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1 FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

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4 ECO IN THE MARKET - GREEN BUILDING AND TEXTILES

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11 Tuesday, July 15, 2008

12 9:00 a.m.

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16 Federal Trade Commission

17 FTC Conference Center

18 601 New Jersey Avenue, N.W.

19 Washington, D.C.

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1 FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

2 I N D E X

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4 Welcoming Remarks by James Kohm Page 3 

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6 Opening Remarks by Chairman Kovacic Page 8 

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8 Session 1: Weaving Green Textile Claims - Page 17

9 Cotton, Organic Cotton & Bamboo 

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11 Session 2: Typing-Up Loose Ends - Page 57

12 Substantiating Green Textile Claims

13 & the Need for FTC Guidance

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15 Session 3: Shades of Green - Overview of Page 94

16 Green Claims for Building Products 

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19 Session 4: Framing it Up - Consumer Page 154

20 Protection Issues Regarding Green

21 Building Certifications

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23 Session 5: Punch List for Green Buildings - Page 204

24 Roundtable on Consumer Protection

25 Challenges & the Need for FTC Guidance
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S

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3 WELCOMING REMARKS

4 MR. KOHM: Good morning, everyone, and welcome

5 to the Federal Trade Commission's Green Guides Building

6 and Textiles Workshop, the third in our series of green

7 marketing workshops. 

8 Before we begin, I just have a few

9 announcements for participants and for panelists. One,

10 the microphones both for the panelists and up for the

11 moderator look like they are really high-tech. In fact,

12 they are not. 

13 (Laughter.)

14 MR. KOHM: So, when you are speaking up here,

15 please lean into the microphone. We want to make sure

16 that everybody in the room and everybody to whom this is

17 being webcast can hear what you have to say. 

18 A little bit about time limits. Anybody who

19 has been to our prior workshops knows that we will run a

20 pretty strict ship in terms of time limits. So, all

21 panelists please finish in your allotted time. There

22 will be a timekeeper up front that will let you know

23 where you are in your allotment. It is not that we do

24 not want to hear everything you have to say, but we want

25 to make sure we hear everything that everyone has to say,
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1 even at the end of the panel, and that every panel, we

2 guarantee, will have time for questions at the end. 

3 If you have questions, please fill out the

4 cards. So everybody can see, these are the cards that

5 were in the packets that you picked up this morning. If

6 you need an extra card, simply hold up your hand and

7 somebody will walk around and provide one. When you are

8 done with your question, just hold up the card. Somebody

9 will collect it. And we will ask questions at the end of

10 the panel. 

11 Now, we will not necessarily have time for

12 every question. We will ask as many as we can. However,

13 this is a little different than many of our workshops. 

14 This is part of a rule-making, in this case a

15 guide-making proceeding, and the questions will be made

16 part of the guide-making record. So, what we would ask

17 is we would ask you to identify yourself on the card. 

18 You are welcome to send up anonymous questions if you

19 would like, but we would really like it if you would

20 identify yourself on the card. 

21 If you have additional comments, and we hope

22 that today's activities spur lots of more in-depth

23 comments, the record will be open until August 15th. So,

24 you simply need to go to our website and post a comment

25 on the website and, hopefully, many of you will do that
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1 between now and August 15th. When you are doing that,

2 think about a couple of things. We would really like you

3 to tell us what are the trends in the areas that you are

4 commenting on, whether they be building or textiles; what

5 are the problems that you see currently in the industry;

6 and what are the problems you foresee coming in terms of

7 misleading claims and provide some examples. Because

8 that will help us best formulate guidance for the future. 

9 Today's event is being webcast. It is

10 simultaneously webcast so lots of people around the

11 country and around the world can watch this. It will

12 also be archived with the transcript. So, if you want to

13 refer to those materials when you are making your more

14 in-depth comments, they will be available on our website

15 usually starting tomorrow. 

16 A few comments about security. When you came

17 in this morning, you were screened. Every time you leave

18 the building, you will need to be rescreened to come back

19 in. So if you leave between panels or particularly at

20 lunch when everybody's trying to get back in at the same

21 time, we will start on time, so please leave enough time

22 to go through the screening process. 

23 Everybody was provided with name tags. Please

24 wear the name tags at all times when you are inside. And

25 if you see any suspicious behavior, you can report that
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1 to the guard desk up front. 

2 In case of a fire emergency, there are two ways

3 out of the conference center. Back through the pantry,

4 right behind us, and out on to G street, and out through

5 the main doors and the front of the building. Then we

6 will congregate diagonally across from the building by

7 Georgetown Law School. In case of a SIP emergency, a

8 shelter-in-place where you do not want to go outside,

9 what you want to do is leave the conference center, take

10 the hallway to the left of the guard stand and then

11 follow everybody down into the garage, down -- we do not

12 want to take the elevators, but down the stairs into the

13 garage. 

14 A couple comments about cell phones and

15 Blackberries, now is the time for amnesty. 

16 (Laughter.)

17 MR. KOHM: It is not socially awkward for the

18 next 30 seconds to take out your cell phones and turn

19 them off. If you need to be reached, please put them on

20 vibrate. If you need to take calls, please leave the

21 conference center. Aside from being able to hear you out

22 in the hallway right beyond our room, I am told that that

23 can interfere with the video webcast. So please go out

24 into the main hallway if you need to take calls. 

25 Finally, the most important reason that I am up
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1 here, particularly for those of you who are going to be

2 here all day, the bathrooms. 

3 (Laughter.)

4 MR. KOHM: If you leave the conference center

5 and go to the left of the guard station and follow around

6 to the left, both the men's and the women's room are in

7 that direction. 

8 Turning to today's opening remarks. In keeping

9 with our pledge to start everything on time, without

10 further ado, I am proud to introduce the Chairman of the

11 Federal Trade Commission, William Kovacic, to open what 

12 I am sure will be a productive and interesting day.

13 Chairman? 

14 (Applause.)

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1 OPENING REMARKS

2 CHAIRMAN KOVACIC: I want to welcome all of you

3 to our program today by putting in context the

4 undertakings that we have launched. This is the third in

5 a series of workshops dealing with green claims and to

6 put in context what we will be doing today into the

7 framework of the agency's larger work in this area. 

8 I have spent most of my professional life over

9 the last 20 years in the academic tower of ivory. And

10 when you look at the typical assessment of public policy,

11 commentators, many of my colleagues over at GW and others

12 tend to identify three weaknesses in the way in which

13 public agencies operate. The first is that they lag

14 behind developments in commerce and in consumer behavior

15 that is relevant to the formation of policy. That our

16 tendency naturally is to look in the rearview mirror and

17 not to have particularly farsighted vision looking ahead

18 through the wind screen at what is coming up, so that we

19 are perpetually in the process of trying to catch up and

20 like Sisyphus never quite able to put the boulder up over

21 the hill. 

22 The second complaint is that many of our

23 policy-making gestures lack nuances. That too often we

24 tend to fall into a habit of using a single tool rather

25 than using a variety of policy responses that would
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1 assist us in coming up with good policy outcomes; that

2 having learned a single instrument, we are unable to

3 effectively apply others so that like an artist in a

4 particular field, we can play one composition. But if

5 you discuss to do something else, much less to play

6 another instrument, we are stymied. 

7 And the last is that in the archipelago of

8 public policy, we are victims of fragmentation, that in

9 the areas in which we operate, we all inhabit individual

10 islands. And you might think that in a larger community

11 that when you go to visit another island, arms would be

12 extended, there would be welcoming ceremonies, but quite

13 often the inhabitants of each island come out to repel

14 boarders who are arriving instead of welcoming them even

15 if they are part of the same archipelago and nominally

16 part of the same policy-making institutions. 

17 I think one of the great stories about the

18 Federal Trade Commission and a reason it is one of the

19 great success stories of public administration in our

20 lifetimes is the way in which it has tried to address

21 each three. Addressing each of these three problems

22 really is manifest in the conduct of this workshop

23 dealing with building and textiles issues associated with

24 green claims. 

25 First, dealing with modern trends in the
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1 sector. As you know, in many respects, we have a

2 commercial system that is driven significantly by changes

3 in consumer tastes. And owing to the work of media

4 organizations, consumer groups, intermediaries who

5 provide information to consumers in a variety of

6 different conduits, consumers develop a greater awareness

7 and preference for different types of products and

8 services. Green claims, climate change, a whole host of

9 concerns associated with developments that, in many ways,

10 transpired 40 years ago, in the late 1950s and throughout

11 the '60s with the continuing evolution of awareness about

12 the importance of environmental concerns, consumer tastes

13 have changed, changed in ways that have dramatically

14 changed the demand for services and products in the areas

15 in which we are going to be discussing today. 

16 The second-related change is that firms respond

17 to these changes in consumer preferences. Notice for

18 those of you in the business community, notice how many

19 of your firms have adapted both qualitatively and

20 quantitatively to changes in consumer tastes, to

21 construct buildings that are more sensitive to

22 environmental concerns, to use clothing raw materials

23 that are made in a manner that imposes fewer demands on

24 the environment. 

25 A major reason that we conduct these sessions
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1 is to learn about those developments. And in many

2 respects, this is part of a rejuvenation, re-invention of

3 the agency that transpired well over a decade ago

4 throughout the '90s and into this decade. Part of what

5 we realized is that if we are going to remain current, if

6 we are going to stay state-of-the-art concerning these

7 developments, we have to engage in a regular process of

8 public consultation with the whole collection of

9 interested parties -- consumers, business associations,

10 academics, and other commentators who have views who can

11 teach us about what is taking place. 

12 That is why Jim's invitation to you to share

13 your views is so important. That is why we commit on a

14 regular basis substantial resources to this type of

15 public consultation. And I think the results of the

16 program today unmistakably will put us in a better

17 position to make judgments about the application of the

18 full range of policy tools we have at our disposal. That

19 is one reason to convene this event. 

20 The second is that we have learned, looking at

21 our entire portfolio of tools, that the appropriate

22 policy response in many instances is to use a varied,

23 multiple collection of strategies in dealing with

24 individual phenomena. That was the purpose for creating

25 this agency. My agency is part think-tank, it is part
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1 law enforcement body. We like to think of it in many

2 ways as the thinking person's approach to consumer

3 protection and competition policy. 

4 Why? In part, we are a law enforcement agency

5 and we are quite willing to use our enforcement powers to

6 ensure the claims relating to green products, green

7 services are indeed truthful. And I think all of you

8 understand the intuition behind that. That is,

9 confidence on the part of consumers about the legitimacy

10 of claims is indispensable to permitting these changes in

11 consumer tastes to really drive adjustments in commercial

12 behavior. And it is equally important for individual

13 entrepreneurs who want to respond to these claims in an

14 honest way to be able to make representations with

15 consumers being confident that those claims are truthful. 

16 So, we regard the enforcement process as being

17 an indispensable ingredient in ensuring honesty in the

18 making of these claims. But it is not the only tool that

19 we use. The workshop, the public consultation is part of

20 that process. The guidelines that we will be discussing

21 are a key element to educate both business actors who

22 want clarity and predictability about what they do and

23 for consumers to educate them about what to expect when

24 they hear representations regarding green claims, and to

25 engage in a process of research so that we better
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1 understand what consumers are taking away from individual

2 ads. 

3 I am sure that in the world that Jim just

4 talked about before where this demonic device. 

5 (Laughter.)

6 CHAIRMAN KOVACIC: Summons your attention by

7 the minute, I look forward to a day past when this

8 wonderful thing, but this curse, this Blackberry, never

9 summoned you. That there were not messages cascading

10 over you regularly from a computer screen. That phones

11 were attached to walls. 

12 (Laughter.)

13 CHAIRMAN KOVACIC: That there were miracle

14 devices called fax machines that could come and creep up

15 after you. And, at best, an express courier who is at

16 least two days away from wherever you were. In many

17 ways, that was a happier state of life. But the benefits

18 that come with the information do impose costs. And a

19 key question about which we conduct research, and we are

20 very interested in conducting these proceedings, is how

21 do people actually absorb information that are presented

22 through advertisements? 

23 In the downpour of information where consumers,

24 in effect, are standing under a giant waterfall with a

25 teacup every day trying to catch little drips of
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1 information and absorb them, how do people understand

2 claims that are being made, how do they perceive them,

3 and how should that guide our approach to formulating

4 policy? 

5 So, in many respects, the approach that you see

6 today, and this program is part of it, is a recognition

7 on our part that if we are going to make good policy in

8 this area, we are going to have to use the full portfolio

9 of policy instruments dedicated to us, to be a wise

10 enforcer, to engage in public consultations, to do

11 research, to issue guidelines. This program today is

12 going to inform the use of each of these policy tools. 

13 And the third challenge that we are addressing

14 is one of cooperation, how to provide better ferry

15 service and communication in the archipelago. You will

16 notice today that participation in this program engages

17 the energies of our public institutions that are deeply

18 involved in making good policy in this area: our

19 colleagues from the Environmental Protection Agency, from

20 Customs and Border Protection. This is part of a

21 conscious effort on the part of the policy-making

22 community to try to achieve coherent approaches to teach

23 each other, to build relationships that will facilitate a

24 conversation over time that ensures that different public

25 institutions, state institutions, local institutions are
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1 working toward the same policy end. 

2 And the panels you will see assembled today

3 throughout today are a manifestation of our realization

4 that to achieve good policy results, one of the critical

5 frontiers of better policy-making in the future is better

6 coordination against these individual institutions. And

7 that the collaboration, in many ways, though perhaps not

8 as deep or integrated as it is with the public

9 institutions, is a greater collaboration with academic

10 bodies, think-tanks, the trade associations, the non11 government organizations that, in many ways, if we can

12 work with them effectively, if we can tap their

13 knowledge, will put all of us in a better position to

14 achieve better policy results. 

15 So, I want to finish by thanking you for

16 engaging in this process. A hopeful message I want you

17 to take as we begin this process is that the very fact of

18 having this type of event, in many respects, I think,

19 shows how public institutions can be innovative, they can

20 be creative, they can mature in ways that achieve better

21 policy outcomes. And to thank all of you again for your

22 willingness to participate in this process. 

23 A number of the things that take place today

24 will have immediate results. But, in many ways, this is

25 a contribution to a longer term process where we make the
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1 equivalent of capital investments that will be valuable

2 for the policy community, for consumers and for our

3 agency over the long term. And in a city that tends to

4 be very short-sighted in its treatment of fundamentally

5 difficult longer term concerns, I am heartened to have

6 you all here as an act of faith in your own commitment in

7 taking the long run as though it matters and making the

8 contribution to this process. That is public policy on a

9 good day. 

10 And I want to welcome you and thank you for

11 being part of this endeavor today and to thank my

12 colleagues for making it possible. Thank you. 

13 (Applause.)

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1 SESSION 1: WEAVING GREEN TEXTILE CLAIMS - COTTON, 

2 ORGANIC COTTON & BAMBOO

3 MS. FRANKLE: Good morning, everyone. I am

4 Janice Frankle and this is Session 1: Weaving Green

5 Textile Claims - Cotton, Organic Cotton and Bamboo. 

6 Although today's green textile discussion focuses on the

7 FTC Green Guides, the FTC also administers several laws

8 pertaining to textile labeling, including the Textile Act

9 and the rules promulgated thereunder. 

10 What is important for today's textile

11 discussion is that the law requires you to use the

12 generic fiber name recognized by the FTC to identify

13 fiber content on a label or in advertising. For example,

14 one of the FTC's recognized generic names for regenerated

15 cellulose from bamboo is called rayon. Alternatively,

16 you may use the name recognized by the International

17 Organization for Standardization or IOS. 

18 We have a very informative panel for Session 1,

19 and I would like to introduce them now. LaRhea Pepper

20 from Organic Exchange, Patricia O'Leary from Cotton Inc.,

21 Peter Hauser from North Carolina State University, and

22 Janice Gerde from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. We

23 will start with LaRhea. 

24 MS. PEPPER: Thank you. It is an honor to be

25 here and a pleasure to be in Washington, D.C. I got to
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1 come in last night. So, I was doing the definite mad

2 dash to come here. And first and foremost, I am an

3 organic cotton farmer. So, I am trying to keep a crop

4 growing in West Texas and that is one of the hats I wear. 

5 The other thing is I am the Executive Director of the

6 Organic Exchange. We are a nonprofit, and our mission is

7 to catalyze market forces to expand organic fiber

8 agriculture. 

9 So, I am just going to talk a little bit today

10 about preserving integrity in a rapidly growing market. 

11 I think we have already had a little bit of a taste of

12 sometimes our industries are growing faster than the

13 infrastructure to do that and, so, our role at the

14 Exchange is to connect, convene, to educate, and that is

15 the main thing that we do is education. 

16 Just to put organic into context, organic

17 fibers are regulated by the National Organic Program here

18 in the United States by USDA and, so, when you say the

19 word "organic" here in the United States, it is a legal

20 term and it has a definition around that. And, so, there

21 are strict laws that are enforced about what can and

22 cannot be called organic, and it is about a method of

23 production when we talk about organic fibers. So, most

24 people think it is cotton grown or fibers grown without

25 this. It is not organic by default, it is organic by
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1 design. It is about a system of agriculture where you

2 are using crop rotation, where you are putting in an

3 ecosystem or a habitat. 

4 So, some of the fibers that are now being

5 certified are cotton, hemp and linen. In addition to

6 that, there's organic wool. The livestock are being

7 certified on pastures that meet the organic requirements

8 and the livestock are treated in such a way. So, many of

9 the times right now the fiber components are done within

10 a food system and the focus is on the food and the

11 regulations and, again, the agricultural products that

12 are derived from that and we also are starting to see

13 some organic leather. 

14 So, in the United States organic fiber products

15 sales grew by 44 percent, and here are the categories

16 where this growth has been taking place, and these are

17 results from a survey that was done by the Organic Trade

18 Association. So, women's apparel is 43 percent; infant

19 and children clothing are 40 percent; men's is 43 percent

20 with sheets and towels at 38 and child and teen at 52. 

21 These are the growth percentages in those different

22 categories. And we are going to have some new results of

23 this at the end of the year and there is significant

24 growth that is still happening in this marketplace. 

25 When we look at this globally, organic fiber
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1 markets have increased 35 percent from 2001 to 2007 and

2 we are going to increase it significantly again by 2008. 

3 When we look at where these numbers are coming from,

4 consumers are driving this market on one end of the

5 spectrum because they are wanting products that -- either

6 they have allergy sensitivities and want organic fiber

7 products for a quality of life issue or they are making a

8 life-style choice that support this type of agriculture. 

9 And when my husband and I started farming

10 organic cotton in the early '90s, it was very difficult

11 to find any organic cotton products anywhere. But, now,

12 you are able to find them all over the place. Big

13 department stores, the big box and brand stores,

14 boutiques, catalogs, Internet. Of course, that has

15 changed where we are. 

16 We have a lot of designers in Organic Exchange. 

17 Our members represent over 80 percent of the fiber

18 production and consumption of organic fiber at this point

19 in time. So, there is more and more companies coming

20 into the marketplace. 

21 And here are the top five brands and retailers

22 right now that are using organic fiber. And we have over

23 1,500 brands and retailers that are advertising out

24 there, offering an organic fiber component in their brand

25 or their line. 
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1 So, let's get into the labeling certification

2 of organic fiber products. This is where, if you can see

3 on one side of the screen, there are all kinds of

4 regulations around what you can and cannot say and

5 sometimes they can be misleading and confusing about what

6 you should say or cannot say on an organic fiber product

7 because the National Organic Program, in its preamble,

8 says here is what you can say about an organic

9 agricultural product and their processing standards cover

10 foods. 

11 Where we are in a textile product where it may

12 be more confusing about what you may need to put on that

13 product because unlike a food situation, you know, you

14 are talking about a function. If you did not have

15 something other than organic fiber in this pair of socks

16 they would not stay up. So, there are reasons for

17 different labeling and education and what you put on that

18 claim other than the strict requirements of what you put

19 on a food product. 

20 So, what we have done here is that while there

21 have not been legal requirements about what you can and

22 cannot say in an organic fiber product, what we have

23 tried to do is keep with the intent of the National

24 Organic Program and its regulations that are there on how

25 you label food products, as well as be compliant with the
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1 Federal Trade Commission and the regulations there on

2 textile products. 

3 So, our guidelines, and we talk to our brands

4 and retailers, is that all claims must be true. So, if

5 you say that there is 85 percent organic cotton in this

6 sock, then that is what you need to say and you need to

7 say that the other part is nylon and Spandex. And, so,

8 be careful about what you say. All claims must be true. 

9 The wording of the labels cannot be misleading to

10 consumers. The percentages of the fiber content must be

11 given and the organic fiber must be certified by an

12 accepted standard by the National Organic Program. And,

13 so, regardless of where this cotton is grown around the

14 world, it has to be accredited by certification groups

15 that is credited by the National Organic Program if it is

16 going to be sold here in the United States. 

17 So, when we look at working with the National

18 Organic Program, some of the guidelines that have come

19 from there that we have worked together that if you want

20 to put -- there are two kinds of claims. One is about

21 the product itself and the other is about the fiber that

22 is in the product. So, if you want to make a claim that

23 says it is 100 percent organic, then 100 percent of the

24 fiber in that content must be organic. You can only use

25 organic processing aids. And the USDA seal may be
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1 displayed on the final product only if all operations

2 producing and handling and processing the final -- you

3 know, every step along that way, if you are going to put

4 100 percent organic out there on a product. 

