Our goal is to help you meet the most demanding environmental “green” standards of your local authorities and clients. When it comes to product selection, even the most progressively green facility executive will probably agree that performance and cost are the most critical criteria. For many organizations, however, green criteria are becoming nearly as important due to the high cost of energy and upper management’s desire to use sustainability to bolster an organization’s image. We will help you address the task of determining what is important for your organization and develop a plan to synchronize product selection with that vision.

We address which green criteria are important and how these criteria should be weighted against one another, and against performance and cost. Because green certifications say that, on balance, certain products are environmentally superior based on specific standards, we ask our manufacturers directly about the standards, and examine the environmental track records of our product suppliers. For example, is a product with high post-consumer recycled content greener than one that was manufactured with a low embodied energy? If all criteria are equal, the question becomes about how the product rates on things that are important to the organization.

We ask them to address both levels of green – green performance and green manufacturing. We consider raw materials, chemicals composition, what happens to the waste, carbon dioxide emissions, VOC emissions in use, and end-of-use strategies. For example, our recycled rubber products help reduce the amount of tires in dumps around the country by recycling and converting them into viable products. 

Buying Green in the Real World
The nation’s largest health maintenance organization has identified factors that make a green alternative preferable:

• Reduces consumption
• Conserves resources (uses less water, energy or virgin resources to produce or use, has Energy Star rating)
• Eliminates or reduces waste
• Reduces toxicity
• Can be recycled
• Offers competitive functionality and effectiveness
• Offers competitive total cost of ownership, including unit cost, cost of waste, etc.

The majority of green products have one or more of the following health or environmental attributes:

• Promote good indoor air quality, typically through reduced emissions of VOC’s and/or formaldehyde.
• Are durable and have low maintenance requirements.
• Incorporate recycled content post-consumer and/or post-industrial.
• Salvaged from existing or demolished buildings for reuse.
• Made using natural or renewable resources.
• Have low “embodied energy” (the energy required to manufacture products and transport materials).
• Do not contain ozone-depleting substances.
• Do not contain highly toxic compounds, and their production does not result in highly toxic by-products.
• Obtained from local resources and manufacturers.
• Employ “sustainable harvesting” practices for wood or bio-based products.
• Easily reused either whole or through disassembly.
• Readily recycled, preferably in a closed-loop recycling system.
• Biodegradable.