seems pretty mature, but the county level Built Green schemes all left home, and got new logos. Kids. Then there’s the distant cousins that moved to Canada (but really only settled in BC in Alberta).

Of course, the proud grandparents live in Colorado (Built Green Colorado), where we find the Home Builders Association of Metro Denver, which still holds the keys to the Prius in the energy efficient garage – and the Built Green trademark.

It feels a bit like beating my head against a brick wall – I don’t care that it’s reclaimed brick – it still hurts.

I have a feeling LEED’s not much better. One of our goals with ecolabelling.org is to help make this all a bit clearer — but I think schemes could really do with getting their houses in order too. How about some discipline around here – everyone in the Built Green family wears the same logos, and everyone plays by the same rules.

“In booming economies, cement is crucial for growth but an enemy of green” (IHT, 21 October 2007) outlines a major environmental issue: cement. According to the article, cement is now responsible for 5% of global CO2 emissions. The article also notes that the greenest cement technologies only reduce emissions by 20%.

While the rapid growth in absolute amounts of cement being produced represents a major environmental problem, discounting the benefits of greener cement is a mistake. 20% less emissions is 20% less emissions. In lieu of substitution for another building material green cement is the next best option and it should be encouraged.

Along those lines the article references the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI), a project of the WBCSD (an industry group based in Geneva). Their agenda for action contains an extensive list of industry commitments set for publishing in 2006. Some of the key ones are:

1. baseline data on CO2 emissions and targets;
2. emissions targets;
3. rehabilitation plans for quarries;
4. statements of ethics.

According to an email from the CSI regarding this blog, the companies have further agreed to independent third party verification of their CO2 emissions, and beginning in 2007, the same treatment for plant safety indicators.

On 19 March 2007 the CSI launched an 8 page brief (PDF | 257kb), that outlines aggregate CO2 emissions for 40% of the industry. The brief notes that a full report outlining a five year plan of action is forthcoming this year.

So far ecolabelling.org contains 13 labels under the type – buildings. There is nothing for cement. The success of Home Depot’s Eco-options label demonstrates demand at the retail level for green products. Our informal conversations with procurement officials, along with initiatives like NAGPI in North America, indicate similar demand at the institutional level. We therefore urge the CSI to work with its members and industry label leaders like LEED to establish an ecolabel for cement.

Those companies making the extra effort to produce a green product deserve to be recognized in the market for it.

We’ve been working on this project for about six months and haven’t seen anything for cars.

Forbes built its 2007 ranking based on air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and came up with a list of twelve top performers.

Cardiff University Business School just came out with this report that puts small light cars at the top of the ranking using a “fuller set of criteria” than just emissions.

It’s hard to compare the lists because one is for the North American market and the other is for the EU. No one appears to be looking globally at this stage.

Window shopping for a car while in LA some months ago I came across federal emissions classifications like “ultra low emission vehicle” but as Cardiff notes emissions isn’t the whole picture. How much juice went into building the car and how long will it last?

For such a fundamental part of our lives we were surprised to find no independent international labelling system for the total environmental impact of automobiles. Would be great to see a dream-team of the manufacturers of the twelve greenest cars and a leading environmental group team up on something like that.

I’d much rather see a label and know a car is green so I can get back to choosing one based on whether or not it will help me with the ladies.