5 Now, if you are just going to make an organic

6 claim, then, by weight, a minimum of 95 percent of that

7 fiber or the product must be the organic fiber. And the

8 5 percent of non-organic substances have to be listed in

9 the NOP program as allowable. And they have kind of

10 given me a sign. The other thing -- they are going to

11 hurry me along here, ten minutes and five minutes, we are

12 going to click away on the time. 

13 So, the other and the most predominant market

14 claim that is made on organic products at this time is

15 made with organic, which means that the product must, by

16 weight, contain 70 percent of organic fibers and you must

17 identify the specific fibers that are in the product. 

18 Grace is going to be talking later on about

19 textile claims and product claims and, again, I just want

20 us to be clear that organic in the product may be about

21 the fiber itself. 

22 Then there are voluntary processing claims,

23 GOTS is one of them, but there are a number of different

24 processing claims that are in the global market. And in

25 Europe, there are a number of them. Here in the United
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1 States, there are a few of them. But as an industry, we

2 are working to endorse and support one single voluntary

3 organic textile standard and, so, that is called the

4 GOTS. Again, Grace will be going into that in the next

5 panel. 

6 For companies that do not want to make a

7 product claim, then the Organic Exchange is supporting

8 two different standards. One is called the OE blended

9 and one is called the OE 100. The OE 100 allows the

10 brands and companies to have verifications on fiber

11 content by a third party to verify that the cotton in

12 this product, for example, is 100 percent organic. That

13 there are no other fibers utilized in this product other

14 than the organic and they are only making a fiber claim. 

15 Now, when you talk about a blended claim like,

16 for example, this sweater is going to be a certain

17 percentage tencel and a certain percentage organic

18 cotton. There are a number of reasons to blend. 

19 Patagonia is going to be talking about some of their

20 blends with cotton and recycled polyester. So, a lot of

21 times companies are going to blend cotton with other

22 fibers in order to have the functionality of the garment

23 to meet the needs of the consumer. 

24 There is another reason to blend and that is to

25 encourage organic cotton production. A lot of companies
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1 like Nike are using 3 to 5 percent blends of organic

2 fiber in all their products and they are not making any

3 product claim on that. That claim is coming through in a

4 CSR report or on their website talking about their

5 willingness to support organic fiber agriculture. 

6 The other thing that I think is important to

7 recognize is that there is transitional fiber being grown

8 and we are starting to talk about that in the transition

9 to organic. 

10 And then who is buying these products? More

11 than that, and I think this is something everybody needs

12 to be aware of, people are asking what is in your

13 product, who made it, where it comes from. So, when we

14 look at labels around what is going on with products,

15 people are caring and want to know how, where, what, and

16 what is going on in their products. Thank you for your

17 time. 

18 (Applause.)

19 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you very much, LaRhea. 

20 Pat? 

21 DR. O'LEARY: Good morning, and thank you for

22 the opportunity to talk today. Today, first of all, I

23 would like to start out and give just a small

24 introduction and follow that with what is Cotton's green

25 message, what is the message that we are trying to get
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1 across to consumers. And then after that, what do

2 consumers think about the environmental issues, about the

3 environmental claims that are being made? And, finally,

4 I would like to end with just our recommendations of what

5 should be done with the Green Guides. 

6 First of all, Cotton is one of three national

7 organizations that represent the cotton industry in the

8 U.S. We are a research and promotion program that is

9 funded through commodity check-off. So, that being so,

10 we operate under the oversight of USDA. 

11 In our marketing campaign, we use a push-pull

12 strategy. Therefore, we have two audiences. One, they

13 are the businesses that make and sell cotton products,

14 and the other is the consumer. And in my presentation

15 this morning, my comments will only address the consumer. 

16 In the consumer marketing, we have several

17 venues that we put our green message out before our

18 audience. Of course, it is print advertising. We

19 sponsor mall events. And since last fall we have what we

20 call our green fields commercial. This is our green

21 commercial for cotton. And more in the future we will be

22 utilizing the Internet. And the focus of this program is

23 the natural cotton seal. And our green message, it is

24 very simple, really. We are trying to remind the

25 consumer that cotton is natural, that it is a product of
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1 Mother Nature, and that cotton is renewable. It is a

2 renewable resource, unlike our competitors. And I might

3 add that our competitors are man-made fibers. And, so,

4 that is where we are trying to differentiate ourselves. 

5 Also, farmers that grow cotton do so in a

6 responsible manner. We are growing more cotton on less

7 land with less water, less chemical inputs than we did

8 just 15 years ago. Also, our message is cotton is green

9 and that then goes back to being a product of Mother

10 Nature. 

11 Part of what Cotton does is that we follow

12 consumer attitudes. We conduct surveys, usually between

13 2,000 and 3,000 consumers between the age of 13 and 54,

14 and these consumers have the responsibility of making the

15 decision on their cotton purchases. First of all, where

16 do the environmental issues fit in with the overall

17 factors that a consumer considers when he is making a

18 decision on a product? You can see about 50 percent

19 marked environmental friendliness. This is really far

20 below the four main factors that consumers consider. 

21 Fit, price, style, and color. This has not changed. 

22 These four items have been the most important since we

23 have started doing our research. 

24 What about believability? How often do

25 consumers believe the environmental claims or the
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1 environmentally friendly claims that they hear? 

2 Regardless, even with food, which overall has the highest

3 score in this particular category, always is very low. 

4 Sometimes, as you can see, is the highest. And leading

5 to this gap in believability, we believe is the lack of

6 understanding or confusion. 

7 An example here is our study that we did in

8 2003 and 2004, when we asked consumers about their

9 perception of organic cotton textiles. These questions

10 were developed jointly with the Organic Trade

11 Association. But as you can see by the high scores

12 there, there is a lot of confusion out there. And there

13 is very little difference between 2003 and 2006. Also,

14 in the 2006 survey, 40 percent of the respondents said

15 that they had no idea what sustainable agriculture or

16 renewable were or what the meaning was. 

17 Say the consumer buys a product that he was

18 under the impression was environmentally friendly and he

19 comes to find out it was not. How would they react? 

20 Well, 79 percent of the consumers said that they would be

21 bothered, but only 19 percent said that they would take

22 any kind of action and complain. 

23 Let's talk about natural fibers versus

24 synthetic. Which is better for the environment? There

25 is still that 22 percent of not sure. But,
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1 overwhelmingly, consumers think that natural fibers are

2 better and this is borne out when they were asked about

3 the safety of individual fibers. So, natural fibers,

4 cotton, bamboo, silk and wool were at the top. Synthetic

5 fibers at the bottom. 

6 Well, it is not surprising that when consumers

7 were asked how they would describe cotton as being

8 comfortable and soft, after all, that is why we buy

9 cotton, isn't it? But, then again, natural and

10 environmental friendly were also rated very high. 

11 In the Green Guides, what would we recommend? 

12 We would suggest that the FTC revise the Green Guides to

13 include textiles. There are a multitude of misleading

14 claims in the marketplace as you can see by some of the

15 research, and we have done a lot more than what I have

16 just put up here. There are claims like renewable and

17 sustainable, which we have already heard about. But

18 there are claims like reused, recycled, earth-friendly,

19 environmentally engineered. What does that mean? Pure. 

20 Chemical-free. I mean, this is just a few of them. 

21 There are a lot of them that are out there that need to 

22 be addressed. 

23 And developing these examples, we would suggest

24 that for the guidelines that they address the issue, does

25 the claim that is on the package pertain just to the
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1 product or is it the product plus the packaging? Does it

2 pertain just to the fiber or does it include the

3 processing of that fiber? Also, how would you put the

4 wording on the package to distinguish among those,

5 whether it is just the fiber or all elements? And that

6 includes the zipper, buttons, and so forth, as well as

7 processing. Also, when a claim is used that says

8 "contains," it definitely needs to be substantiated. How

9 much, what percentage of that product is that

10 environmentally acceptable fiber? 

11 And above all, the substantiation of these

12 claims should be science-based. They should take

13 advantage of the peer-reviewed research as well as all of

14 the public data that is available that is maintained by

15 USDA, EPA and USGS. And with that, thank you.

16 (Applause.)

17 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you so much, Pat. Peter's

18 next. 

19 DR. HAUSER: Good morning. First, I would like

20 to thank the organizers for inviting me to this. Janice

21 asked me to talk about preparing fibers from bamboo, so

22 this will be a bit more technical. There are some

23 references included at the last slide if you wish to go

24 into some more detail. 

25 Some of the attributes of bamboo as a raw
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1 material is that it does not require much water, it grows

2 quickly, it is naturally regenerative, it will grow over

3 and over again, you can harvest from the top and it

4 continues to grow, and it is claimed to be inherently

5 pest-resistant. 

6 However, to convert the bamboo stalk into

7 fiber, you have to separate the fibers out from the rest

8 of the material. And there are two ways to do that. One

9 is a mechanical process, and this is where you actually

10 separate the individual fibers from the bamboo stalk and

11 then make a textile yarn out of it. 

12 The second process is a chemical process, and

13 this is really a preparation using regenerated cellulose. 

14 So, in this process you actually dissolve the cellulose

15 and you extrude it, coagulate it, wash it and then turn

16 it into a yarn. Very similar to the processes that are

17 used for rayon and lyocell. 

18 The thing I like to make mention here is that

19 once the cellulose has been regenerated, it loses some of

20 the properties of what the natural bamboo fiber might

21 have. 

22 The mechanical processing of bamboo, it is

23 similar to flax processing which is used to make linen

24 yarns and fabrics. So, I am going to call that natural

25 bamboo fiber in this presentation. The first process is
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1 something called retting and that loosens up the internal

2 structure and allows the fibers to be separated later on. 

3 There are two ways to do that. One is an enzymatic

4 process. In days past, you would lay out the stalks in

5 the field and let the natural dew and the natural enzymes

6 that are there degrade the material and sometimes it

7 takes as long as several weeks or you put in artificial

8 ponds and then you collect the weakened stalks. 

9 A method now which is used, because it is much

10 more time-saving, is the chemical process. You boil the

11 stalks in either a mild acid or alkaline solution to

12 loosen up the fibers from the stalk material. 

13 Then we go to something called breaking, and it

14 is just like what it sounds. You actually separate the

15 bundles from the stalk through a mechanical process of

16 crushing the stalks. The material is loosened from the

17 actual fiber. Then you go to something called scutching

18 and that is like your grandmother beating a rug on a

19 clothesline. You actually use mechanical action to knock

20 everything loose except for the fiber that you are trying

21 to keep. 

22 Finally, something called hackling, which is

23 where you take these fibers that have about scutched away

24 from all the other extraneous material, you pull it

25 together, align it and then it goes from there into a
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1 yarn. Just from what I described, you can tell this is a

2 very labor and time-intensive process and it produces

3 linen-like fabrics which is like, you know, thick and

4 thin slubby yarns. This is, according to the references

5 I found, is probably not used very much now because of

6 the time and labor and the cost in making yarn from this

7 process. 

8 A much more common way of making fibers from

9 bamboo raw material is a process very similar to making

10 viscose rayon, and I am going to call this rayon from

11 bamboo. You start out with a sodium hydroxide treatment

12 of the leaves and the stems, the stalks, and you form a

13 material called alkalized cellulose. You then take the

14 chemical, carbon disulfide, which will react with the

15 alkalized cellulose to form sodium xanthate. Additional

16 sodium hydroxide will then dissolve this xanthate. Now,

17 you have this very viscous material, dissolved cellulose. 

18 You then extrude this into a sulfuric acid, sodium

19 sulphate, zinc sulphate solution. And, at that point,

20 the dissolved fiber, polymers are coagulated and

21 converted into a fiber. 

22 Then you must go through multiple washes to

23 remove all those sulphs, the sodium sulphate, zinc

24 sulphate, the excess sulfuric acid, the carbon disulfide. 

25 Everything that was added to it to dissolve it has got to
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1 be removed. And from there, you dry it and you can make

2 your fiber. You can see there is significant air and

3 water pollution in the manufacture of rayon from bamboo.

4 It does produce a very nice fiber. It produces soft

5 apparel fabrics. The cellulose that comings from bamboo

6 is a pretty good molecular weight, so you get good

7 mechanical properties. But it should be considered to be

8 a rayon fiber, as the definition that Janice mentioned

9 earlier. 

10 Another way to make fibers from bamboo raw

11 material is similar to the lyocell or tencel process. I

12 am going to call this lyocell from bamboo. We use a

13 chemical called N-Methylmorpholine oxide. I am going to

14 call it MNMO for time's sake. And we add that to the

15 bamboo cellulose and the cellulose dissolves and this is

16 the chemical structure of that material. This can then

17 be extruded directly into a water and a dilute solution

18 of MNMO and the fiber forms there. As you dilute the

19 solvent, the fiber forms. You wash the fiber and it

20 removes the solvent. 

21 Now, what is special about this is that this

22 solvent can be recovered and be reused, and they claim up

23 to 99 percent recovery. So, if you have a closed system

24 where you are going to collect and reuse this NNMO over

25 and over again, then you have a fairly contained system
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1 with less pollution and concerns. And it produces fabric

2 similar to rayon from bamboo, as the nice, soft fibers. 

3 Now, let’s talk quickly about some properties

4 of bamboo fibers, and I have listed them as natural

5 bamboo, rayon from bamboo and lyocell from bamboo. It is

6 documented that fibers that I call natural bamboo, that

7 is made from the mechanical process, is antimicrobial. 

8 There is a material in the bamboo stalk itself that has

9 antimicrobial, antibacterial properties. However, when

10 that stalk and those fibers are dissolved to make rayon

11 from bamboo or lyocell from bamboo, that material is

12 probably lost. I have not been able to find any

13 documented studies in the literature where rayon from

14 bamboo or lyocell from bamboo fibers have been shown to

15 be antimicrobial just by themselves. So, those claims

16 have to be considered carefully. 

17 Natural bamboo fiber has a unique and special

18 molecular fiber structure. It has pores, it has a

19 certain arrangement of the fibers and polymer exchange,

20 such as it is high for water absorption and high for

21 breathability. That is, there is a lot of moisture

22 transport that can take place through garments that are

23 made with this. However, once you dissolve the cellulose

24 and you regenerate a fiber, either a rayon or a lyocell

25 type fiber, you are going to lose those pores and lose
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1 that breathability unless -- depending on the process

2 that you have. So, I think claims that claim this need

3 to be substantiated by scientific studies. As Pat said,

4 you need to have some good science, peer-reviewed studies

5 in order to document these claims. 

6 I have included some references here for those

7 who want to go further into this. Scientific papers,

8 textbooks, as well as some information that was found on

9 the web. 

10 (Applause.)

11 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you very much, Peter. This

12 is a reminder that the PowerPoint slides will be up on

13 our website, so you can look at the references. They

14 should be up tomorrow. 

15 Now, we are going to have Janice speaking. 

16 DR. GERDE: Good morning to all of you, and

17 before I begin I, too, would like to thank the workshop

18 organizers and the Federal Trade Commission for the honor

19 of asking us to be participants today and to have us give

20 this presentation to you. 

21 Before we start, I do want to say that since

22 Dr. Hauser's given us such a good introduction,

23 especially to the viscose system, I am going to try not

24 to repeat on any of that, but at the same time build on

25 some of the fundamentals that he's already given us. 
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1 Also before I begin, I want to say a little bit

2 about who we are and what we do. I could spend another

3 10 minutes on this or more, but briefly Laboratories and

4 Scientific Services is the scientific support arm of U.S.

5 Customs and Border Protection. Our legacy organization

6 was U.S. Customs Service under U.S. Treasury. Since

7 March of 2005, we have belonged to the Department of

8 Homeland Security.

9 We are primarily an internal service component. 

10 We support our main customers, who are import

11 specialists, agents and other officials who are on the

12 front line dealing with all of the goods and commodities

13 that are imported into the United States. That is a

14 fairly simplistic overview, and if you would like to talk

15 more in-depth, I will be here all day. Please do find

16 me. 

17 Having said that, we work to the Harmonized

18 Terror Schedule of the United States which is a legal

19 document. It is a 10-digit system and it is the primary

20 document for classification and assessment of tariffs or

21 duties on goods brought into this country. And I will

22 also be happy to talk about that at length if you would

23 like. 

24 Now, to the question at hand. I am focusing

25 primarily on regenerated cellulose rayon by viscose
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1 process and whether or not the cellulose involved in this

2 process can be instrumentally or scientifically

3 differentiated depending on what the source of that

4 cellulose is, whether it comes from cotton linters or

5 wood pulp, which is traditional, or, as we have heard

6 already today, whether that cellulose is being derived

7 from bamboo or any other cellulose-bearing plant, which

8 is most plants, actually. 

9 I do not want to go into too much chemistry,

10 but just to give you a little bit of a background on

11 this, the individual unit is a glucose forming

12 polysaccharides and they then form what we call polymers

13 or long change molecule calls, the mer is a repeat and

14 many mers or polymers, that is where we get that word. 

15 It is a hydrocarbon containing oxygen, hydrogen and

16 carbon atoms only. Enough chemistry. 

17 (Laughter.)

18 DR. GERDE: Cellulose is a major component of,

19 as far as I can tell, every plant that there is. There

20 may be some exceptions, but I could not tell you what

21 they are. We know them intimately with perhaps not

22 really even knowing them. Cotton, of course; flax, which

23 gives us linen; jute; kapok and hundreds of other things

24 that may be potentially available for textile or fibrous

25 applications. 
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1 The cellulose component of plants accounts for

2 probably half, if not slightly more than half, total

3 consumption of textile fibers can be obtained from seed

4 hairs, cotton, plant stems like bamboo, leaves or bark. 

5 Some of the things that are being used these days sort of

6 prototyping, things like hibiscus kenaf fiber and bagasse

7 fiber which comes from sugar cane. The cellulose is the

8 raw material for many things besides textiles including

9 paper, cellophane and, of course, other woody

10 applications such as furniture and decorative objects,

11 which we are not going to talk about today. And, of

12 course, rayon. 

13 A little bit about bamboo botanically. This

14 will build a bit on what Dr. Hauser told us. It is a

15 grass. The largest grass in the world, in fact, is the

16 giant bamboo. It is a huge family. It is the fastest

17 growing woody plant in the world, so it is very

18 sustainable. It spreads easily. If you have ever tried

19 to eradicate it from your garden, you know what I mean. 

20 I remember my dad doing that once years ago. Its growth,

21 though, is dependent, to some extent, on local climate

22 and soil conditions. However, it grows virtually every

23 place in the world except perhaps the North and South

24 Pole. Is really is a ubiquitous plant in some form. 

25 Historically, it is of high cultural and
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1 economic significance in East and Southeast Asia. I am

2 sure we have all been to lovely oriental Japanese gardens

3 or Chinese gardens, for instance. It is used for

4 building and as a food source. But, increasingly, we are

5 seeing its importance for commercial application. It is

6 easy to grow. Once it is growing, it is fast in its

7 growth. It renews itself quickly. Needs very little

8 attention and has broad market application. 

9 But having said that, and again, as Dr. Hauser

10 pointed out, we need to stop and consider what is the

11 difference between the botanical entity which may convey

12 beneficial properties, such as the antimicrobial

13 properties, and what can convey with the cellulose from

14 the bamboo once it has gone through commercial

15 processing, and that is part of the question. 

16 Research into cellulose from bamboo with

17 comparison to other kinds of cellulose is not new. So

18 far, I have found research reports dating to the early

19 1930s, using various instrumental approaches. And the

20 upshot for the studies that we have seen so far is that

21 once the cellulose is simply cellulose, the source cannot

22 be differentiated. 

23 Both the FTC and our document, the Harmonized

24 Tariff Schedule of the United States define rayon. The

25 FTC is defined in rules and regulations under the Textile
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1 Fiber Products Identification Act, which is 16 CFR Part

2 303, and that is a document that we do use in conjunction

3 with our work in the CBP laboratories. I think the first

4 line essentially is worth repeating. It is a

5 manufactured fiber composed of regenerated cellulose and

6 then it goes on to be more specific about certain

7 chemical aspects. 

8 The tariff defines man-made fibers, in general,

9 as an overarching term in several chapters that pertain

10 to textile goods brought into this country. Man-made

11 provides for both staple fibers, short fibers and

12 filaments, the longer sort, that are organic and gained

13 by manufacturing. It particularly speaks to regenerated

14 cellulose and it talks about both cuprammonium rayon,

15 which we are not talking about today, and the viscose

16 process, which is the focus of this presentation. 

17 The tariff and the FTC documents, by the way,

18 are available online as PDF files and they can be

19 searched by keyword. I will say that I have done a

20 keyword search with respect to the word “bamboo.” It

21 does not appear in either document in the context of

22 textiles. It does appear in the tariff, but in a

23 different context. 

24 The tariff further defines synthetic and

25 artificial under man-made. Synthetic would pertain to
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1 fibers that we know, such as polyester or nylon, that

2 come from petroleum precursor and the artificial would be

3 the generated or viscose rayon and its family as we are

4 talking about today. 

5 Rayon is provided for in four chapters of the

6 tariff, man-made filaments, man-made staple as a

7 component or the entire portion of various sorts of non8 wovens, including waddings and felts and industrial

9 textiles or textiles that have coatings, impregnations,

10 or are laminated and so on. 

11 Early commercialization, as far as we have been

12 able to determine to date, dates to 1947 in the

13 post-World War II environment and was undertaken by an

14 Indian company, Travancore, which is still in business,

15 by the way. Whether or not they are still using

16 cellulose by bamboo, we have not been able to determine

17 yet. We are working on it. The implication is that

18 there were post-war restrictions on the use of cotton

19 linters and wood pulp. So, they were turning to bamboo

20 as a possible source for their fiber production. 

