Assessment Methodology
Seeking best practice
The market for ‘environmentally preferable’ products is relatively new in the mainstream in Australia. All concerned, from building developers to manufacturers, are coming off a low-base of product environmental profile and knowledge. In many instances organisations have a poor knowledge of the environmental attributes of products they make or use. It is also fair to say that scientific knowledge on health and environmental impacts is in many areas embryonic.
For these reasons ecospecifier firstly looks to identify what is known from science about priority issues, and looks for best performance against these priority areas towards what we call 'best practice towards sustainability'.
The following table gives two examples to illustrate this point:
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Paint
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All acrylic paints use much the same levels of acrylic resins. However, a large proportion of the overall life-cycle impacts come from the high burden of producing the titanium dioxide, a pigment used to provide opacity and other properties (see Glossary). There is now some differentiation in the marketplace between titanium dioxide levels in paints. Another key impact is on smog-formation and human health from volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. VOC emissions, and what is emitted, varies a great deal from almost zero grams per litre to upward of 100 grams per litre. Therefore both titanium dioxide and VOC emission characteristics are used as a basis for identifying ‘best practice’. |
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MDF
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The principal life-cycle impacts from medium density fibreboard are generally considered to be from production of wood fibre, and production of and emissions from glue manufacture.
ecospecifier therefore considers the sustainability claims and verifications made around production, and looks for certification of sustainable woodfibre production e.g. Forest Stewardship Council Certification (FSC) and emissions data in particular formaldehyde emissions from finished panels, as there is considerable variability in both of these indicators. Although most MDF manufactured in Australia and New Zealand is manufactured with the same wood fibre, radiata pine it can come from (in increasing sustainability):
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