I was just reviewing an article on how the Federal government audited the Energy Star program and found that it suffered from a common trend these days referred to as “green-washing”. “Green-washing” is where a corporation represents its products as being environmentally friendly even when they may not be. This can be done by applying a little “Green-Spin”, or heavily weighting the benefits of a single feature without looking at the entire picture. In the case of the Energy Star label the congressional audit submitted a Gasoline powered alarm clock that was the most energy efficient version on the market, not to mention the only version – what’s most alarming is that the government bought it! The article from the New York Times is can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/science/earth/26star.html
KPA has long had a practice of representing a metrics driven approach to rating the compliance of your facility and we believe that any submission for a “green” or “safe” program should be verified by a 3rd party to ensure the validity of the claim. If you are approached by someone selling you a “Green” certification for your facility, ask the following questions: Under who’s authority is the organization issuing this certificate? Who verifies that my facility has met the qualification criteria? What percentage of applicants are certified as Green? If you don’t like the answers to these questions ask yourself how the public will respond if the certificate issuer makes news like the Energy Star program. I do believe there is a great benefit in Green certification, but not until standards are developed that can be independently verified.