21 Now, where are we today with this? We have

22 talked about labeling a little bit today already. I have

23 been on the lookout for samples for a project I am doing

24 on this subject anyway. And this spring in Montgomery

25 County, Maryland, where I live, I walked into a craft
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1 store for knitters and bought this off the shelf

2 commercially. On the back, the label says "100 percent

3 bamboo." We regularly use an instrument called a Fourier

4 transform infrared spectrometer to identify man-made

5 fibers. This is typical in all of our laboratories. 

6 When I subjected a sample of this particular yarn to the

7 FTIR, this is what I got. 

8 If you look to the left of the spectrum, you

9 will see at that lower broad peak, you will see a red and

10 a blue line. The red is the sample from that skein of

11 yarn I just showed you. The blue is a laboratory match

12 with high confidence for viscose rayon domestically

13 produced, that is in this country when we still produced

14 viscose rayon, and there were at least seven other of 20

15 matches that were nearly as good as this one. So, that

16 leaves us with our question, where do we go from here. 

17 That is always the question. 

18 First, how do we differentiate what green

19 attributes might convey from a botanical entity that

20 undergoes essentially radical transformation by some sort

21 of chemical processing? How do we characterize those by

22 developing methods -- as we have mentioned earlier we

23 need to have methods that can be subjected to peer

24 review, that can be repeated, be replicated and will

25 stand up to legal scrutiny. And what instrumental
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1 approaches do we use to do that? 

2 I would like to thank, in particular, Korin

3 Ewing, Janice Frankle and Elsie Kappler, who have been

4 guiding me through this process with FTC since spring,

5 and my own colleagues in LSS, our Executive Director, Mr.

6 Ira Reese, my Laboratory Director at Springfield

7 Laboratory, Renee Stevens, who I think is hiding

8 somewhere in the back of the room, all of my staff,

9 colleagues at Springfield Lab and my field lab colleagues

10 around the U.S. And a special thank you to Gail Hamill

11 who is -- is Gail here from our -- hi, Gail -- from our

12 office of rulings and regulations. Gail is the -- I am

13 going to have to look at this now to say it right -- is

14 the Chief for Tariff Classification and Marketing Branch

15 in our Office of International Trade. Thank you all very

16 much. 

17 (Applause.)

18 DR. GERDE: Oh, we are on the web, too. 

19 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you very much, Janice, and

20 thank you to all the panelists. And now we are going to

21 have some time for questions. So, if you have questions,

22 hold up your question cards and they will be collected. 

23 If you need a question card, hold up your hand and we

24 will give you a question card. 

25 I want to start this off with a follow-up to
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1 Janice. Janice, how and when does Customs decide to test

2 an imported product? 

3 DR. GERDE: Well, as I mentioned, LSS, the Lab

4 System, is an internal service component and our front

5 line customers in-house are import specialists primarily. 

6 And this is going to be sort of the simplistic

7 explanation because there are obviously all kinds of

8 exceptions to every rule. An import specialist who will

9 be at the point of opening a cargo van, we have all seen

10 the vans stacked up, if we have been around a major port

11 of industry, sea, land or airport. They will open them

12 and a whole series of circumstances could come into play,

13 from very objective in that we have other colleagues in

14 Customs who are essentially trade intelligence

15 specialists, if you will. And they regularly monitor the

16 dynamics of trade into and out of this country, but we

17 are just talking about into right now. 

18 They may actually have already directed a

19 particular port to open certain cargo vans and to do

20 routine inspections, inspections for cause, and that

21 cause could be all kinds of things. It could be as

22 simple as an import specialist having a lot of experience

23 with their commodity group and, frankly, something just

24 does not seem right with respect to the documentation

25 that they have already seen and what they are seeing when
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1 that van is opened. So, there is a whole host of

2 possibilities. And then if they decide to pull a sample

3 then it goes to their service area laboratory. 

4 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you very much for

5 explaining that. This is a question for all the

6 panelists and we will just go down the line and we will

7 start with LaRhea. As we all know, the marketplace is

8 abundant with green claims for textile products. Should

9 the Green Guides be revised? This is really the heart of

10 this whole workshop. Should they be revised to address

11 green textile claims and, if so, what kind of guidance

12 would be helpful? And if you have any specific examples,

13 we would appreciate those, too. So, we will start with

14 LaRhea. 

15 MS. PEPPER: Thank you. Certainly, I think you

16 are taking the first steps to having these types of

17 hearings and it is important that the Green Guides be

18 modified to reflect what is happening there in industry. 

19 Speaking from an organic perspective, I think

20 we need to be able to make sure that provisions are made

21 for accurate labeling around all types of products that

22 are out there, whether it be making a product claim or a

23 fiber claim and especially around the years of change,

24 the transitional years. 

25 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you. 
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1 DR. O’LEARY: I do not know that I have much to

2 add than what I gave in my presentation but yes, a

3 resounding yes. The green claims do need to be addressed

4 in the Green Guides because as you can see by the data

5 that I presented, there is a lot of misunderstanding,

6 misleading information that needs to be clarified. 

7 MS. FRANKLE: Peter. 

8 DR. HAUSER: I would agree with my fellow

9 panelists that the guides need to include more

10 information on the specific textile products. 

11 MS. FRANKLE: Janice? 

12 DR. GERDE: Obviously, I agree with what has

13 been said already and I think in terms of terminology,

14 focus definitions and objective foundation so that we,

15 who work in the scientific mode, have something that we

16 can pin our findings to. So, objectivity and good,

17 strong definitions I think would be my comment. 

18 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you. This is a question

19 for LaRhea. You spoke about the criteria for making

20 organic cotton claims and we have talked about claims for

21 bamboo. Can bamboo that has gone through this viscose

22 process, but which has been grown organically, be labeled

23 organic? And, if so, what kind of qualifications should

24 be made in order to make sure consumers understand this

25 product? 
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1 MS. PEPPER: Well, the conversations around

2 bamboo are something we are having in our industry as

3 well. So, since it is an agricultural product you could

4 certainly make a fiber-only claim to say that the fiber

5 in this product was grown organically and, certainly, if

6 it were grown organically, it would address a lot of the

7 issues around crop rotations, sustainable harvesting and

8 different things like that. So, it is an agricultural

9 product, but conceptually yes, the fiber could be

10 certified to be grown organically. 

11 I do not see that it could ever make -- there

12 is just no way it would ever be able to make a product

13 claim because of the type of processing that is required. 

14 Unless you go to that totally mechanical part that Peter

15 was talking about where it is just that natural process.

16 So, again, if you made a product claim, it would have to

17 be not only the production but the processing. 

18 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you. Pat, in your

19 presentation, you talked about Cotton, Inc's green

20 marketing messages. How does Cotton, Inc. respond to

21 claims that it takes a lot of pesticides and insecticides

22 to grow cotton and thus non-organic cotton is a green

23 product? 

24 DR. O'LEARY: Well, if we were talking about

25 25, 30 years ago I would agree, we did use a lot of
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1 pesticides in growing cotton. But we have come a long

2 way since then. The latest USDA data shows that it is

3 less than a tenth of an ounce per pound of cotton

4 produced -- and that is an average over the whole

5 country. 

6 I might add that the majority of that is 

7 used -- they are herbicides. And these are herbicides

8 that are being used to allow the grower to use

9 conservation tillage, and conservation tillage is an

10 important tool to preserve the soil, to improve the

11 quality, to prevent erosion. 

12 The pesticides that we are using today are much

13 more target-specific than they were 25 years ago. So,

14 they kill primarily, not always, the insects that they

15 are intended to. 

16 Also, pesticides are heavily, heavily regulated

17 in the U.S. EPA has rules and regulations that state

18 when and where and how much pesticides can be used. And

19 cotton, if you did not know it, is regulated as a food

20 crop. So, we have the same tolerances that are allowed

21 for the foods that we eat. 

22 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you very much. And, Pat,

23 this is a question from the audience. 

24 MS. O’LEARY: Okay.

25 MS. FRANKLE: You mentioned that consumers
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1 generally believe natural fibers are better for the

2 environment than synthetics. Are all natural fibers

3 actually better than synthetic fibers on a life cycle

4 basis? 

5 DR. O'LEARY: I would say no. The fibers like

6 cotton -- compare cotton say to silk or wool. Cotton, of

7 course, being a plant takes sunlight and directly

8 converts that into the fiber. Well, with silk and wool, 

9 that energy has to go through an animal. So, whether it

10 is the silk worm or the sheep, you still -- the process

11 is less efficient and it does require more resources and

12 a greater impact on the environment. 

13 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you. This is a question

14 for Dr. Hauser, Peter. How does making natural fibers

15 from bamboo differ from making them from wood or is it

16 similar? 

17 DR. HAUSER: Well, if you are go in to make the

18 process to make rayon or lyocell from bamboo, it

19 basically is the same process. You use the same

20 chemistry. Cellulose is cellulose. 

21 MS. FRANKLE: Okay, thanks. And when you

22 discussed the process of bamboo fibers, you questioned

23 whether rayon or lyocell from bamboo retained bamboo’s

24 natural antimicrobial properties. In those lines, what

25 kind of testing would one need to conduct to substantiate
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1 a claim that rayon or lyocell from bamboo maintains

2 bamboo's natural antimicrobial properties? 

3 DR. HAUSER: I would like to see a peer4 reviewed scientific study using accepted tests where the

5 article in question has gone through that test method

6 where it actually will show whether it does actually have

7 those benefits. But, again, it would need to be a well8 run, scientific, peer-reviewed study. 

9 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you. Janice, this is a

10 question from the audience. If it were up to you, how

11 should the yarn you found in the arts/crafts store have

12 been labeled to avoid misleading the consumer? 

13 DR. GERDE: I believe that the accepted

14 terminology currently, and this is not a U.S. Customs and

15 Border Protection area, but in my reading, I find the

16 term 100 percent rayon from bamboo. But I think that

17 brings up the question, then, traditionally, with a rayon

18 product, why haven't we labeled them 100 percent rayon

19 from cotton linters or 100 percent rayon from wood pulp? 

20 The question is, why do we need to qualify the

21 rayon? Because what rayon is is the cellulose component

22 of a plant that has gone through a chemical dissolution

23 and regeneration, and that then becomes rayon. So, what

24 is the impetus behind adding that from whatever, bamboo

25 or whatever? 
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1 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you. And this is another

2 question from the audience for the whole panel. It says

3 no one in this panel mentioned coatings applied to

4 textiles. Those coatings, say, to make them

5 wrinkle-free. How should these affect environmental

6 claims or what effect do they have on the environmental

7 claims that are being made? LaRhea? 

8 MS. PEPPER: Well, depending upon what it is,

9 if it is a natural beeswax to make it rain-proof, it

10 depends on what the coating is as to where it will fit

11 into whether you can only make a fiber claim back to this

12 product is made with this, or if it can fit into the

13 processing, if the finish fits into a process that is

14 organically approved. Then you could possibly make a

15 product claim as well. So, it would depend upon what

16 that coating is. 

17 DR. O’LEARY: Again, as LaRhea said, it depends

18 upon what the claim is. First of all, if it is a claim

19 specifically for the fiber, there should not be any

20 problem. But, again, it needs to be differentiated on

21 the packaging. You cannot make claims that are not for

22 the whole product that is not true. 

23 DR. HAUSER: If you refer to that GOTS standard

24 that LaRhea mentioned earlier, if the coating is composed

25 of those types of materials I would think you would be
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1 safe in using those claims. Otherwise, as Pat said, you

2 would need to differentiate. 

3 MS. FRANKLE: Janice, do you have a comment?

4 DR. GERDE: I would tend to agree with what has

5 already been said and the question of coated, laminated,

6 impregnated textiles is very specific. In one of my

7 slides, in fact, I mentioned there is a particular

8 chapter in the tariff that covers those along with

9 textiles intended for industrial use. 

10 When we do our analysis, for any given sample

11 that comes to the door of any of our labs, it very much

12 comes to a case-by-case basis. There are instances where

13 a laminate could actually be peeled off of the textile

14 substrate and perhaps the textile is not affected at all. 

15 But in other cases where you have an impregnation where

16 something is actually working its way into the small

17 voids between fibers and yarns, then you might have an

18 entirely different situation. But you would have to look

19 at it through instrumental and analytical processes. 

20 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you. And this is a

21 question for Pat or anyone else dealing with cotton

22 garments. This is from the audience. Cotton garments

23 require a higher wash temperature and longer drying times

24 as compared to most synthetics. So, how can one

25 substantiate the green claim for cotton during consumer
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1 use? 

2 DR. O’LEARY: That is a good one. That all

3 gets back to the life cycle analysis of the fiber. And

4 it depends on what the claim is. You know, if you are

5 claiming just for the production of the fiber or whether

6 you are -- of the whole footprint. So, that is part of

7 the reason we need to have these claims addressed in the

8 Green Guides, so that it is clear what the claim is

9 that’s being made. 

10 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you. This is a question

11 for the whole panel. What is the best way to communicate

12 that the FTC's Green Guides apply to business-to-business

13 transactions and not just business-to-consumer

14 transactions and what should the FTC do more of to get

15 the Green Guides message out to businesses making these

16 green textiles kinds of claims. LaRhea, you want to

17 start us off. 

18 MS. PEPPER: Sure. I always think education is

19 the key. So, let people know it is out there and network

20 with the trade associations and different groups that are

21 interfacing with the brands and retailers out there to

22 say would you make sure this gets shared and, of course,

23 have educational seminars that you host as well to do

24 that firsthand training yourself, train the trainers. 

25 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you. 
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1 DR. O'LEARY: Well, adding to what LaRhea said,

2 I think, too, it needs to be made obvious, more obvious,

3 that the guides do apply to business-to-business as well

4 as business-to-consumer, because I think the general

5 perception out there is that it only applies to the

6 latter. 

7 And there is something I might add, too. I

8 cannot speak to everyone, but when Cotton talks

9 business-to-business, we talk on a completely different

10 level as when we talk to the consumer. It is a level

11 that is a lot more technical and we use a lot more data

12 to back up the claims that we are making, and also some

13 of the responsibility falls upon that business to be

14 responsible for knowing the source, all along the

15 sourcing chain, where the products are coming from. 

16 MS. FRANKLE: Thank you very much. We are

17 running out of time. Peter, Janice, any quick comments? 

18 DR. HAUSER: I think that if you focused on the

19 retailers and explained to them that they needed to be

20 sure of their sources, as Pat said. And who is the one

21 who is ultimately going to be held responsible, I think

22 is going to be the retailer because they are the ones who

23 are selling it to the consumer. So, they need to be

24 aware of what is available to them. 

25 MS. FRANKLE: Thanks, Janice? 
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1 DR. GERDE: Basically, I agree with the

2 panelists and to say it is a little bit outside the

3 purview of what we do and who we are. But, certainly, if

4 our domestic retailers are talking to their overseas

5 sourcers, that would be the best way of communicating and

6 reiteration. 

7 MS. FRANKLE: Well, thank you all so much. We

8 have learned so many new things and we appreciate it. 

9 (Applause.)

10 MS. FRANKLE: We are going to take a real short

11 break and we are going to resume at 10:40. So, thank

12 you.

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

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1 SESSION 2: TYING UP LOOSE ENDS - SUBSTANTIATING GREEN 

2 TEXTILE CLAIMS AND THE NEED FOR FTC GUIDANCE

3 MS. KAPPLER: Good morning, my name is Elsie

4 Kappler and I would like to welcome you to our second

5 session, Tying up Loose Ends - Substantiating Green

6 Textile Claims and the Need for FTC Guidance. Our

7 panelists this morning are Grace Gershuny of the Organic

8 Trade Association, Todd Copeland of Patagonia, Kathleen

9 Huddy from The Good Housekeeping Research Institute and

10 Pat Slaven from Consumer Reports. Without further ado, I

11 would like to introduce Grace Gershuny. 

12 MS. GERSHUNY: Thank you, Elsie. And I was

13 wondering if there was some conspiracy about the organic

14 people always starting. But let me just say a couple of

15 words. I am representing the Organic Trade Association

16 as a consultant. I have been working on the textile

17 standards and, in particular, the GOTS standards for, oh,

18 about three or four years representing OTA on the

19 Technical Committee of the GOTS, the Global Organic

20 Textile Standard. Sometimes people call me the GOTS

21 queen. 

22 I do other things for OTA, but it seems as

23 though just from my own observations that all of that

24 increasing interest in organic textiles is really taking

25 off rapidly and I could actually spend probably a
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1 full-time job just doing this kind of textile work. So,

2 it is definitely on the rise. And the complexity of the

3 textile labeling issues are multiplied by the complexity

4 of the organic labeling issues, so I wanted to make that

5 point. LaRhea made some great points about labeling

6 claims and I am going to go a little farther with that

7 today. 

8 Exhibit A is this t-shirt that I bought in the

9 Burlington, Vermont, airport snack bar on my way here. 

10 It is a good company. It is a company that does a good

11 job and is a member of OTA, so I cannot say anything bad

12 about them. And it says 100 percent certified organic

13 cotton t-shirt. Green T. It says "This garment is made"

14 -- on the hang tag, “This garment is made with 100

15 percent certified organic grown cotton without the use of

16 pesticides, herbicides or artificial dyes.” Who uses

17 artificial dyes to grow cotton, I don't know.

18 (Laughter.)

19 MS. GERSHUNY: So, even the people who are

20 getting it right do not always get it right. 

21 The global organic textile standard was

22 developed -- and you can go to the website to get all of

23 the background information on them -- to define

24 requirements that ensure the organic status of textiles

25 from harvesting of the raw materials to environmentally
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1 and socially responsible manufacturing up to labeling. 

2 It was also intended to harmonize existing standards. 

3 There were several international organizations, such as

4 Soil Association, such as Crav in Scandinavia, I never

5 remember which country they were from, and Scall which is

6 now Control Union, which had their own organic textile

7 processing standards. So, those were all harmonized

8 essentially and incorporated under GOTS. 

9 The Organic Trade Association also had

10 developed its own organic textile processing standards

11 under the American Organic Standards. That has all been

12 now subsumed under GOTS. 

13 Just a little Organic 101. The idea of organic

14 standards is a process claim, it is not a product claim. 

15 So, that is significantly different from things that can

16 be tested in a laboratory to be determined to be organic. 

17 You cannot do that. What you need to do is to have an

18 independent verification of what that process was through

19 an auditing procedure. And there is a great deal of

20 misunderstanding, although many people perceive, rightly

21 so in my opinion, organic products to be more healthful,

22 more environmentally friendly and all of those good

23 things, that they are not making any of those claims

24 inherently by putting an organic label. It is about how

25 the product was produced. 
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1 So, the processing standards reflect all of

2 these different aspects, including how the raw fiber was

3 produced, which must comply with the country of marketing

4 regulations. So, if a product is being marketed here, it

5 must be produced in accordance with the National Organic

6 Program. As LaRhea mentioned, FTC does allow the word

7 "organic" to modify the fiber content on a label. And

8 there are a number of other reasons why the GOTS label is

9 different but similar to the National Organic Program. 

10 GOTS is a voluntary standard. Again, it is not

11 subject to government regulations. It does require NOP

12 certification for U.S. market products. It has similar

13 label grades as LaRhea pointed out. I do not know if it

14 would be possible to be any 100 percent organic products

15 since it would have to be made only with organic

16 agricultural products as processing aids which would be

17 difficult. Very few textile processing substances are

18 permitted under the National Organic Program, and that is

19 one of the key reasons why the National Organic Program

20 does not address process textile products. It only

21 addresses raw fibers. 

22 GOTS also addresses environmental and social

23 criteria such as labor conditions, which are not

24 addressed under the National Organic Program. GOTS

25 labeling rules mirror the National Organic Program as
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1 LaRhea mentioned. The problem is that the food products

2 talk about what can be put on the principal display panel

3 of a food product. What is a principal display panel of

4 a fiber product? I do not know. The care and content

5 label may be likened to the ingredient panel, which is

6 fine, but when you put a made with organic label on a

7 food product, on the principal display panel, consumers

8 assume that it is processed according to the rules that

9 are required under the National Organic Program. 

10 If you make a made with organic cotton claim on

11 a textile product, it does not necessarily mean that, and

12 there's a lot of confusion, and many people who are

13 familiar with food products will assume that that means

14 that it is processed according to the National Organic

15 Program rules. So, that is something that needs to be

16 clarified. 

17 I am going to go right to the question of --

18 these are examples from the Oregon Till Certified Organic

19 Company Certifier, which does do GOTS certification now. 

20 This is relatively recent. This is an example of a

21 correct label. We now have just released last month in

22 Italy a global organic textile standard logo which will

23 be allowed to be used under a licensing agreement. And

24 one of the things that we have requested is that the

25 National Organic Program consult with the FTC. So, when
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1 those folks from the other islands in the archipelago

2 come over and talk to you about organic labeling claims,

3 do not shoot, they are your friends. 

4 Let's see, there is a real possibility about

5 consumer confusion on a textile product that is labeled

6 organic. That we need to have a little bit of agreement,

7 a mutual discussion about how to regulate that. For now,

8 GOTS is the safe harbor, the voluntary claim that can be

9 substantiated by third-party verification, transparency,

10 accountability. I think the Green Guides definitely need

11 to address not only textile labels but process claims in

12 general and the use of third-party verification systems,

13 such as certification, such as organic certification as a

14 means of substantiating those claims. It is not

15 necessarily a scientific testing method, but it is a well

16 recognized means of substantiating a claim. Thank you. 

