Universal Green Product Database? Yes, Please!

(This piece originally appeared in the February 2011 issues of Merchant Magazine and Building Products Digest.)

I sound like my grandpa, but today’s green merchandisers never had it so easy. Back in my day – 2005 – there were few residential green building programs or product standards to consult. Online lists and databases of verified products were sparsely populated and behind the market. When I was asked to develop a green merchandising program, it was a challenge we met only by doing lots of extra work vetting products ourselves and assembling our own database. Though our methodology would be easy for non-experts to implement, the burden on a typical merchandising department is simply too great.

Thankfully, the last several years have seen tremendous maturation in the green building sector. The trails have been blazed and today’s merchandise managers have a growing number of information resources at their disposal. But trails are trails, and until sustainability is a fully mature, mainstream superhighway, (ironic choice of metaphor, I know), successful merchandisers must still invest time in evaluating their green product choices. There is still no universal green product database. On the other hand, there are a small number of valuable online resources that make the process of identifying “greenest in class” products a little easier.

The GreenSpec database from BuildingGreen.com has been one of the most trusted sources of green product information for years. The editors evaluate products against their own stringent criteria and avoid accusations of favoritism or bias by not accepting advertising or listing fees. It’s not a comprehensive list, but the products listed are often best in class. BuildingGreen offers news and analysis, too, and is a valuable resource that every dealer and distributor in the green building space should utilize regularly.

In the recent past, a common criticism of green building rating systems organizations is that they failed to provide relevant product information, also. Wisely, both national residential green building programs are developing their own green product information resources. The NAHB is creating a database of products that the NAHB Research Center has evaluated and approved for use in their National Green Product Standard program. However, it is virtually useless at this stage with a clunky interface and only a handful of products listed.

Alternatively, the GreenHomeGuide.com, founded in 2003 and acquired by USGBC in 2008, is not a simple directory of products. The site is based on expert advice delivered as focused “Know How” pieces or as answers to inquiries in the “Ask a Pro” section. Providing this kind of contextual information about products and materials can be extremely valuable for gaining knowledge about the category, alternatives, performance, and installation issues that simple databases will not provide. While it offers no product directory, per se, it does link to the GreenSpec directory.

There are other product lists and directories worth a look, too. Product certifying organizations, such as Scientific Certification Systems (www.scscertified.com), list certified products on their websites. But the need for reliable, transparent product information is huge and still largely unmet. New online directories have emerged to try to fill the gap. One of the best designed attempts to provide a LEED-oriented directory of products is EcoScoreCard.com, but it’s still too young to be comprehensive.

Green building culture values transparency and third-party verification, which has led to greater focus on life cycle analysis (LCA) and environmental product declarations (EPD) as a standard method for manufacturers to communicate the sustainability profile of their products. If widely adopted, such standardized product data would make development of a universal database feasible. That’s exactly what’s needed in order to create mainstream scale at the retail end of the green building supply chain.