17 MS. KAPPLER: Thank you, Grace. 

18 (Applause.)

19 MS. KAPPLER: Todd? 

20 MR. COPELAND: Thank you to the FTC and to

21 Janice for inviting me here to speak today. I am going

22 to talk about the company I work for, Patagonia, the

23 green textiles that we use and the way we market them. 

24 We are a retailer and an apparel brand in the outdoor

25 market. 
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1 Patagonia has been involved in environmental

2 action since we started. As a climbing company in the

3 '60s, through a transition of climbing pitons, which are

4 metal bolts you nail into a rock face, something where

5 you can actually stick something in a crack in the rock

6 and then pull it out when you are done to leave the rock

7 the same as it was after you are done climbing. 

8 We also did some action in our community, in

9 Ventura, to stop over-development of the Ventura

10 coastline, and that evolved into donating some of our

11 profits to non-government environmental organizations. 

12 And it was spun off as this One Percent for the Planet,

13 which is an independent non-profit organization that now

14 has over 800 companies as members. 

15 In the early '90s, we started looking at our

16 own products and tried to make them more environmentally

17 friendly, and this is when we got involved in organic

18 cotton. We got involved in recycled polyester, and this

19 is what we call e-fibers, which is the green textiles

20 that I am going to talk about mostly. 

21 In 2005, we launched a common threads recycling

22 program which is we are trying to take responsibility for

23 our products at the end of their life cycle and be able

24 to recycle garments to garments and sell them back to the

25 market. And, most recently, we have embarked on this
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1 Footprint Chronicles, which is a mini website where we

2 show the entire manufacturing process of some of our

3 products, delve into the specifics of those and try to

4 measure the environmental impact of our product. 

5 So, our e-fibers. This is a not a

6 comprehensive list, but the most appropriate list I could

7 put up here, so including organic cotton, hemp,

8 chlorine-free wool, recycled polyester, recycled nylon

9 and tencel, which is not officially on our list yet but

10 being added right now. We have been using it for a long

11 time, but I think it is about time it got added to our

12 list here. 

13 So, if we have a product that, by weight, is

14 more than 33 percent of one of these fibers, we label it

15 in the store and in the catalog with a green E. That

16 shows that it is made from environmentally friendly

17 fibers and we usually have some more kind of explanation

18 in the store and on the website and in the catalog to

19 explain what it is. 

20 So, what do I mean by more environmentally

21 friendly? Well, we focus on cotton, wool, synthetics and

22 regenerated solvent spun fibers and try to concentrate on

23 what is the environmental impact of that product. So, I

24 will mention, too, that you can see it is not all

25 naturals here. We have naturals, we have synthetics, we
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1 have everything and we are trying to focus on the

2 environmental impact as opposed to just saying natural is

3 good and synthetic is bad or vice versa. 

4 So, for cotton I think the big issue was we

5 wanted to eliminate the synthetic pesticides, synthetic

6 fertilizers and the defoliants that were being used in

7 industrial cotton. So, we started to embrace organic

8 cotton. By the same token, we could use hemp for certain

9 applications. I do not think it is appropriate for all,

10 but hemp has a natural fiber not being processed through

11 a chemical process similar to the natural bamboo that was

12 talked about earlier. It could be used in the same

13 application. 

14 In wool, I think the main issue was chlorine in

15 the processing of shrink-proof. So, we used different

16 technologies such as ozone and plasma treatment to try to

17 avoid the chlorine load and the wastewater from wool

18 shrink-proofing called chlorine-free wool. In

19 synthetics, we really wanted to get away from using

20 petroleum as a raw material for synthetics, so we started

21 using recycled polyester like the PET water bottles and

22 soda bottles and, more recently, recycled nylon to offset

23 that petroleum input.

24 When we talk about solvent spun, we talk about

25 regenerated fibers, we really have gone towards the
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1 tencel process which was explained a little earlier, too. 

2 It is a lyocell fiber. Tencel is the brand name from

3 Lenzing, where instead of using carbon disulfide, which

4 is a toxic solvent used for rayon processing, that it

5 uses a non-toxic solvent and in that process is almost

6 100 percent recycled and reused. 

7 So, for some questions like why isn't bamboo on

8 there, why isn't PLA on there, and if I have time I will

9 hit it. Otherwise, I need somebody to ask me a question

10 later. 

11 (Laughter.)

12 MR. COPELAND: So, I wanted to make sure I

13 overview textile processing because I think it is really

14 important to remember that we start with a raw material

15 from petroleum or from a plant or from an animal and then

16 we make a fiber and then we spin a yarn and then we have

17 to knit or weave a fabric and you have to color it and we

18 have to cut and sew it and assemble the garment. So, I

19 think there is a lot of opportunity for environmental

20 improvement in this entire process, and we need to think

21 about, when we make environmental claims, what is

22 significant. I just thought I would put this up here to

23 give it a little bit of context. 

24 So, I have talked mainly about how we address

25 the fibers, but we also are addressing the processing
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1 more recently and we are using this global industry

2 textile standard called bluesign. They are mainly

3 focusing on dyeing and finishing, including the chemicals

4 that are used, trying to use less chemicals, safer

5 chemicals, measuring and reducing air pollution and water

6 pollution, focusing on the worker safety as well as

7 consumer safety and reducing the water and energy

8 consumption used to be more efficient. 

9 At the end of life, like I mentioned earlier,

10 we are focusing on the Common Threads Program trying to

11 increase the amount of garments that we can take back and

12 recycle into new garments. 

13 Finally, I want to mention the Footprint

14 Chronicles. This is where we are kind of learning out

15 loud online, chasing our own supply chain back. We have

16 10 products on the website right now and plan to add five

17 products each season. We are tracking the energy, the

18 CO2, and the waste for each of these supply chains and we

19 show little videos or slide shows of each step. So, what

20 we are doing is traceability and transparency, and I

21 think without having knowledge of where your product

22 comes from and how it is made, it is impossible to make

23 accurate environmental claims about a textile product. 

24 So, this is where we are at right now. 

25 That is the end of my slide show, so I get to
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1 go back and answer my own questions, right? Awesome. 

2 What about bamboo? Well, it has been well

3 answered today. 

4 (Laughter.)

5 MR. COPELAND: We do not use bamboo because

6 when we went to the processing factories, we found out

7 that a regular rayon processing factory is using a lot of

8 waste products from the pulp and paper industry to make

9 rayon anyway. So, substituting that raw material for

10 bamboo, it does not really give you an environmental

11 story. The problem or the environmental issue with rayon

12 processing is the solvent. So, if we can change that

13 solvent, like I said, with a tencel process that we see

14 where we can change the solvent and make it non-toxic,

15 recycle the solvent, then I think then we have a good

16 environmental story. 

17 Why not PLA? Polylactic acid. This is a made

18 from corn type of product that we really, really

19 seriously looked into the benefits of and were pretty

20 much ready to launch it until we kind of got to thinking

21 that it was not so much of a good idea because we were

22 doing a good job of reducing petroleum as a raw material

23 for synthetics, but what we kind of substituted that with

24 was an agricultural system that we did not think was very

25 sustainable. 
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1 So, this is back to the kind of questioning

2 whether something natural or something agricultural is

3 inherently environmentally friendly. And I think what we

4 decided was, is that since it was coming from our mono5 cropped corn culture, a lot of it was using synthetic

6 fertilizers, synthetic pesticides. We just did not think

7 that this was a sustainable way to make a fiber.

8 And there was also a GMO component which we did

9 not want to support the genetically modified organisms,

10 which is a personal choice from our company. But I think

11 there is a lot more that could be done to make a

12 sustainable agricultural type of system that could feed

13 into a really sustainable type of PLA project. But for

14 right now, we are kind of staying away from it.

15 I will try to make some kind of closing

16 comments and I think it is that since 1996 all of our

17 cotton is organic. We would like to be able to label it

18 that way as organic even if it is in a blend. I have a

19 shirt on today that is a cotton polyester blend. So, I

20 want to label the fact that all the cotton in here is

21 organic even though it is not a 100 percent organic 

22 shirt. We would like to do the same thing for recycled

23 polyester, recycled nylon, things like that because we

24 want people to know what they are buying so they can

25 actually support these types of things if they think it
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1 is important. We will continue to try to find the best

2 materials and market them in the best way and make the

3 best product. Thank you. 

4 (Applause.)

5 MS. KAPPLER: Thanks, Todd. Next, we have

6 Kathleen Huddy. 

7 MS. HUDDY: I am afraid I am still in the mid8 20th century. I do not have a PowerPoint. So you have

9 to stare at my name. 

10 The Good Housekeeping Research Institute has

11 been around for over 100 years. What we do is we clarify

12 consumer confusion on product claims. We also look at

13 new products and try to identify and clarify those for

14 the consumer. We do this via a magazine that is read by

15 24 million readers. Of course, mostly women. Plus, we

16 are also very strong in our website and on television

17 with mass media. Good Morning, America and the Today

18 Show are two of the shows that we are on regularly. So,

19 we have a broad reach to the consumer explaining about

20 products and their claims. 

21 How do we do this? Well, we do it through lab

22 and consumer testing using industry and government

23 standards, AATCC, ASTM and CFR standards. Plus, we also

24 create new test methodologies for a product where a

25 standard may not currently exist and we like to point out
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1 how some manufacturers like to wriggle through loopholes

2 in existing standards. That is one of our most favorite

3 things to do. 

4 This occurred most clearly with the FTC on

5 thread counts in bedding. That started, we noticed, in

6 2000. We saw that people were making outrageous claims

7 on bedding products. Of course, we brought them in and

8 started looking at them and testing them against the

9 standard, noticed what was happening with the standard,

10 what the manufacturers were doing. We did not really see

11 a change until we wrote about it again in 2003. We

12 started to see a change when the FTC released a letter in

13 August 2005 stating that this was, in fact, a violation

14 of Section 5 of the FTC Act and that counting the plies

15 within a thread was not an accurate thread count and it

16 was an inflation of thread count. 

17 So, we wrote about that again in 2006 and we

18 are still seeing some, but there is very few. So, as you

19 can see, it takes time sometimes with product claims to

20 get the manufacturers and the consumers to understand

21 what the changes are and what they should be saying. 

22 We are in retail stores constantly looking at

23 merchandise and the claims that a product has. When

24 investigating suspicious claims, we look at government

25 regulations first for guidance. 
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1 With the advent of the green movement, the GHRI

2 has definitely noticed the proliferation of green wash

3 claims and products and are concerned by the consumers'

4 perceptions of what they really mean. For example, most

5 of us in the industry know what labeling an organic

6 garment really means and we have all talked about that

7 before. But what does the consumer think? Well,

8 unfortunately, they think that that means that the

9 product has been made environmentally, in an

10 environmentally sound manner from start to finish. They

11 do not know or they do not understand that it is just

12 that the cotton was grown organically. 

13 Our readers have told us that they are

14 receptive to green products as long as they perform and

15 do not cost much more, especially in this time and era. 

16 They also find green claims confusing and suspicious. 

17 They are very suspicious of the claims. 

18 Most consumers do not know that Section 5 of

19 the FTC Act protects them. It has broad governance, but

20 it is very, very broad and it is very hard for the

21 manufacturers to follow. Clear, tight guidance on what

22 can and cannot be said from the FTC is imperative. Proof

23 of substantiation is needed for all claims from ultra

24 absorbent to antifungal to very vague ones as eco

25 sensitive, good for the environment, and my favorite,
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1 beneficial to those with allergies and sensitive skin. 

2 If you have that claim, you better have this much data

3 behind it to tell me that you have really researched it

4 and you can prove it. 

5 Besides us and Pat from Consumer Reports, there

6 are other groups that are out there trying to make sure

7 that the consumer knows what they are getting and that it

8 is truthful besides the government standards. There are

9 ways to prove your claims through ASTM and A Squared

10 standards, plus there are independent certifications such

11 as bluesign, GOTS and Okatech (phonetic), that is a

12 European standard, one actually that the consumer is

13 starting to understand. 

14 So, just remember that when you are about to

15 make a claim, there are people like us, Pat and I, that

16 are out there looking and making sure that it is truthful

17 for the consumer. Thanks. 

18 (Applause.)

19 MS. KAPPLER: Thanks, Kathleen. Pat? 

20 MS. SLAVEN: Good morning, I am Pat Slaven from

21 Consumer Reports magazine and I would like to thank

22 Janice and the FTC for bringing us here to talk about

23 textiles, especially textile labeling. 

24 My talk is bamboo by rayon. Recently, we had

25 the opportunity to test bamboo toweling in 2006. This is
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1 part of a project where we tested 27 different models of

2 bath towels. Five models among that 27 had big claims

3 that they were made from bamboo. They were bamboo

4 towels. Only one of those five models had sewn-on

5 labeling that actually correctly stated the fiber

6 content, that it was rayon from bamboo. Land's End had 

7 a correctly labeled, sewn-on fiber content and here is

8 the label which states 60 percent cotton, 40 percent

9 rayon from bamboo. This was the exception. 

10 We have four other towels in this project that

11 incorrectly stated bamboo as part of the fiber content. 

12 The towel in question here, you may not be able to read

13 it, says 100 percent natural element, 70 percent cotton,

14 30 percent bamboo. That is not correct. 

15 We are seeing a lot of hype with bamboo. The

16 five bamboo towels in the project were all a blend of

17 cotton and rayon ranging from about 50 percent cotton and

18 50 percent rayon to 70 percent cotton and 30 percent

19 rayon. This is really a stretch when you are touting

20 bamboo on the labeling in a very large font. 

21 Often, we are seeing additional indications

22 hyping bamboo, such as the border of the towels would be

23 festooned with weavings indicative of bamboo and the

24 nodes on bamboo. One of the cases in point were towels

25 from Target. The Target towels, again, had bamboo in
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1 large font and the tag, here is a copy of the tag, in

2 large font, it states bamboo. In very small font, it

3 states 50 percent bamboo, 50 percent cotton. And the

4 claims are especially interesting, some of these claims,

5 especially the antimicrobial, as some of our previous

6 panelists have stated, is not, in any way, substantiated

7 by rayon made from bamboo. This claim is substantiated

8 from true bamboo fibers but not from the bamboo. And

9 this was a few years ago. 

10 We wanted to verify the claims because we are

11 Consumer Reports. We stuck the fibers under a microscope

12 and sure enough there were the striations typical of

13 rayon. We contacted the manufacturers and they all did

14 fess up and said, yeah, it is bamboo. Well, actually,

15 no, it is rayon from bamboo. So, at least they were

16 honest enough. 

17 But what it comes down to for Consumer Reports

18 is what does the consumer get? You are seeing bamboo

19 rayon and cotton blend towels from major manufacturers,

20 Land's End, Lenox Platinum Collection, CB2 Bamboo, the

21 Bombay Company Estate. All of these towels cost well in

22 excess of $20. The Target bamboo towel was the one

23 bargain of the bunch. It cost $8. It quickly

24 disappeared from the shelves. In fact, it disappeared so

25 quickly that it was not available for Consumers prior to
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1 publication, we had to pull it from our report. Regular

2 cotton bath towels on average cost substantially less. 

3 Well, you are hearing us talk quite a bit about

4 some of the fallacies of rayon made from bamboo. But

5 what is the good stuff? We did have our sensory plant

6 panelists evaluate these bath towels and they are indeed

7 softer than most regular cotton bath towels. Not all

8 regular cotton bath towels, but most. But the bad stuff,

9 we did not see any superior products. Nothing was

10 clearly superior. In the case of the bath towels, the

11 rayon-cotton blends did indeed have a softer hand, but

12 similar to other bath towels, and including much less

13 expensive bath towels, they shrank, they pilled. Many of

14 them termed into bon-bons, that is when the border

15 shrinks up and you get that characteristic wrapped candy

16 shape. 

17 The other thing that may have been corrected in

18 the industry, but at the time of publication, there were

19 no deeper intense colors. Everything was essentially a

20 pastel, as shown on my first slide with the stack of

21 bamboo rayon towels. 

22 We are seeing a lot of claims that bamboo is

23 renewable. Well, I beg to ask is it renewable or is it a

24 weed? Bamboo is indeed a fast-growing source of

25 cellulose. The producers, for very good reasons, are
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1 quite cagey about the actual process, as several of my

2 colleagues have discussed, and it makes it very difficult

3 for the consumer to look at a claim or look at a hang tag

4 or look at a sewn-in label and assess its eco-friendly

5 claims. 

6 But we do have one part of the claim that is

7 easy to substantiate. Bamboo is indeed renewable. Do

8 note some people consider bamboo to be a weed. In fact,

9 just ask the facilities manager at Consumer Reports. 

10 (Laughter.)

11 MS. SLAVEN: This is our facility manager,

12 Victor Frederico. And he is not on a tropical vacation

13 in an island. This is in the back 40, this is in the

14 back lot at Consumer Reports in Yonkers, New York. We

15 are north of New York City. The site that Consumer

16 Reports is on is an old Boyce Thompson agricultural

17 facility. And Vic and his staff, to this day, spend

18 quite a bit of time containing the bamboo grove. It has

19 a nasty tendency to pop up amongst our parking lot. In

20 fact, I live a few blocks away and there's a little bit

21 of it growing in front of my house that I have to whack

22 back. Again, Yonkers. 

23 A number of my colleagues have talked at length

24 about rayon manufacturing. It is hardly benign. It

25 includes pulp, sodium hydroxide, sulphuric acid,
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1 disulfide, lots of water, lots of power. I could go on

2 at length. It is really the topic of a Textile 101

3 lecture, it may be a full course. But we will spare you

4 this. 

5 So, the question is, is this green washing? A

6 number of the previous panelists have pulled up the FTC

7 definition of rayon. Nowhere in it do we define what

8 types of cellulose go into the manufacture of rayon. It

9 is not like lyocell that is a clearly defined different

10 process that does have some advantages. Rayon can be

11 made from pretty much any sort of cellulose. We have had

12 a number of discussions on cotton linters, wood pulp. I

13 went to UC-Davis. One of my colleagues was working on

14 extracting cellulose from rice and turning it, too, into

15 rayon. There was a problem with silica in the

16 processing, which, again, is beyond the scope of this

17 discussion. 

18 So, in conclusion, the consumer is being led to

19 believe that she is purchasing a green superior product. 

20 What the consumer is indeed purchasing is a cotton-rayon

21 blend bath towel. She is paying a premium price for the

22 honor and the privilege. And what does she get? She is

23 getting an ordinary bath towel that, at best, is a bit

24 softer than 100 percent cotton. We would like to see

25 better labeling. 
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1 Well, while stating that something is made from

2 bamboo rather than rayon is misleading, this is not

3 necessarily a hazard to life and limb as say an

4 automotive rollover standard is, but it affects the

5 consumer's pocketbook. As long as consumers are spending

6 more money for something with these claims, we should be

7 seeing better labeling and we should be seeing better

8 superior products. 

9 Thank you very much for allowing us to present,

10 and at Consumer Reports we are really honored to see that

11 the Federal Government is taking an interest in labeling. 

12 (Applause.)

13 MS. KAPPLER: Thanks to all our panelists. 

14 Let's move on to questions. We have some from the

15 audience and I have some for you as well. 

16 This is for all the panelists. What is your

17 understanding of consumers' interpretation of a textile

18 label that says "made with organic cotton"? Does this

19 interpretation go beyond the way the cotton is grown, for

20 example, to the production of a finished product? If

21 yes, what kind of guidance would be helpful for the Green

22 Guides to provide? 

23 MS. GERSHUNY: Well, I probably address some of

24 that by saying that if a consumer is familiar with the

25 food labeling requirements for organic, they might assume
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1 that something that says "made with organic cotton" is

2 also complying with the processing standards under the

3 National Organic Program, which would not be the case. 

4 So, in order to address that, I think that there needs to

5 be a very clear statement both from the National Organic

6 Program and from FTC that any content claims on fiber in

7 a product about -- organic content claims about a product

8 are only about the fiber content and not about how the

9 product is processed unless it is certified under a

10 scheme such as GOTS. 

11 MS. KAPPLER: Thanks. Todd?

12 MR. COPELAND: Sure. I agree that some

13 customers will be confused by that. I think not all of

14 them and I think it is a learning curve and we need to be

15 clear. And I think I agree with the fact that looking at

16 the difference between a pure agricultural product and a

17 processed product, in the case of a textile a very

18 processed product, that we need to be specific about this

19 is regarding just the fiber or we are talking about the

20 entire processed product. And I think for me it would be

21 two separate things, organic for the fiber and a GOTS

22 certification or a bluesign certification or some kind of

23 certification for the processing part. 

24 MS. HUDDY: I have already stated in my speech

25 that we think that the consumer thinks that the
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1 perception is the finished -- from the beginning to the

2 end of the product, that the whole thing is sustainable

3 and environmentally friendly. So, I think that besides

4 fiber identification, that there also needs to be other

5 clear identifications as to where the product stops being

6 environmentally friendly or continues to be

7 environmentally friendly such as the independent

8 certifications. 

9 MS. SLAVEN: Consumer Reports, like Good

10 Housekeeping, has been trying to do some education, and

11 the consumer, the perception, again, is that the entire

12 product is organic where, at best, it is how the fiber

13 was grown. It has nothing to do with the processing. We 

14 published an article about sheets a few years back and a

15 little bit in the towel story where we tried to educate

16 the consumer, but there is not a lot you can do with one

17 or two lines in an article and it really comes back to

18 labeling. 

19 MS. KAPPLER: This a question for Todd. Todd,

20 you alluded to the challenges of non-deceptively

21 communicating green textile claims that go merely beyond

22 making fiber claims. Along those lines, what should the

23 Green Guides say to provide marketers with guidance when

24 they make green textile claims? 

25 MR. COPELAND: Beyond the fiber, I think it
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1 needs to be related or limited to some kind of

2 third-party certification. It is pretty difficult to

3 make a reference to natural dye or uses less energy or

4 something like that and really have some objective

5 support for that as a brand. I think you need some kind

6 of third-party support independent verification behind

7 that. 

8 MS. KAPPLER: You mentioned the issue of

9 bamboo and the perception at Patagonia that it was not a

10 trade-off that was worth it, as I understand it, because

11 the rayon was also being manufactured using refuse from

12 wood plants and cotton fibers. Is there some way that

13 the Green Guides could communicate that issue of a

14 trade-off? 

15 MR. COPELAND: I think in that case it was the

16 case of one factory. I think that is the standard

17 process. But I just think that the big issue of using

18 bamboo for rayon processing, we were not even addressing

19 the right problem. I think that was the point of me

20 making that comment. So, it is important to say that it

21 is rayon. If you want to go beyond that and say, okay,

22 it is rayon from something, then that is fine, whatever

23 that is, and then maybe the FTC decides whether you say

24 that or not. But I think definitely you have to say at

25 least what the fiber type is. 
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1 MS. KAPPLER: This is a question for Kathleen

2 and Pat. You talked about the observations of your

3 companies regarding green textile claims. What are the

4 most egregious claims that you all have noticed, and

5 along those same lines, what textile claims seem to be

6 causing consumers the most confusion. 

7 MS. HUDDY: Well, the latest bit of bamboo that

8 we saw had, I would say, probably six or seven claims. 

9 One being the -- a bunch being the ones that I stated

10 before. Antifungal, antimicrobial, beneficial to those

11 with sensitive skins and allergies, just claims that we

12 really question whether there is substantiation for them. 

13 MS. SLAVEN: Similar to Kathleen, we are seeing

14 the claims that are on par with a creative writing degree

15 out of Harvard. 

16 (Laughter.)

17 MS. HUDDY: Yeah, yeah. 

18 MS. SLAVEN: And it is misleading to the

19 consumers. Consumers are reasonably intelligent. 

20 However, when you are getting bombarded with hype in

21 20-point font, it is hard to dig into the label. It is

22 hard to do your own documentation. So, we are seeing the

23 most egregious stuff with bamboo. We have seen a little

24 bit with the organic cottons. Actually, some of the

25 better stuff that we saw a few years back were the soda
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1 pop bottle fleece that Patagonia made. It was something

2 that we tested about 10 years ago and it was actually

3 nice to see something that was a good consumer product. 

4 MS. HUDDY: That was telling the truth. 

5 MS. SLAVEN: Yeah, it was like whoa. 

6 MS. HUDDY: It happens every once in a while. 

7 MS. SLAVEN: It should not be so rare.

8 MS. HUDDY: Not often, but it happens every

9 once in a while. 

10 MS. KAPPLER: Let me raise this question with

11 the entire panel. If a fiber product must have fire or

12 flame retardancy for the consumer item, how does that

13 impact any kind of green claim? Can you even make a

14 green claim for these kinds of products? 

15 MS. HUDDY: I do not think you can make a green

16 claim. 

17 MS. SLAVEN: Well, a few years ago we saw some

18 items that were treated with Borax and I guess that would

19 be the stretch. 

20 MS. HUDDY: Yeah, they are chemicals. I mean,

21 they have been proven to be not harmful -- some of them,

22 some of them have been proven not to be harmful to

23 humans, but they are still chemicals. So, I do not think

24 there is a green claim that can be made on them. I have

25 not seen that yet. I have seen FR cotton, but I have not
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1 seen FR cotton with a green claim yet. 

2 MS. SLAVEN: No, I have not seen that either. 

3 Although we did get -- actually, a trade association that

4 I worked with a number of years ago, we got asked how to

5 do an organic treatment with flame retardancy, and the

6 closest thing we could come up with was dipping something

7 in Borax which is really a push. But we have not seen

8 that as a claim. But everything is chemicals including

9 what we are breathing. 

10 MS. GERSHUNY: The GOTS standards do permit

11 treatment with flame retardant chemicals where that is

12 required by law. So, that would be an exception. And if

13 people are familiar with the standards, they will know

14 that if it is a certain kind of product, then they can

15 still put a GOTS label on it even though it is treated

16 with fire retardant chemicals. I think that there may be

17 some GOTS approved chemicals that are used for fire

18 retardant, but that is beyond my scope of expertise. 

19 Maybe Sam Moore knows. No? Okay. 

20 MS. KAPPLER: Here is a question for Todd. Is

21 Patagonia differentiating between post-industrial and

22 post-consumer recycled content? What about routinely

23 collected waste, is this called recycled? 

24 MR. COPELAND: That is a really good question. 

25 Currently, we are not explaining differences between
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1 post-industrial and post-consumer recycled content. I

2 think they are both pretty important and I think that you

3 can make a claim for both of them being environmentally

4 friendly, and I think as long as we are checking our

5 sources of recycled material, we are pretty confident

6 that we are doing the right thing in most cases. 

7 MS. KAPPLER: A question for the panel. Some

8 organic advocates claim that products produced

9 organically are more environmentally friendly than

10 conventional fibers. How can one reconcile the fact that

11 there are often lower yields, more soil losses, more

12 water pollution and, ultimately more loss of wildlife

13 habitat in organic methods? 

14 MS. GERSHUNY: How much time do I have for

15 that? 

16 (Laughter.)

17 MS. GERSHUNY: I think that the environmental

18 benefits of organic production are well documented and

19 the claims that those methods are not environmentally

20 beneficial are promulgated by people who are trying to

21 promote not more industrial, chemical and genetically

22 modified organisms, and I think that the reams of data

23 that are out there will certainly refute that argument. 

24 I do not think I can go into all of the documentation at

25 this point, but certainly there is lots of it. 
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1 MS. KAPPLER: Any examples? 

2 MS. GERSHUNY: Any examples? I do not think I

3 can give any citations at this point. I was not prepared

4 for that question here. But you could go to the OTA

5 website, www.ota.org, and with links to research and

6 documentation about those claims. I am sure you will

7 find the information there. 

8 MS. KAPPLER: Anyone else? 

9 MS. HUDDY: Well, we cannot really answer that

10 question because we deal with the end product that the

11 consumer is purchasing at the store. 

12 MS. SLAVEN: And Consumer Reports really cannot

13 add anything to that either. 

14 MR. COPELAND: I am a retailer, not a farmer,

15 but I can say that I support organic agriculture. And I

16 think any claims that say that it is more environmentally

17 harmful than industrial agriculture than somebody has

18 done a lot of work to try and get those numbers together

19 to prove a point and I do not have the numbers to refute

20 it, sorry. 

21 MS. KAPPLER: Here is a question for Kathleen

22 and Pat. Is it possible to adequately qualify a

23 “renewable sustainable source claim” for textiles made

24 from bamboo? If so, how would a marketer qualify a

25 claims so that the claim does not imply that it is
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1 manufactured in some sort of environmentally friendly

2 way? 

3 MS. SLAVEN: I think it would require a very

4 large label. And other than one of the certifying

5 bodies, that would be an awful lot of words to put on a

6 label. 

7 MS. HUDDY: I do not think there is any way to

8 do that that I know of. 

9 MS. KAPPLER: Well, along those lines, so many

10 of these justifications and qualifications make for a

11 label that is the size of a gas station bathroom key.

12 MS. HUDDY: I have seen them that long,

13 especially if they are going to different countries. It

14 is ridiculous. 

15 MS. KAPPLER: Is some sort of reference to

16 third-party certification the answer to that? Or is

17 there some way to try to summarize in a few short words

18 what is true? 

19 MS. HUDDY: Well, you can use an independent

20 lab, using ASTM and A Squared standards, which is

21 perfectly justifiable. And then you can also use the

22 independent certifications, which the consumers are

23 starting to understand. They are starting to see

24 Okatech, they are starting to see it in catalogs, they

25 understand it. It is easy for them to understand. And
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1 they are already starting to see bluesign and that also

2 is very easy for them to understand. 

3 MS. SLAVEN: Even some of the simple stuff,

4 some of the simpler tags that we saw where it said rayon

5 from bamboo, a little bit of education provides a lot. 

6 As Dr. Gerde said earlier, we do not say rayon from

7 cotton linters, rayon from wood pulp. However, that is

8 one modification that may make it clearer for the

9 consumer. 

10 MS. GERSHUNY: I would just say that the word

11 "organic" is now legally defined and that it is not

12 something that fits on a bumper sticker either. But any

13 consumer can find the standards and know just what that

14 means. As a matter of fact, the standards do call for

15 practices that eliminate the danger, the threat of soil

16 or water pollution, for example. In any practices, every

17 practice has to be shown to minimize any threat to soil

18 or water. 

19 MS. KAPPLER: Let me just return to the issue

20 of product labeling because you all talked about the fact

21 that consumers are starting to understand these

22 third-party certifications and there is information on

23 websites and catalogs that provide them with more

24 information about this. But what about the point of sale

25 and the label? Is it really adequate for a consumer to
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1 have a reference to a third-party certification on a

2 label without some further explanation of what that

3 certification connotes or conveys? 

4 MR. COPELAND: Can I shoot? I think, in some

5 cases, you could have a book attached to your garment and

6 some people want that. Some people want to sit in the

7 store and they want all that data. But a lot of people

8 don't. Trying not to give all that information and

9 totally overwhelm somebody is kind of a balancing act I

10 think. So, a lot of what we do is try to make it as

11 simple as possible on the garment, but we reference a lot

12 of stuff to our website. With the case of an organic or

13 a third-party certification, you kind of reference out

14 another company's website. People can do all the

15 research they want to at home. 

16 MS. SLAVEN: With the care labeling effort that

17 took place a few years back, coming up with universal

18 codes, and there was a lot of consumer education

19 involved, letting consumers know this was a symbol for

20 wash, a symbol for dry. That would be one suggestion, to

21 try to find a way of simplifying it, codifying it and

22 doing consumer education. 

23 MS KAPPLER: Here is a question for the panel. 

24 What about regenerated proteins such as soy and milk

25 fiber, should marketers be able to claim that products
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1 made from these fibers are green? If not, why not? 

2 MS. HUDDY: Well, again, it is the processing

3 from the product, you know, from the beginning of the

4 product to the end of the product. We have looked at milk

5 t-shirts and soy t-shirts. Some of the claims have been

6 fairly impossible to substantiate. You know, it makes

7 your skin softer if you wear a milk t-shirt. You know,

8 prove that to me. That would be hard to prove. 

9 And, again, it is the processing. I think it

10 is fascinating that they were able to make it out of a

11 milk protein and that is a great thing, but again,

12 listing all those product claims and not being able to

13 substantiate them is a problem. 

14 MS. SLAVEN: I have not seen any of these items

15 in my lab yet. 

16 MR. COPELAND: I think these fibers are like

17 the protein version of bamboo rayon kind of. Where they

18 are talking about that it is made from soy or milk, but

19 not talking about the fact that it is a regenerated

20 process that uses chemical solvents and other chemicals

21 to actually congeal it back out. And I think that is the

22 environmental issue, not whether you are using soy or

23 milk or something. 

24 But I think it is being promoted as a natural

25 product, renewable product source or whatever, and I
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1 think that is another case where we should focus on what

2 is the fiber, and if we can label it -- I think Azlon is

3 the general word for regenerated protein fiber. If we

4 could say it’s Azlon, that would be a little more clear,

5 it’s like saying rayon instead of bamboo. 

6 MS. KAPPLER: One challenge we have had is it

7 appears that a lot of manufacturers and retailers and

8 marketers are not familiar with our Green Guides. 

9 MS. HUDDY: Yeah, they are not. 

10 MS. KAPPLER: What can the FTC do to better

11 disseminate this information? 

12 MS. HUDDY: Get a list of them all and send it

13 to them and tell them they will be fined unless they

14 follow it. 

15 (Laughter.)

16 MS. HUDDY: I am sorry, but, I mean, that is

17 what you have to do. Every manufacturer in the garment

18 industry -- not every, God bless me, is going to try

19 this. Let’s see, how long can I get away with this

20 before they come after me? How many products can I sell,

21 how much of a profit margin can I have before I get

22 caught? It has been going on since I was a buyer in

23 1987. 

24 MS. SLAVEN: It comes back to carrot and the

25 stick. One is encouraging them to do better labeling
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1 like your Threading Your Way Guide. And then that is the

2 carrot. And then the stick is enforcement. And I

3 realize that that is a real tough one. 

4 MS. GERSHUNY: I would suggest, I mean, there

5 are lots and lots of conferences and trade shows for

6 green products and the Organic Trade Association's annual

7 conference, All Things Organic, which it would be very

8 helpful to have that information for people who

9 manufacture those kinds of products. 

10 MS. KAPPLER: Thank you. That is all we have. 

11 Now, we are going to move on to a lunch break and we will

12 be out until 1:00. Just to remind everyone that you will

13 need to allow some additional time to get back into the

14 building, so do work that into your schedule. Thanks to

15 all our panelists. 

16 (Applause.)

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25
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1 SESSION 3: SHADES OF GREEN - OVERVIEW OF GREEN CLAIMS 

2 FOR BUILDING PRODUCTS

3 MR. FRISBY: Good afternoon, everyone. My name

4 is Robert Frisby. I will be monitoring our third

5 session. 

6 Before we get to that, I want to make a few

7 brief announcements for people who did not attend this

8 morning's session. The restrooms in this building are

9 located across the lobby behind the elevators near the

10 guard desk. Also, we ask you to please turn off your

11 cell phones or put them on vibrate, and if you want to

12 make calls, we would prefer that you do so out in the

13 lobby or outside the building. 

14 Also, we are going to be posting the

15 PowerPoints that you are seeing today on our webpage very

16 soon and we will also be posting a transcript of the

17 proceedings and the archived webcast very soon as well. 

18 We are going to be following our presentations

19 with a question-and-answer session. If you have a

20 question, please write it down on one of the index cards

21 that you may have seen back there. If you need a card,

22 there are folks walking around with them and we will try

23 to pose whatever questions we can at the end of the

24 session.

25 And with that, let me introduce our third panel
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1 of the day. The third panel is on Shades of Green -

2 Overview of Green Claims for Building Products. We have

3 Kirsten Ritchie, who is Director of Sustainable Design at

4 Gensler. We have Corey Brinkema, President of FSCUS, the

5 National Initiative of the Forest Stewardship Council. 

6 We have Rick Cantrell, Vice President and Chief Operating

7 Officer of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Steve

8 Sides, Vice President of Environmental Health and

9 International Affairs at the National Paint and Coatings

10 Association. And, finally, we have Frank Hurd, Vice

11 President and Chief Operating Officer of the Carpet and

12 Rug Institute. 

13 With that, I will turn over the floor to

14 Kirsten. 

15 MS. RITCHIE: Good afternoon, everybody. I

16 feel so lucky being the first speaker after lunch before

17 those carbs race in and shut your body system down. 

18 Welcome, glad you could all make it. 

19 What I am going to talk about, the whole panel

20 is talking about shades of green, and I am really kind of

21 getting to the whole issue of getting beyond eco fluff

22 and how we really get to green products. But before I go

23 on, I will just give you a little bit of insight into who

24 I am. I am Director of Sustainable Design at Gensler. 

25 How many of you are familiar with Gensler? Well, Gensler
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1 is the world’s largest architectural firm. We specify

2 and we are involved in 250 million square feet of

3 building a year. So, you can imagine the quantity of

4 products that we are responsible for specifying, and we

5 have the opportunity to make a lot of them very, very

6 green. We are just trying to find them. And one of the

7 challenges that our designers have is that they have to

8 wade through all this eco fluff thrown at them. So, I am

9 going to hopefully clarify that.

10 So, the four key agenda items, how we lose the

11 eco fluff, the realities that we cannot speak, multi12 attributes, what the value is of standards and how you go

13 about gaining our trust. 

14 Losing eco fluff. Family Circus, this was a

15 Mother's Day cartoon. You have little Jimmy there, mom

16 is being served pink eggs and ham, and Jimmy says, Look,

17 Mom, we could not find any food coloring so we used

18 finger paint. But it is okay, Mommy, on the box it said

19 non-toxic, that means it is not fattening. People do not

20 always understand what we are throwing out there when we

21 say what we are saying. So, what is really the true

22 meaning?

23 Or we may mistakenly assume there is this nice

24 little can here. It has a pretty graphic little symbol

25 here, nice blue water drops and water-based. What does
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1 it mean? What does it mean to you? Well, a lot of

2 people think, oh, it means it is a safe product, I can

3 use it maybe around my pools and my sinks. The reality

4 is it only means that the carrier is water, it is no

5 longer oil. It can still contain arsenic, cyanide and

6 all kinds of other things. And if you notice, it has a

7 big keep out of reach of children label on it. So, we

8 have to be very concerned about those things that look

9 pretty but, you know, what do they really mean. 

10 We can misinterpret. I love this. Our store

11 uses environmentally friendly darkening fluid. What the

12 heck is that? No cancer-causing agents. Now, you get

13 any good scientist or toxicologist and they could say,

14 you know, we throw enough of something at any one

15 particular thing, we could probably get some sort of

16 cancerous reaction. And this has no, not even free of,

17 which we know can be .05 percent, but no. That is pretty

18 firm. And virtually non-toxic and biodegradable. Well,

19 it is a dry cleaning fluid. Chances are it has no water

20 as a carrier. It is not supposed to get out in the

21 environment. Why would you have something that

22 biodegrades if it is never even supposed to be out there? 

23 So, I mean, that is a little question. 

24 Miscalculate. Those of us who are involved in

25 the green building industry and there is the LEED rating
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1 system, which is a point-based system, and we love all

2 these manufacturers that come to us and say, look at my

3 product, just specify my product and you get seven

4 points. And you are going no, that is not the way it is.

5 Just by specifying a stormwater collection system, we are

6 not going to get seven points on the project. So, please

7 do not try and allude that we will. 

8 Sometimes we can just get confused. I love

9 this one that came to me a couple months ago from a

10 designer. More environmentally friendly and functional. 

11 Our unparalleled products are manufactured with 100

12 percent new, virgin, mechanically frothed polyurethane

13 formulation containing ultra-fresh antimicrobial

14 chemicals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Does somebody

15 want to explain to me what is environmentally friendly

16 about that? 

17 So, the reality is even though we get -- well,

18 we lost a few. We have a whole long laundry list of

19 attributes that are out there, eco safe, no chemicals, no

20 additives. I always love the no chemicals. Okay, yeah,

21 it does not have any carbon, it does not have chlorides,

22 it does not have any oxygen or hydrogen. The list goes

23 on and on and on and we really can get very confused. 

24 At the same point in time, the market is able

25 to understand a lot of claims. We are able to understand
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1 and speak multi-attribute. Plenty Magazine, I love that

2 magazine, he could be the one, he drives a hybrid but

3 does he compost.

4 (Laughter.)

5 MS. RITCHIE: We have the capability to

6 understand more than one thing at one point in time. 

7 And, actually, the Europeans I think are a bit ahead of

8 us. This is from Marks and Spencer, they have what they

9 call their Plan A because there is no Plan B. They are

10 now requiring their tire supply chain, all their products

11 to evaluate along what they call the five pillars of

12 environmental and social issues. Climate change, waste,

13 dealing with is this product recyclable, is it

14 compostable, sustainable raw materials, what is the

15 recycled content, is it organic, is it FSC certified, is

16 it a fair partner that is dealing with the social

17 responsibility aspect, and then health because we are

18 concerned about public health and we want to make sure

19 these products do not cause any problems for us. 

20 So, they are looking -- Marks and Spencer is a

21 very, very large retailer in the European Union and they

22 actually are coming here to the States and actually going

23 internationally. And they are saying, you know what, our

24 customers, the average, you know, grocery store buyer can

25 understand these things and they want to know. 
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1 So, what are the targets that we have to --

2 what we are trying to achieve because we often have

3 people come to us and manufacturers come to us and say,

4 well, just tell us what you want. And it is like, that

5 is your job, you are supposed to know your product, you

6 are supposed to know the market, you are supposed to be

7 doing the right thing, but we will go ahead and help you. 

8 We have issues of product -- the reality is you

9 are looking at both the product and the process. On the

10 product side, you are looking at things of the

11 attributes, it is the material content, it is the mission

12 profile, it is performance characteristics, it is

13 toxicity. But you also have to deal with the process,

14 how that product was produced. Energy consumption, its

15 carbon footprints, clearly we are very concerned about

16 that from a climate change perspective. Water

17 consumption, behind energy and carbon, we are running out

18 of water. What waste is being generated and how is this

19 being managed, what are the air emissions that are

20 associated with the production of that product. 

21 In terms of the product characteristics, there

22 are a whole bunch of green rating systems that are out in

23 the marketplace. Many of you are familiar with some of

24 these, like, for example, LEED, you’ve got Energy Star,

25 you’ve got Green Globes. If we look just at LEED, LEED
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1 actually lays out for us kind of the product

2 characteristics that we typically are looking for when we

3 are talking about products for the built environment. 

4 In terms of water, I mean, you have water

5 efficiency fixtures, energy efficient lighting and

6 appliances. You want to reduce toxic materials,

7 particularly as it relates to lighting the steels with

8 mercury. Are you using salvage materials? Are you using

9 recycled content pre and post? Post is preferred. Is it

10 a locally and regionally harvested material? Is it 

11 rapidly renewable? Is it a certified wood source? And

12 then, also, from more of the health perspective, is it

13 low emitting, whether it is adhesives, your paints, your

14 carpets. 

15 LEED actually has some guidelines here for you. 

16 So, from that perspective, if you are a manufacturer or

17 if you are a specifier, if you are a buyer and you are

18 concerned about product characteristics, this is a good

19 short list to start to say I have to be able to

20 articulate how my product performs or meets these

21 criteria. 

22 But what we really are concerned about is the

23 life cycle of this product and all the impacts that are

24 associated during the extraction of raw materials, its

25 manufacturing, its use and then what happens to it end of
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1 life. That is the life cycle assessment. Part of the

2 reason we want to look at things from a life cycle

3 perspective is to make sure that we are not trading off. 

4 Just because we are getting something that is very energy

5 efficient, we do not want to know that it is toxic from a

6 public health perspective. Or just because we are

7 really, really good at extracting materials does not mean

8 we have a very inefficient product in the marketplace. 

9 So, we have to make sure that we are not incurring undo

10 trade-offs to try and get some of the benefits that we

11 think we are receiving. 

12 Now, the reality from a life cycle perspective,

13 it is pretty complex science and it is evolving science. 

14 This is the scope, a life cycle assessment, for ketchup. 

15 Now, you think ketchup and then you think potentially

16 this podium. There is a bit of difference in the

17 complexity of that. And from here, you see all the

18 different things you have to look at and you multiply

19 that by what is -- when you have a multi-material sort of

20 product, how you really can assess it. But we can. We

21 are getting better and better and better at that. 

22 What is it we are really trying to determine

23 from a life cycle perspective? We look at all these

24 flows, we look at all these emissions, we look at all the

25 consumption and we aggregate them together to identify
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1 the impacts in certain key impact areas. 

2 Internationally, there are five agreed-to impact

3 categories. There are global warming, also known as

4 carbon footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, stratospheric

5 ozone depletion, acidification, utrification and photo6 chemical smog. We agree to both universally. There is

7 no doubt about that. 

8 But the reality is there is a whole lot more

9 that we are also interested in. This is the list of

10 impact categories. It was developed by EPA as part of

11 TRACEI, the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of

12 Chemical and other Environmental Impacts. How is that

13 for nomenclature? You can see that it has the five main

14 categories there, climate change, utrification, smog,

15 acidification, ozone depletion, but it also has things

16 like resource depletion, human health, a big thing. On

17 the life cycle area, public health is a real challenge,

18 we do not know how to do it yet. Water intake, human

19 health cancers, eco toxicity, habitat alteration, non20 cancerous human health impacts and indoor air quality. 

21 Now, from a life cycle perspective, the life

22 cycle practitioners say all of these are equal. They are

23 all equally important and we have to address them all

24 equally. But the reality is trying to do that from a

25 manufacturing perspective or from a marketplace
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1 perspective is not really practical. It is like there is

2 too much, I cannot work on it. 

3 So, what NIST actually did is they undertook an

4 assessment to try and figure out what really are the

5 priorities. This is what is going to kind of form the

6 basis of the criteria in LEED saying, you know, we are

7 looking at the most important things for us are climate

8 change. So, if you are looking through your target from

9 a manufacturing perspective and from a marketplace

10 perspective, you have to be able to articulate how this

11 product impacts climate change, i.e., what is its carbon

12 footprint. And as you can see, you know, going on the

13 independent and U.K. requiring carbon footprint to be

14 revealed. 

15 Just a quick word on environmentally

16 preferable. We hear this a lot, environmentally

17 preferable products. Oftentimes, somebody says my

18 product has 5 percent more recycled contact than theirs,

19 therefore, I am environmentally preferable. We do not go

20 there. We say in order to make the claim of

21 environmental preferable, you have to consider both the

22 product as well as the process. The intersection where

23 you can get the best of both, that is when you have

24 something that truly is environmentally preferable. 

25 The value of standards. Standards are what we
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1 use to define performance internationally. There is a

2 whole set of definitions. But the one that we are really

3 focusing on here is that rule or set of rules or

4 requirements which are widely agreed upon or imposed by

5 government. 

6 Now, the reality is they touch all facets of

7 our life. How fast the secondhand moves on your watch,

8 the flamability of the carpet you are walking on, red

9 means stop at a stoplight, yes, not in Italy but

10 generally everywhere else in the world, that is what it

11 means. And the international language of commerce is

12 standards. We have to understand that. Because the

13 reality is we are living in an international marketplace,

14 and when we order specified products for those 250

15 million square feet of building, they are coming from

16 around the world. So, we have to have standards that are

17 applicable around the world. 

18 Now, the reality is that there are a bunch of

19 road maps that already exist. They are international. 

20 They are ISO. And, yes, we, as Americans, always say do

21 we have to use international standards, can’t we create

22 our own? But from an FTC perspective, I would really

23 like to encourage that we start to leverage and use what

24 is already out there, starting, for example, with ISO

25 14021, the single environmental attribute road map. It
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1 has a bunch of great language in there. But one of the

2 things is an environmental claim that is vague or non3 specific or which broadly implies that a product is

4 environmentally beneficial or environmentally benign

5 shall not be used. What does that mean? All those terms

6 that we see, environmentally friendly, environmentally

7 safe, earth friendly, non-polluting, green, ozone

8 friendly, you just don’t go there. Pretty simple. Just

9 don’t do it. 

10 ISO 14025, which is a life cycle, basically

11 nutritional label. A newcomer for those of us in the

12 building products trade is 21930, which is environmental

13 product declaration for building products, basically

14 think of a nutritional label for building products. It

15 does not tell you good bad or ugly, it just tells you

16 what is. 

17 So, for example, carbon facts on the

18 cheeseburger right here. This is just reporting out what

19 the carbon footprint of a cheeseburger. I am running out

20 of time, but just quickly to note, carbon product ratio,

21 this is just a teaser for the day, 23.7, that means 23.7

22 points of CO2 equivalent per pound of cheeseburger. 

23 Do you know what concrete is? .1. Do you know

24 what steel is? 1.7. Do you know what carpet is? Three. 

25 Cheeseburger, 23.7. So, watch those cheeseburgers if you
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1 are concerned about climate change. 

2 (Laughter.)

3 MS. RITCHIE: 14024, environmental seal of

4 approval. This is giving you the good, better, best. 

5 And, fortunately, we have a lot of standards that are now

6 developing here in the United States using that kind of

7 protocol to help us figure out what are really good

8 products, and they look at a whole host of attributes. 

9 This is not just recycled content, this is not just

10 energy efficiency. This is the new standard, IEEE 1680,

11 which is the basis for the electronic products

12 environment assessment tool. 

13 And you notice they talk about elimination of

14 environmentally sensitive materials, materials selection,

15 end of life management, energy conservation, corporate

16 performance. If we had to list all the attributes for

17 every single one of the thousands and thousands and

18 thousands of products that go into our buildings, we

19 would have spec books that would run from that wall to

20 that wall. You cannot operate that way. 

21 But, now, what we can do is we can say, all

22 electronic products have to meet IEEE 1680 level of

23 bronze or level of silver. It is greatly simplifying

24 what we will have to do as specifiers to get good quality

25 products that are also environmentally friendly in the
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1 marketplace. 

2 NSF Carpet standard, NSF 140. We also have a

3 new draft standard out for sustainable assessment for

4 resilient floor coverings. BIFMA is also working on a

5 standard for sustainability of furniture. The list is

6 growing, which is very important. 

7 ASTM has an evolving standard on

8 environmentally preferenced products. So, a number of

9 organizations are working in that way. But how do we

10 then move from standards and get products in the

11 marketplace? And the important thing is we have to gain

12 our trust. In God we trust, all others bring data, great

13 quote from Gerry Anderson who was the founder of

14 Interface. You have what are called environmental

15 product declarations. 

16 This is that nutritional label we are talking

17 about, very detailed, tells you what the carbon footprint

18 is, tells you what the acidification footprint is, tells

19 you what materials went into the product. A very nice

20 one because we are dealing again with the design

21 community, try and have a little nice graphic on their

22 face. This is an environmental product declaration that

23 Steel K (phonetic) has put together on a chair. They

24 have it for a number of their products, particularly

25 those that they sell in Europe. 
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1 We then quickly have the issue of

2 certification. Because these are very complex standards,

3 they look at a lot of information. Who can we really

4 trust in saying, yes, I meet the standard? You have the

5 first party certification, which basically is

6 self-declaring; you have second party which there is some

7 relationship between the certification organization and

8 that being certified, such as, for example, a membership

9 in a trade association or a vendor; and then you have

10 third-party certification and that is really where we

11 want to encourage that you go. 

12 The final element is branding. Branding is

13 very important. The reality is we are a brand-driven

14 society as you know, it really helps -- takes a lot of

15 complex processes, brings them down and makes them nice

16 and graphical. And there are things like the value, even

17 from an environmental perspective, when you talk about

18 the value, for example of Energy Star. People who became

19 aware of Energy Star appliances said next time that they

20 are going to buy and look for them. So, it does have

21 real value. 

22 And you see we have a whole lot of those brands

23 in the environmental arena, and I would leave you with a

24 question, though, are we being overwhelmed. So, I am

25 hoping somebody will ask us that of the panel so I can
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1 answer that because I am out of time. Thank you.

2 (Applause.)

3 MR. FRISBY: Thank you very much. Corey, you

4 are next. 

5 MR. BRINKEMA: Thank you. I am Corey Brinkema

6 with the Forest Stewardship Council United States and I

7 am the president of what is known as the National

8 Initiative within our International System. I think we

9 are approaching 50 national initiatives now. We are

10 based in Bonn, Germany and our offices are based in

11 Minneapolis. 

12 We are going to make that shift now into 

13 discussing certification systems and standards, and I

14 would also like to comment on a few points that Kirsten

15 touched on as well. First of all, our organization, our

16 mission, as stated here, we are about promoting the

17 environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and

18 economically viable management of the world's forests. 

19 We do this through setting standards, developing a

20 certification system and creating a logo and a label that

21 will be recognized in the marketplace and reward good

22 behavior. 

23 So, I mentioned we are a global organization,

24 and if there is one take-away today that you get out of

25 my talk, it is comprehension that FSC is what is known as
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1 a consensus-based organization. And that means we bring

2 all stakeholders together through membership, through

3 standard-setting and policy development. And that is

4 really what sets FSC apart. 

5 We have three chambers in our membership.

6 Membership is open. You categorize yourself as either

7 environmental, economic or social. Organizations like

8 the timber industry and lumber producers and retailers

9 would be in our economic category. Environmental is

10 primarily environmental NGOs; and social is an

11 interesting and sometimes eclectic mix. Internationally,

12 it is indigenous organizations, labor, and community and

13 community development organizations. 

14 We have certified now -- these are figures from

15 April of 2008. I’ve just recently received the second

16 quarter of this year and we are a little over 260 million

17 acres certified and we are getting very close to 10,000

18 chain of custody certificates, and I will explain what

19 that means in a minute. We are now in 81 countries. 

20 So, what is FSC? We are a market-based non21 regulatory tool for forest conservation. We have

22 developed the world's most rigorous and prescriptive

23 standards for forest management. Essentially what we are

24 trying to do is allow the consumer or corporate purchaser

25 to reward good forest management practices, and we do
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1 this through setting standards, as I mentioned, and

2 providing a third party verification system for

3 accrediting independent certifiers, more forest

4 management and then through the chain of custody. This

5 set of arrows down here, in just very summary form,

6 describes the chain of custody process from the forest

7 floor through primary and secondary mills and through to

8 the distribution channel and retailers and, finally, a

9 label on a product like a pad of paper or a piece of

10 furniture or lumber or other green building products. 

11 Our guiding principles, there are 10 of them. 

12 And with each one of these principles there are a set of

13 criteria. We have, I believe, 54 criteria and then at

14 the standards, national and regional standards level we

15 have also what are known as indicators that allow and

16 provide guidance for our certifying bodies to determine

17 compliance to these principles and criterias. 

18 So, the first one is primarily around legality.

19 The second one about land tenure. The third is

20 indigenous people's rights. Four is community relations,

21 labor rights. Number five, benefits of the forest,

22 largely an economic principle. Number six, environmental

23 impact. These are quite a lengthy section of our

24 standards. Number seven, requiring a detailed management

25 plan. Eight, monitoring and assessment. Number nine,
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1 the maintenance of what are known as high conservation

2 value forests. That is a term that was coined by the FSC

3 and specifies protections for areas of special

4 conservation value, it can also be social criteria there. 

5 Number 10, plantations and plantations need to be managed

6 under the FSC principles and criteria. They do not have

7 a separate set of rules, and it is an understanding that

8 plantations do have a role in reducing the burden on our

9 natural forests. 

10 I mentioned the consensus based approach and

11 what you get when you move forward with that approach is

12 you get some strange bedfellows. In the FSC, you have

13 folks like the Sierra Club and Forest Ethics and

14 Greenpeace sitting down and negotiating with Potlatch and

15 Domtar and New Page over what the standards should be. 

16 And in the U.S., our national initiative, one of the

17 roles that we play is taking those international

18 principles and criteria and creating indicators for those

19 criteria. We are actually in the middle of that right

20 now. We are in a five-year, every five-year standard

21 revision process. And on our standards revision

22 committee we do have Sierra Club, Forest Ethics and the

23 Nature Conservancy, Potlatch, and a number of other

24 forest management companies are also represented. 

25 How does FSC earn market trust? Certainly,
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1 this consensus approach is very powerful, but what

2 matters most are the standards. And FSC has set, by far,

3 the most comprehensive and prescriptive and verifiable

4 standards for forest management. 

5 When I go around talking with our stakeholders,

6 particularly the corporate stakeholders, these little

7 checkmarks here are what I hear most frequently why

8 company A or consumer B has chosen FSC. I hear national

9 forest conversion, the fact that we disallow that within

10 our standards. Converting natural forests to plantations

11 or other non-forest uses. The real protection of high

12 conservation values in forests. The fact that we protect

13 indigenous rights and labor rights. And then you get

14 down to some of the more minutia within the standards,

15 tree retention within openings, protections for

16 threatened species and a very lengthy list of pesticides

17 that are not allowed within forest management practices. 

18 Obviously, the balance in democracy and

19 transparency in the system and for many it is the fact

20 that we have the leading environmental and social NGO

21 support. 

22 Our growth here in the U.S., you can see 

23 that -- and it is part of the reason why we are here

24 today and why the FTC is paying so much attention to this

25 arena, our growth has been quite rapid, almost 100
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1 percent last year. We are on a similar pace this year. 

2 Internationally, we grew by 40 percent last year. We are

3 at 47 percent annualized rate internationally right now. 

4 In green building, specifically the driver

5 certainly has been FSC's exclusive recognition within the

6 LEED program, the USB Building Council’s LEED Program. 

7 Many other green home-building programs, many of which

8 are regional in nature, also recognize only FSC or give

9 preference to FSC. I mentioned a few states there. Home

10 Depot and Lowe's have given preference to FSC-certified

11 wood products as well. And the environmental

12 organizations are also playing a significant role in

13 demand creation in this arena. 

14 I am going to end very quickly here with a

15 description of our logos. The mixed sources logo is the

16 one that is used frequently in the paper sector and

17 engineered wood products, and I can describe this later

18 if anyone wants me to go into what is known as controlled

19 sources. That is where that mixed sources label comes

20 into play. 100 percent FSC is fairly self-explanatory. 

21 All the fiber or product comes from an FSC certified

22 forest and then there is also a label for recycled. 

23 And then, finally, this is my last slide, FSC

24 trademarks provide a guarantee that the products are

25 coming from a responsible source and authorization is
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1 required to ensure that these trademarks are used

2 correctly. The certifying bodies provide that guidance

3 to the companies that are in the chain of custody and

4 then for others, like retailers who do not require chain

5 of custody, there are nominated agents and my national

6 initiative serves as one of those. We also have a very

7 robust misuse functioning system. 

8 So, I will end with that. This is one of many

9 now promotional examples of FSC recently in the

10 marketplace, this is from a couple months ago. Wal-Mart

11 is an example of how corporations are using FSC in

12 promoting their products. I will end with that. Thank

13 you. 

14 (Applause.)

15 MR. FRISBY: Thank you. Rick? 

16 MR. CANTRELL: Thank you. Good afternoon,

17 everyone. I do have a lot packed into this presentation,

18 so I am going to go through some things fairly quickly. 

19 We have been talking about green buildings and the green

20 building standards a little bit. Basically, when you

21 look at those standards, they are all addressing some of

22 the basic core values. 

23 The one I am going to focus on today is

24 resources and particularly the wood resources in those 

25 buildings. It is interesting to note in most of these
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1 systems, if not all of them, that wood is the only

2 material that is being held to voluntary third-party

3 standards and certification processes. 

4 Our relevance is to the materials and

5 resources. We believe, as others have talked about today

6 already, in a life cycle analyses and the value that can

7 bring. We know that in all these analysis we have seen

8 that wood stacks up very favorably with some of the other

9 materials in terms of life cycle analysis results. 

10 Here is just another example of that that I saw

11 recently from the BCMON up in British Columbia, and I’ve

12 put the website down there if you want to take another

13 look at this in more detail. But it shows how wood

14 stacks up against some other materials as well in terms

15 of life cycle analysis on climate change, energy and air

16 pollution. 

17 We have heard about certification programs, we

18 have heard about what is credible, what is not credible

19 in the marketplace. Recently, a group called the

20 American Consumer Council published an article on how to

21 evaluate credible green certification programs. We took

22 a look at it and thought it was interesting and decided

23 we would see how our program stacked up against their

24 criteria, which you see here on this slide. 

25 First of all, SFI is sponsored by a credible
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1 non-profit organization, we are an independent 501(c)(3),

2 the Sustainable Forest Initiative Program. We, too, have

3 a balanced Board of Directors with the three chambers

4 represented, the environmental, the social and the

5 economic interests. We are also a consensus-based

6 process as well. If fact, our bylaws and governance

7 dictate that no individual chamber can be overruled in

8 terms of voting and we have never had that to happen

9 anyway. The board and all the folks, all the

10 stakeholders involved in setting our standards operate on

11 a consensus basis. 

12 We are also in a five-year review cycle and we

13 have started that review this year. It will be the third

14 such review we have had since 1995. Open comment period,

15 public input is welcome. 

16 The existing standards based on nine

17 principles, 13 objectives, 34 performance measures and

18 103 indicators where program participants are required to

19 implement policies, plans, procedures to make sure all of

20 those things are being met in their operations in the

21 forest and in the way they procure their wood on the open

22 market as well. This was developed by professional

23 foresters, conservationists, scientists and others

24 through a very rigorous public review process. 

25 And we are a single standard that is applied in
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1 the U.S. and Canada and recognized internationally. We

2 have been endorsed by the Program for the Endorsement of

3 Forest Certification Schemes out of Europe, which is

4 similar to FSC in that they are an umbrella organization

5 that endorses national or regional standards. And, so,

6 we are now endorsed by PFC, which means we have access to

7 international markets with our products as well. 

8 We do have verification and validation as part

9 of the certification process. We do not accredit the

10 third party certifiers that certify companies to our

11 standard. We rely on groups like ANAB, ANSI and SCC, the

12 Standards Council of Canada, to accredit auditors. 

13 Auditors who want to do business by certifying folks to

14 the SFI standard have to receive their credentialing from

15 ANAB, ANSI or SCC. 

16 We do have both accountability steps and a

17 continuous improvement process. We do require folks to

18 be audited to our standard before you are allowed access

19 to product labels, and that does also require annual

20 surveillance audits with a full recertification required

21 every five years. 

22 Principle 9 of our standard and Objective 13

23 are specific to continuous improvement, which requires an

24 annual management review and a feedback loop so that as

25 problems are detected or opportunities for improvement
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1 are found that that happens within the organization.

2 Credible in the marketplace. We are recognized

3 by a number of green building standards as well, like the

4 National Association of Home Builders and Green Globes. 

5 We strongly believe that we should be recognized in LEED

6 and continue to work toward that end. We have been

7 recognized internationally. The United Kingdom

8 Government’s Timber Expertise Panel recognizes SFI and

9 gives us full credit as does the U.S. Government Central

10 Services Administration. It is interesting to know we

11 are also recognized in the U.K. Government’s Green

12 Building Program.

13 Chain of custody. Corey walked you through how

14 FSC worked. It is very similar with FSI. If you are

15 going to make a percent content claim and carry a product

16 into the marketplace with a label, if you are going from

17 a certified forest, certified logs, certified sawmill in

18 this case, the lumber eventually makes it to a retailer. 

19 Chain of custody is required throughout the process so

20 you can keep track of that fiber. If you are able to do

21 that with SFI and meet our requirements, you can use on

22 product labels, here are a couple of examples. 100

23 percent, as Corey said, is self-explanatory. That means

24 you are tracking all of that lumber from a certified

25 forest. 
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1 If you are going to make a percent content

2 claim, in our situation, you have to put the percentage

3 on the label. You could put 10 percent came from

4 independently certified forests or 50 percent, whatever

5 percentage you are able to track through your chain of

6 custody. That makes the claim very clear. 

7 We also have what is called a fiber sourcing

8 label for those who are not able to make a percent

9 content claim or do not wish to. This does not have any

10 claim at all regarding what percentage of the wood came

11 from a certified forest. This is important because it

12 recognized a very important fact. Only 10 percent of the

13 world's forests right now are certified. There's 90

14 percent that are not. And, so, having a way to track

15 your wood and to make some type of a claim in terms of

16 your fiber sourcing, this is one of the ways you can do

17 it without having misleading claims about percent

18 content. 

19 Consumer research, we have done some and are

20 currently doing some more. Some that we did recently, in

21 terms of our messaging on our labels, was with the

22 Artemus Strategy Group and we found out some things that

23 were top of mind for customers making sure that

24 sustainable forestry practices are in place particularly

25 related to sensitive land. And the Smead example there,
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1 where the office workers are talking about buying papers,

2 we want to make sure that they are coming from well

3 managed forests. 

4 Some customer research we did with the Lowe’s

5 and Home Depots of the world, who we also supply a

6 significant amount of material to, sustainable, renewable

7 are important for them, globally recognized symbols, use

8 of the word “sustainable” is also important. We are also

9 doing some consumer testing right now. It just started. 

10 Looking at our labels, looking at claims because we want

11 to make sure, as we have done in the past, that our

12 labels are not misleading, that they are providing the

13 information that our program does deliver, that that is

14 the perception the consumer has. And based on the

15 results of that consumer work, as we have done in the

16 past, we may tweak our labels, add some new claims, add

17 some new labels to make sure that our claims continue to

18 be represented in the marketplace in the manner they

19 should be. 

20 And I see that I am now out of time, but just

21 to give you a parting thought, this is a timely issue for

22 green building claims and that programs like NAHB, Green

23 Globes need to recognize all credible systems, which they

24 do, and we hope that LEED will do that soon. Thank you. 

25 (Applause.)
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1 MS. FRISBY: Thank you. Steve? 

2 MR. SIDES: Thank you to the FTC for organizing

3 and inviting a number of us here to speak with you today. 

4 I am from the paint manufacturing industry. Those are a

5 lot of companies you probably know because you have used

6 their products and appreciate them and a lot of companies

7 you probably do not know, but maybe still appreciate them

8 because of the finishes on your car or something that you

9 purchased. 

10 The trade association itself that I worked for

11 is about 115 years old, and our primary mission is to

12 assist our industry with compliance with governmental

13 regulations and also advocacy before federal, state and

14 local agencies. The paint industry in the U.S. is about

15 an $18 billion industry. Not very big. But our products

16 ultimately end up being applied to about 75 percent of

17 the gross national product. So, we are regulated

18 everywhere our customers are regulated. 

19 And, consequently, coatings and paints are a

20 very diverse industry. The stuff we make has to stick to

21 the surfaces and perform to our customers'

22 specifications, and it is important for protection and

23 for beautification of those products. And while,

24 Kirsten, I do not think we use cyanide and arsenic in any

25 great quantities, I know that was a jest on your part, we
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1 certainly do use a number of hazardous substances and we

2 are highly regulated. So, I wanted to give you a little

3 sense of what happens in the course of putting out a

4 paint formulation and why green product claims are

5 difficult and truly require the formulation of a very

6 responsive green product at this point. 

7 The paint industry is regulated. We, as an

8 association, also put forward guidance for our members on

9 how to label products and produce material safety data

10 sheets. Many of you are familiar with these regulations. 

11 The OSHA has a communications standard that requires

12 appropriate hazard warnings on products containing

13 chemical components. So does the Federal Hazardous

14 Substances Act. Our industry labeling guidance compels

15 action and awareness of our members on the specific

16 requirements that are necessary for both hazard and

17 precautionary warning, target organ health effects and

18 even chronic hazard warnings like cancer on consumer

19 products. 

20 Take a trip down to one of your local paint

21 stores and take a look at a paint label sometime and you

22 will see that those product claims are present on those

23 products as a result of regulatory requirements. 

24 Consequently, to get a truly green product like you have

25 heard described here and to make environmentally friendly
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1 and non-toxic claims requires an intentional effort on

2 the part of a product manufacturer. 

3 A lot of what you see in the environment claims

4 and in some of the green building standards associated

5 with paint, as with other building products, have emerged

6 from other regulatory requirements. In our case for

7 paint, the volatile component of that product is a

8 critical consideration. Essentially the solvents that

9 are in the paint. 

10 A lot of you are not old enough to remember

11 oil-based paint and the particularly odorous requirements

12 of applying that type of product, it is almost gone in

13 the marketplace right now. A lot of technology forcing

14 regulations have come along which have pushed that

15 product out. A lot of them are emerging in California. 

16 By, I guess, by our best estimate, low VOC requirements

17 are going to be required by law, by regulation in nearly

18 68 percent of the country within the next six to eight

19 months, I believe, because of requirement in the ozone

20 transport states out east here and the mid-Atlantic, as

21 well as the areas around Lake Michigan. 

22 There is a national rule. EPA has promulgated

23 it some years ago. But it is, of course, the least

24 stringent of these rules that are currently operating,

25 and the paint industry needs to react to that. 
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1 VOC product fees is a new area that is driving

2 changes in product formulations. Because of air quality

3 impacts of stationary and mobile sources, a lot of state

4 governments are interested in controlling area sources

5 and the emissions from you painting your house is an area

6 source. So, consequently, if we make products that you

7 use and they have VOCs, we may pay a fee in several

8 states now, and more states are pursuing that, to address

9 the air pollution requirements of that. It drives up the

10 cost of manufacturing a product and, so, consequently,

11 the industry responds by driving down the use of these

12 materials, really changing product manufacturing as well. 

13 We, too, are engaged in research. We have a

14 cooperative research venture now with UC-Riverside in

15 California. It is called Paces. It is essentially

16 seeking to integrate life cycle assessment, to look at

17 the next generation, if you will, of product restrictions

18 on paints and integrate many of the features that you

19 have seen here. Historically, we have been interested

20 and receptive in moving forward with tools to evaluate

21 potential risks. There is a wall paint exposure model

22 that EPA has up on its website that many of our

23 formulators use to assess formulations. Then there is

24 the whole myriad of green building standards which have

25 incorporated requirements for paint and coatings. 
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1 I just want to quickly run through four. 

2 Anybody here from other standard setting organizations, I

3 apologize, but there is a time terminator right here in

4 front of me that is going to keep me moving.

5 (Laughter.)

6 MR. SIDES: LEED, Green Seal, ANSI and

7 Scientific Certification Systems. LEED really, as most

8 of these are focused on, how does the use of the paint

9 product impact indoor air quality for principally the

10 persons applying the product because you would hope that

11 after it dries, it is not continuing to off-gas. Many of

12 you would not paint if that were, in fact, the case, if

13 the paint was stinking and causing problems for a long

14 time. But the LEED standards basically seek to do that. 

15 How do they do it? These standards tend to

16 piggyback on each other. Green Seal, GS-11 on paint

17 references EPA test methods, has some specific content

18 restrictions, but also looks at VOC numbers, solvent

19 content numbers that have been established by

20 governments.

21 ANSI, I think you are going to have a speaker

22 from ANSI later today, and the National Association of

23 Home Builders Research Foundation is working with ANSI,

24 is establishing new standards, building standards, and

25 they have two tiers, interestingly, of restrictions. One
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1 has to do with sort of the traditional gross VOC content

2 restrictions, but they are moving into a new area which

3 involves small chamber testing and evaluating the

4 emissions of products from small chambers and some of

5 those are identified here. 

6 The Scientific Certification Systems on the

7 West Coast is one of the standard setting organizations

8 that has embraced small scale testing. Ironically, a lot

9 of these testing, Scientific Certification and others,

10 are commercial standards, Green Seal, commercial

11 standards. They set themselves up. They say if you want

12 to be certified and be able to stick a logo up on your

13 paint product label, pay us money and we will certify

14 you. So, they become a business in and of themselves,

15 quite frankly, and they certainly are not going to have

16 more restrictive standards that drive their marketplace

17 away. I will offer that to you at this point. You want

18 to make sure they are intellectually honest.

19 Consequently, we tend to favor strong FTC

20 guidelines, EPA stepping into the fray and putting forth

21 solid standards. Let’s face it, some of these things,

22 like Energy Star, we all respect and EPA has a good green

23 flag to fly, I would say. 

24 We have a whole number of other standards, I

25 will toss them up here, ASTM, National Sanitation
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1 Foundation. We are regulated everywhere. 

2 A couple conclusions I seek to offer. We are

3 technically challenged all the time in terms of

4 formulating a product. It has to meet our customer

5 standards, but it also needs to meet environmental

6 performance considerations that the marketplace is

7 increasingly valuing. Our members do want to market a

8 green product. It is challenging in light of this myriad

9 of technical standards and the trade association is

10 viewed as being a critical supportive entity. 

11 Again, we are very supportive of strong FTC

12 guidelines. I cannot tell you how many times I have

13 cited it. The marketplace is a savage place. An

14 extraneous claim of non-toxic, I get a letter or call

15 from a company saying there is a paint company saying

16 non-toxic, how would they be making that claim, and I

17 follow up on those things. Not that I am looking at a

18 job at the FTC or anything, but we do find a way of

19 supporting this through peer-to-peer interactions, and

20 that is what we do. So, thank you very much for your

21 time. 

22 (Applause.)

23 MR. FRISBY: Thank you. Frank?

24 MR. HURD: It has been alluded to, there is a

25 lovely young lady who keeps our time. But what they did
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1 not tell you is Robert promised to tazer us if we did not

2 finish on time. So, I was really worried about Steve

3 when he went over. And that is why Kirsten sped up so

4 much towards the last half of her presentation. 

5 Definition of sustainability. Sustainability

6 is really talking about meeting the needs of today

7 without sacrificing the needs of tomorrow. And that

8 means there are trade-offs when you do this. There is

9 always trade-offs when you are talking about

10 sustainability. 

11 I am not going to spend time about standards. 

12 Kirsten really talked about that, what standards are. 

13 But standards are just recognized -- widely recognized

14 standards. Like what a ton is. 

15 When we talk about environmental standards,

16 they involve recognized protocols, developing consensus

17 process and, generally, usually some third-party

18 certification is involved in that. 

19 This has been alluded to all morning and now

20 that these are the kinds of sins that you talk about when

21 you talk about green washing, this is what we do not want

22 to do. This is what I think the FTC is trying to

23 preclude. 

24 Credibility that prevents green washing is at

25 third-party verification. An organization like ANSI that
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1 does accreditation that is third party that does not

2 allow the industry to be the predominant part of the

3 consensus-based organization that sets it up and is

4 balanced, whether it is academics, environmentalists,

5 industry folks, architectural designers. And I think

6 probably the most important aspect when we talk about

7 that is the fact of transparency. You have got to be

8 transparent with everything you do. Without

9 transparency, everything else is a waste. 

10 Carpet and Rug Institute. I think I will

11 surprise you when I talk about what we do. We are an

12 ANSI-accredited, product-certifying body, which means --

13 ANSI does two things. They accredit bodies to develop

14 standards, they accredit bodies to certify products. The

15 most famous ANSI-accredited, product-certifying body that

16 you are familiar with is UL. That is the kind of things

17 we do. 

18 Right here, we certify green label plus carpet

19 for VOCs. We also certify adhesives and we certify

20 cushions, those all kind of fall into the bailiwick of

21 what you would expect us to be able to do. We also

22 certify vacuum cleaners. Why? Because a vacuum cleaner

23 manufacturer had some processes of ASTM how to do it but

24 never told the consumer what they were doing, never gave

25 the consumer the results. Would not give us the warm and
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1 fuzzy feeling that their products were doing what they

2 said they would do. So, we were forced by them to go in

3 and certify vacuum cleaners. 

4 Now, the seal of approval that is on the far, I

5 guess, left-hand side on there, that represents the

6 products that we are certifying in the cleaning area. 

7 Spot removers, deep clean machines, systems, cleaning

8 systems, in-tank solutions. Why would we, as a carpet

9 industry, be doing that? We are doing that because we

10 want to make sure that our customers have the proper

11 cleaning equipment to clean our products because that is

12 the number one problem that people think about and it was

13 actually welcome. 

14 Let me give you a little reason of why we went

15 in that. We went out and purchased 24 spot removers off

16 the market, just right off the shelf. Nationally known. 

17 You would recognize those products. Tested those against

18 an extremely difficult benchmark, water. Six did better

19 than water. And when we took them to -- we went to the

20 cleaning manufacturers and said, this is what we found,

21 they looked at us and said, no, you do not understand,

22 you are not right. They had never tested them. They

23 were not looking at it. We were looking at it. That is

24 the kind of thing that you have to do when you look at

25 it. Now, we have an open, transparent process that the
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1 manufacturers know what it is and the consumer knows what

2 it is. 

3 The second thing that we have done, and this

4 was alluded to a little bit by Kirsten, is we went out

5 and we went to NSF and asked them to help us develop a

6 sustainable carpet assessment standard, and this is under

7 the ANSI process. They are an ANSI-accredited, standard8 setting body. NSF, like I said, it is ANSI driven, it is

9 consensus driven. It took us probably more than four

10 years to develop, it was long. It is inconclusive. It

11 is not a LEED, it was developed by a multi-stakeholder

12 group. It is LCA-based, supply-chain focused, includes

13 social equity, and, probably most important to us, it

14 requires third-party certification. 

15 The last thing I was going to say is there are

16 a lot of things going on with ASTM also just dealing with

17 the kinds of things that FTC is looking for for the FTC

18 guides. And these are the kinds of things, environmental

19 principles, economic principles, social principles, all

20 under the rubric of what sustainability is and what we

21 are talking about. With that, I will give it next to our

22 moderator. 

23 MR. FRISBY: Thank you very much. 

24 MR. HURD: I am not going to get tazed.

25 MR. FRISBY: No tazers.
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1 (Applause.)

2 MR. FRISBY: Now, we will turn to our

3 question-and-answer period. The first question is

4 actually for Kirsten. It alludes to a point you made at

5 the end of your presentation about being overwhelmed.

6 Could you elaborate on that, please? 

7 MS. RITCHIE: I am so glad somebody asked that

8 question. I go back and forth on that. On the one hand,

9 I say, yeah, I think we are overwhelmed, but then, on the

10 other hand, I think, okay, I know how many record artists

11 can my son remember, how many TV shows can he remember,

12 the list goes on and on. We have capacity to remember

13 and to recognize and make distinctions. 

14 So, you know, are we really being overwhelmed? 

15 I do not necessarily think so. But I think it is very

16 important. There are five key principles no matter what,

17 if we have one brand or if we have multiple brands that

18 we have to address and that -- first of all is that brand

19 has to be based on open transparent, scientifically sound

20 standards, preferably ones that have been developed in an

21 internationally based consensus process. They have to be

22 internationally applicable. 

23 Second, the manufacturers have to have the

24 data. There really has to be the information that stands

25 behind that brand. 
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1 Third, third-party certification, it has been

2 talked about a number of the times by other panelists, is

3 really important, particularly for these complex things. 

4 So, that talks about the issue separating the standards

5 development process from the certification bodies and

6 what we need to really potentially do there to truly make

7 a claim. 

8 The appropriate graphic mark. Graphics do help

9 a lot. We are a visually-based society. But I think we

10 have to be very careful that the mark is not implying

11 more than is really is being delivered. That is a

12 nuance, but if you think like that water-based, what does

13 it really mean to people, and we have to be careful about

14 that.

15 And the fifth and really important thing, and I

16 did not really talk about it in my presentation, is the

17 reality is that this has to be a cost-competitive

18 environment. We have to have things that are out there

19 that are not driving and not single sourced or sole

20 sourced. There has to be some competition, multiple

21 certifiers, manufacturers, and you just have to know the

22 analysis and the process they are going to be going

23 through really are competitive from a cost perspective

24 and not prohibitive. 

25 MR. FRISBY: Thank you. The next question is
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1 for Corey. In your presentation, you described the logos

2 and mentioned the references to controlled sources. I

3 wonder if you could explain that. 

4 MR. BRINKEMA: Controlled sources play a very

5 important role in the FSC system, particularly for those

6 products that do not necessarily or through the course of

7 inventory controls and the manufacturing process where

8 FSC certified sources may be commingled with other

9 sources. What FSC allows is innovation in the system --

10 I forget exactly how old it is, at least three or four

11 years. We call it a volume credit system and it is very

12 important, I think, for folks to understand and it is

13 confusing to many. But under the volume credit system, a

14 manufacturer, let's say Andersen Windows, near my

15 hometown, manufactures wood-based windows. So, during

16 the course of a calendar year, 10 percent, let's say --

17 actually, I think it is a little bit higher for them. I

18 want to say it is 15 or 16 percent. FSC certified wood

19 comes into their manufacturing process, and we are not

20 forcing them to segregate that FSC wood to create an FSC

21 line, we allow them to commingle with other sources.

22 But what we do, though, is the other 85 percent

23 of their wood cannot just be any wood, it has to be what

24 is called controlled. And controlled in the FSC world

25 means getting rid of what we consider the five most
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1 egregious practices of conventional forestry. So,

2 getting conversion out, conversion wood, wood from high

3 conservation value forests, wood from areas where there

4 is social or civil strife, wood with genetically modified

5 organisms and then also, obviously, legal. We get the

6 illegal wood out of the system. 

7 So we ask -- we force Andersen Windows to do a

8 risk assessment and they have to identify the areas. 

9 They have to know where their wood is coming from and

10 they have to do that risk assessment and determine if it

11 is high or low risk. If it is high risk in any category,

12 then they actually have to drive down to the forest

13 management unit and find out if that particular unit is

14 safe. Otherwise, they can do it on a country or regional

15 basis. 

16 MR. FRISBY: I would like to follow up on that

17 answer. Do you have any data or anecdotal evidence on

18 how consumers interpret controlled sources on the logo? 

19 MR. BRINKEMA: We do not, we do not. I need to

20 make one other point about controlled sources. We do not

21 allow Andersen to label 100 percent of their product,

22 they can only label 15 percent at the end of the day with

23 that mixed sources label. So, the consumer is still,

24 over the course of the inventory controls during the

25 calendar year, they are forcing Andersen to buy 15
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1 percent FSC certified sources. So, if there is more

2 demand, then they have to buy more FSC certified

3 material. 

4 No, we do not have a lot of information about

5 -- in fact, I would probably argue there is not all that

6 much distinction between the mixed sources label and the

7 100 percent label. 

8 MR. FRISBY: This is a question for all the

9 panelists, although I think that Kirsten already touched

10 on this. To what extent do you all believe that

11 marketers are currently making problematic environmental

12 claims for building products and could you give examples

13 of claims that you think are either prevalent or

14 relatively egregious? Kirsten, do you want to start by

15 elaborating on your presentation? 

16 MS. RITCHIE: Sure. I hope I gave you some

17 examples and we could go on and on and on. If you ever

18 want examples, actually, a really great place to start is

19 the garden aisle of your local do-it-yourself place

20 because they tend to have a lot of egregious claims. 

21 I think the biggest part of the claims is when

22 you have -- for the area that we are really concerned

23 about is those fluffy words. It is the environmentally

24 friendly or the eco safe or the great green or clean air,

25 I like that one. Those kinds of claims that clearly, you
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1 know, there is no basis behind them. I think the trends,

2 though, that we have seen, particularly in the building

3 industry and I think part of it is because the awareness

4 from the green building programs that are going out

5 there, we are seeing less and less of those claims. 

6 There are fewer of them. I think now it is little bit

7 harder, although you still can find them, it is a little

8 bit harder to find some of those claims than before. 

9 There does seem to be a bit more of a trend

10 probably from some international manufacturers coming in

11 and trying to make some sort of market niche, making

12 claims, and then you just raise a flag and say, hey you

13 do not want to go there, what is the basis of your claim? 

14 It would be really great if we could have a

15 mechanism by which we see the claims and we could send it

16 to the FTC and have you guys follow up on it. That I

17 would really like. You just write the letter to them and

18 that would get a lot of action. From my perspective,

19 they are using the fluffy language, the stuff that you

20 guys say do not use and, in many cases, it simply needs

21 somebody sending them an e-mail, raising a flag and

22 saying what is the basis of this, where is the data. 

23 MR. FRISBY: Just to follow up, are you saying

24 that those fluffy terms, for lack of a better word, are

25 impossible to qualify adequately and that is why the
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1 green guides should identify them as being likely

2 deceptive or -- 

3 MS. RITCHIE: On a basic level, yes. I do

4 think through the standards process you potentially could

5 find ways to quantify what do I mean when I am saying, in

6 this particular product sector, do we mean when we say

7 environmentally friendly. But that to me would say that

8 when you are making that term, you are qualifying it by

9 saying environmentally friendly as defined by ASTM 1153

10 or as defined by ISO 5367. So, we have a reference point

11 such that the next client or the next manufacturer who

12 comes along and wants to make the same claim can go to

13 that standard and follow that process and be allowed then

14 to compete and make the same claim in the marketplace. 

15 MR. FRISBY: Thank you. Corey, do you want to

16 address this point?

17 MR. BRINKEMA: I would just maybe comment a

18 little bit on our analysis of claims that can be made on

19 a label, specifically related to wood. We have generally

20 used the term well managed. That is what FSC, from its

21 early days, you know, there is certainly the word

22 “sustainable” and sustainability has been used frequently

23 in the forest industry, and there was a high degree of

24 discomfort over using that term and also that it is a

25 squishy term in the marketplace. There are some in the
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1 forest products industry who would have you believe that

2 sustainability means planting one tree for every one you

3 cut down, and we certainly believe that it is a much more

4 loaded term than that. And that we really -- none of us

5 are really truly sustainable anyway. It is a condominium

6 that we strive for. So, for now, we stay away from that

7 and use well managed, and that is fairly fluffy as well. 

8 It is challenging to come up -- I showed that

9 Wal-Mart ad. And I think, actually, they did a pretty

10 decent job of describing what we are about in very

11 careful and measured terms. 

12 MR. FRISBY: Would you like to follow up on the

13 first part of my question about claims that you think

14 might be problematic in the marketplace today? Care to

15 discuss any claims in particular? 

16 MR. BRINKEMA: I think what will be certainly

17 interesting coming up here with the passage of the Lacey

18 Act will be issues around legality and, so, I am not

19 exactly sure how that is all going to play out, but I

20 know that there is going to be a lot coming up here

21 within the wood industry -- wood products industry. 

22 MR. FRISBY: Rick, what about you, do you want

23 to tackle this one, too? 

24 MR. CANTRELL: Sure. Yes, I believe there are

25 some misleading claims in the marketplace. We have all
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1 seen them. We have seen some recently with materials

2 that compete with wood in green buildings where brick or

3 concrete or one of those type of materials we will talk

4 about, we have seen an ad that called them one of the

5 most sustainable building materials and there was no

6 qualification behind that. 

7 We think the use of the word “sustainable” is 

8 appropriate in certain instances. If you are talking

9 about the wood in this product came from a forest that

10 was certified to a sustainable forest industry standard,

11 like SFI, and you give a website and the website details

12 what that means, if you do your consumer testing to make

13 sure the perception of the label by the consumers is

14 consistent with what your product is and what your

15 program delivers. So, there is some opportunity there,

16 certainly, to make sure the claims are accurate and not

17 misleading.

18 And, yeah, we think there are some claims out

19 there that need to be looked at and, hopefully, as you

20 revise the guides, there will be some better guidance

21 with some of those to make sure they are not used in the

22 future. 

23 MR. FRISBY: Yeah, we will be talking about

24 ways to possibly revive the guides a little later. 

25 Steve, do you want to weigh in on this? 
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1 MR. SIDES: I think probably one of the most

2 frequently overused terms for chemical products, if you

3 will, is non-toxic. Kirsten mentioned it as well. That

4 is a tough one. You know, those of us that have a

5 background in public health, or at least follow this,

6 maybe can maybe tie that to some particular standards. 

7 But I think it is rather loosely used. 

8 In the case of art products, there is an

9 industry standard setting organization that operates that

10 is fairly reliable. But I think that is one area, in

11 looking at the current guidelines, that could be beefed

12 up or improved somewhat. 

13 In our industry, as well, we are somewhat

14 compelled to use petrochemical or soil derived feed

15 stocks. There are very little renewables, and there is a

16 history of using renewables in the industry, but

17 petrochemicals replaced it, and not much success in using

18 post-consumer reprocessed consumables as well. So, if

19 you move into that area and want to establish some

20 guidelines along that line, I think we would probably be

21 finding some opportunities to provide you some insight on

22 our experience on the chemical product side as well. 

23 Those are just some thoughts.

24 MR. FRISBY: Thank you. Frank? 

25 MR. HURD: Yeah, I can give you a very good
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1 example of one. We had a manufacturer who said that this

2 product contained up to 70 percent recycled content and

3 his attorney said that met the FTC guidelines. When we

4 challenged that particular company, they actually took it

5 back. Because that is not what -- you know, that could

6 be zero or 70 or 35, anything that says up to 70 percent. 

7 But it met the FTC guidelines according to their

8 attorneys. So, that is the kind of things when you talk

9 about misleading claims, that you can make those kind of

10 misleading claims. 

11 The other thing that is interesting, I think 

12 we have talked about it is we throw terms out about

13 renewable, we throw terms out about nontoxic. We throw a

14 lot of these terms out, but we do not put them in the

15 context of what the overall impact on the environment is. 

16 A good example is ethanol. Look what happened, ethanol

17 is a renewable product. Look what is going on right now

18 because of the use of ethanol. There are other impacts. 

19 And when you look at the ethanol, the energy used to

20 produce ethanol is greater than the energy used to

21 produce oil, gasoline going through a refinery.

22 So, I mean, yeah, there are trade-offs that you

23 have to do and you have to look at life cycle assessment

24 and the entire gamut of attributes that you are dealing

25 with.
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1 MS. RITCHIE: If I could also just add, one of

2 the things, too, that is an issue is the term “free.” 

3 Free of or like formaldehyde free. The FTC, on the food

4 side, you can make a sugar-free or fat-free claim if it

5 is less than .5 percent free. But from a chemical

6 perspective, .5 percent is still very big, particularly

7 when the testing is down to the part per billion. 

8 So, I think that is an area that we are going

9 to have to look at and really encourage you to look into

10 saying how does the use of the term “free” really --

11 should it be used in reference to environmental green

12 claims?

13 MR. BRINKEMA: I was just going to make one

14 really quick point because Frank reminded me something

15 that I wanted to mention and Kirsten had brought it up

16 and Rick as well. But this holy grail of an analytical

17 tool, this life cycle assessment or life cycle analysis,

18 I think actually Rick had a nice slide there that showed

19 some of the life cycle attributes of wood related to some

20 other structural building products. 

21 I think we do all have to remember, though,

22 particularly those products that are derived in the case

23 of wood from -- essentially from organic systems and

24 ecosystems and have significant impacts on ecosystems. 

25 We have not yet figured out really good ways of measuring
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1 those things. So, we can measure carbon emissions, we

2 can measure direct air pollution. But how do we measure

3 an endangered species loss or how do we measure whether

4 these forestry practices are impacting our water aquifer

5 resources and so on.

6 So, I think when we do these sort of analyses,

7 we really need to understand many things, which, right

8 now, are frankly really qualitative and not quantitative. 

9 But they are absolutely essential. We have to figure out

10 some way to value them. 

11 MR. FRISBY: Here is a question from the

12 audience about life cycle analysis. And this question I

13 will address to all five of you if you care to weigh in. 

14 Should the green guides encourage green building

15 certifiers to engage in a life cycle assessment which

16 includes the use phase, that is the use and maintenance

17 of a building following construction? 

18 MS. RITCHIE: I think absolutely you have to,

19 particularly when you are looking at the trade-offs or

20 the benefits that are derived from those products, for

21 example, energy efficiency lightbulbs, energy efficiency

22 fixtures, water efficient fixtures, insulation, which,

23 yes, it does take energy to manufacture insulation. But

24 what it saves over the product is very, very important. 

25 So, there have been some moves in that
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1 direction. BEES is one of the few kind of life cycle

2 tools that actually does that. It is a tool developed by

3 NIST, the Building Economic and Environmental

4 Sustainability tool set that actually help you quantify

5 and compare different products and life cycle

6 perspectives. So, yes, absolutely. 

7 It is a challenge, though. How do you assess

8 the life cycle impact of the two-by-four stud that you

9 are not doing anything with in the use phase other than,

10 hopefully, it’s continuing to hold up the building or the

11 brick or there are other things. But because there are

12 those products that really do have significant benefit in

13 use, even if they do require a little bit more energy or

14 water consumption up front, we do have to have a

15 mechanism to recognize that. 

16 MR. FRISBY: Anyone else want to comment on

17 that question? 

18 MR. SIDES: I just think from the standpoint of

19 the paint and coatings industry, life cycle assessments

20 will provide us with some opportunities to serve the

21 marketplace better. California's a bit of a laboratory

22 for a lot of these things. Discussions now on what are

23 known as cool paints which help reflect heat and save

24 energy, the automotive industry is looking at embracing

25 that, a whole host of opportunities to integrate those
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1 kinds of additional ecosystem services, if you will, that

2 can come about as a result of formulating in that area. 

3 The big question, though, is how will benefits

4 in that arena weigh against use of certain raw materials

5 and the like that may pose a problem. So, we are still

6 trying to figure that out working with UC at Riverside

7 and exploring some options for that. 

8 MR. HURD: I am not sure about the use phase,

9 but I would like to comment on the concept of using life

10 cycle assessment as comparative tool. It is very

11 difficult to compare a product to another product

12 category whether that is floor covering, whether that is

13 wall covering, whether that is roofing shingles. A life

14 cycle assessment is best used internally for you to

15 figure out how you can improve your product and make sure

16 that it becomes a better product that you are developing.

17 I do not think we have developed the analytical tools

18 well enough to be comparing different products, even like

19 products. 

20 MR. FRISBY: Here is another question from the

21 audience. Because of the current difficulty in defining

22 sustainability, would it make sense for the guides to

23 encourage marketers to list product contents and describe

24 business practices to allow the consumer to decide

25 whether a product is sustainable? 
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1 MS. RITCHIE: So, there is the issue of

2 sustainability. First of all, when I am thinking about

3 sustainability, I am thinking of that thing beyond the

4 environment. It is an assessment by which you have

5 looked at economic, you have looked at environmental and

6 you have looked at the social repercussions as it relates

7 to products for its manufacture and its use. 

8 The challenge that you get in saying, let the

9 consumer decide -- as an example, there was a little

10 product I came across, it was a little carpenter’s level. 

11 It was about this big, right? The label was this big, of

12 all the different things it had. No old growth forest,

13 sustainably produced, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I

14 really loved the no old growth forest because the

15 reality, it was steel and plastic.

16 (Laughter.)

17 MS. RITCHIE: That was one of those, it is kind

18 of a little misleading here. So, the challenge that you

19 have also is if you just list all those things and you do

20 not have standards behind them, somebody is coming along

21 who has a competing product and says, I want to be able

22 to make the same claims or I believe my product makes the

23 same claims. But you do not have that methodology, how

24 can they do that? 

25 So, you have a company that is legitimately
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1 saying, I believe we have a better product from an

2 environmental or a sustainable perspective, but I cannot

3 fight, I cannot counter what this other manufacturer is

4 saying because there is no basis for that. So, I think

5 that is something we really want to try to avoid. 

6 The really is we have really won when we do not

7 have to make all these sustainable or green claims on the

8 products because it just is. We can really focus on

9 those things that are important to us, the performance,

10 the aesthetics, the price. That is where we want to get

11 with our products. Right now, we have -- you know, we do

12 have products that do have huge varying environmental

13 profiles and sustainability profiles and that justifies

14 the differential. But, with time, eventually that is

15 going to go away. 

16 MR. CANTRELL: We think the use of the term

17 “sustainable,” as I said a little earlier, has to be done

18 carefully, and we support the way that the Canadian

19 Competition Bureau has recently released guidelines,

20 which talk about not making generic claims of

21 sustainability, but it is okay to make a claim, as I used

22 earlier, that fiber in this product line came from a

23 forest managed to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative

24 standard, and then you define that standard and you have

25 your website information, et cetera, to back it up. 
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1 Those types of claims are fine. It is the

2 generic, the most sustainable product in the world,

3 without any qualification, that are problematic. 

4 MR. FRISBY: I would like to turn now to

5 suggestions for revising the guides. You have already

6 touched on this to some extent. This question I am

7 mainly directing to Corey, Rick and to Frank. To what

8 extent do you evidence of people misusing your

9 certifications and do you think or do you have any

10 suggestions for how the guides might better address the

11 use of seals and certifications? 

12 MR. BRINKEMA: I will start off. We see misuse

13 all the time. I probably see some evidence of it every

14 other day probably. In fact, I was even told by our

15 German office to go check out an eco home store in the

16 northern part of town to make sure that a label or a

17 product that came over from China that was mislabeled and

18 to make sure that the labels were taken off. So, we

19 actually have a very robust misuse reporting and anyone

20 is asked to report misuse of the label. 

21 But, generally, we police it by our third-party

22 certifiers in the case of chain of custody companies, and

23 then I mentioned those nominated agents, they are

24 actually going to be called trademark service providers

25 here by the end of the year, which we will be one, and
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1 that is one of our primary roles is to enforce that. 

2 But, generally, what we are able to do through

3 the trademark service provider platform is we actually

4 review every on-product and off-product claim in the

5 system. So, for instance, an advertisement by Wal-Mart

6 was reviewed by us to make sure that there were no

7 overstatements or misstatements. So, I think requiring

8 that is certainly something that the guides -- I think,

9 to some extent, you already do that. But I agree with

10 Rick that we all have to have where to turn to for

11 information and your website is generally one of the

12 better places for that. 

13 What you also see is often when you have -- you

14 do turn to websites, we will also turn you out, for

15 instance, the third parties that have reviewed us and

16 other standards, for example, and have made robust

17 comparisons. Yale University, for example, did a very

18 nice analysis for the U.S. Green Building Council and the

19 Sustainable Furniture Industry Council to review the

20 forest management certification standards. 

21 MR. FRISBY: We are almost out of time, but

22 Rick and Frank, do you want to try and move quickly on

23 this? 

24 MR. HURD: Yeah, a couple things I would just

25 like to add. I think that the FTC guides could do a lot
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1 of help in making sure that the logos that go up are --

2 define really what they are talking about. Many of them

3 just say it is green or sustainable or whatever and they

4 do not let you know what it is certifying against or what

5 it is certifying for. 

6 And the other thing that I would say is, we are

7 really surprised at the number of phone calls we get from

8 competitors about a competitor who has misused the logo

9 or mis-spoken in the advertising, and that really has

10 proven very successful in keeping it down because all we

11 have to do is send them a letter or make a phone call and

12 cease and desist. 

13 MR. FRISBY: I am afraid we do have to stop.

14 Thank you all very much for your presentations and for

15 your insights. 

16 (Applause.)

17 UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The next panel will begin

18 at 2:30. 

19

20

21

22

23

24

25
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1 SESSION 4: FRAMING IT UP - CONSUMER PROTECTION ISSUES 

2 REGARDING GREEN BUILDING CERTIFICATIONS

3 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: Welcome back. Now that we

4 have talked about some of the green building products

5 that are out there, we are going to frame it up and we

6 are actually going to talk about green buildings and the

7 consumer protection issues regarding green building

8 certification. 

9 We have a wonderful panel here today. We have

10 Michelle Moore from the U.S. Green Building Council; Erin

11 Shaffer from Green Building Initiative; Carlos Martin,

12 National Association of Home Builders; and Sam Rashkin

13 from EPA, Energy Star. 

14 So, I am going to turn it over to Michelle to

15 give the first presentation. 

16 MS. MOORE: Good afternoon, everybody. I have

17 my trusty water here because my throat decided to do its

18 best impersonation of Marlena Dietrich today. 

19 First of all, thank you so much for convening

20 this tremendously interesting conversation. We are

21 really thrilled to be a part of it as USGBC and we think

22 the timing could not be better for what is happening in

23 the marketplace. It has not been that long ago when this

24 is how people thought about green building and green

25 homes specifically, which is what I am going to be
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1 talking about today.

2 (Laughter.)

3 MS. MOORE: So, false claims were not happening

4 so much because there just were not that many people who

5 were listening or who were into it. It was a really

6 narrow part of the marketplace, but a really important

7 one. I am sure many of you here are very familiar with

8 these numbers. But the built environment overall, and

9 this represents commercial building and residential

10 building, has an enormous environmental footprint, and

11 from an economic perspective, from an environmental

12 perspective and from a personal perspective, there are a

13 lot of really wonderful benefits that could be driven by

14 paying more attention and really measuring what our

15 results are. 

16 And the public attitudes around these things

17 have really transformed and we actually have NAHB to

18 thank for helping to advance this research with

19 McGraw-Hill. But as you can see, we are looking at a

20 potentially $40 billion marketplace projected by 2010 in

21 combined sales of green building products and services in

22 both the commercial and residential marketplace. And

23 from the perspective of market transformation, this is

24 great news. From USGBC's perspective, we would like to

25 see every single building that gets built be green and,
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1 to some extent, labels like LEED becoming irrelevant in

2 that future. 

3 It also means that with so much money to be

4 made, potentially with such a great market opportunity

5 here, that there really has been a rush of people -- we

6 do not like to assume bad intent but maybe just

7 misinformed intent into making claims that are not

8 necessarily accurate. Because when it comes to a green

9 home, there are lots of different definitions. This is

10 not really surprising, the residential marketplace is

11 very localized and very fractured and the market needs

12 multiple entry points. 

13 But screwing in a CFL lightbulb and having a

14 bamboo floor doth not a green home make, and we think

15 that there is a wonderful opportunity here to expand some

16 of the guidance and give broader examples for how to

17 appropriately market green claims in the residential

18 context that could help the marketplace to really develop

19 a more common vocabulary around these areas and to have

20 an easier scale-up to being able to meet growing consumer

21 demand. 

22 Many people on the panels today have talked

23 about sustainability as being a three-legged stool,

24 right? It is people, profitability or prosperity, and

25 planet. We would argue that particularly at this stage
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1 in our development there is a fourth P and that is proof. 

2 You know, it is just a regular old business adage, right,

3 that if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it, and

4 if what we are looking for is lower energy bills, a lower

5 CO2 emissions footprint and a healthier indoor

6 environment for our families, those kinds of claims need

7 to be substantiated. How are you getting there and where

8 are people getting on the ladder? 

9 You have seen this before, although I think

10 before it was a hamburger. It is very similar to the way

11 that we think about the food that we put into our bodies. 

12 Consider the built environment, the room that we are in

13 here, the home you are going home to, the places that

14 your kids are going to school. As Americans, we spend

15 about 90 percent of our time indoors. So, it just makes

16 sense that the environments that we live and work in

17 would have a tremendous impact on our health and

18 well-being. But whereas you can get pretty reasonable

19 nutritional information about a box of animal crackers,

20 it is devilishly difficult to figure out what a building

21 is going to do for you. 

22 If you are in the market looking for a new home

23 right now, which, of course, there are not a lot of

24 people doing right now, good luck trying to find out what

25 the energy performance of that home is expected to be,
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1 what have the historical energy bills been, how can you

2 improve on that as a consumer. Or if you are looking for

3 a place for your child to go to school, how is that built

4 environment going to have an impact on the way that your

5 child learns. So, good ideas to consider. 

6 I am going to talk just a little bit about how

7 LEED looks at a green home. It is fairly comprehensive. 

8 I am not going to get down into the nitty-gritty

9 technical details of the rating system. That can be

10 found in the trusty LEED for Homes reference guide, all

11 400 and something pages of it, which I do have here if

12 anybody wants to take a look. But we look at it from, as

13 I said, many different lenses and not just the materials

14 that go into a home, which is actually how most consumers

15 think about green homes. They do not think about air

16 conditioning and windows and flooring products and that

17 sort of thing, but energy performance. What is the site

18 like, where are you building, how are you treating the

19 land development? 

20 And LEED, too, just a little bit of context for

21 you guys, you know, USGBC's mission is market

22 transformation. We are a 501(c)(3) and LEED is the chief

23 tool -- I was going to say in our quiver, but that is a

24 mixed metaphor. But to be able to advocate green

25 building and green homes, you have to really be able to
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1 define it. So, we seek to set the bar for leadership. 

2 So, the best builders, the innovators, the risk takers,

3 the market leaders are the people who would be naturally

4 embracing the LEED rating system. There are a lot of

5 other entry points and a lot of other needs in mainstream

6 building practice that would be at code level or just

7 above that. 

8 So, by setting the benchmark for top

9 performers, it does not denigrate what other folks may be

10 doing in the marketplace, but rather provides a continuum

11 for people to get involved and step up to the appropriate

12 level for where they are performing. 

13 LEED applies in the residential marketplace for

14 a lot of building types, from single-family homes to

15 condos to multi-family dwellings, and it mirrors the

16 certification process that we are implementing for our

17 commercial rating system right now. And this is really a

18 complicated diagram. I know that many people have

19 referred to ANSI and ISO. But the very short version is

20 that as a part of the next evolution of LEED, some of

21 which Kirsten talked about earlier during her

22 presentation, and we are also evolving to an ISO type

23 process for building certifications that engages

24 international certification bodies and that actually

25 would be administered by Green Building Certification
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1 Institute, which is a 501(C)(6) nonprofit that USGBC

2 helped to developed, next year. 

3 So, this is what it looks like for residential.

4 Again, this is where we are headed currently. The

5 process looked a little bit different during our pilot

6 program during which USGBC was doing all the

7 certifications itself through staff. But USGBC works

8 with Green Building Certification Institute, which

9 administers third-party certifications and also the LEED

10 accredited professional program. So, LEED AP,

11 professional accreditation, people get accredited and

12 buildings get certified and that is done through an ISO

13 type process that USGBC is implementing in the

14 marketplace. So, we are able to really manage quality

15 assurance and to have an auditable program in the

16 community that works not only at teeny, tiny numbers of

17 buildings, that would work at scale as well as more

18 builders and homeowners more really embrace these ideas. 

19 From a local perspective, from a builder

20 perspective, they are primarily working with their local

21 provider, and LEED for Homes provider is a local home

22 organization that has expertise and energy efficiency in

23 green building. There are about 33 of them around the

24 country available today. And they are effectively the

25 front door for home builders who are interested in using
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1 the LEED for Homes rating system. There are coaches,

2 there are teachers. They help them with the

3 certification package. But, ultimately, it is USGBC via

4 GBCI and the certification bodies that will be engaging

5 who would actually be administering the certification

6 process. So, we are really differentiating between arm’s

7 length third-party certification and the coaching and

8 sometimes consulting process that happens as the market

9 is adapting and learning how to apply these new tools. 

10 So, back to our credits. I am just going to

11 step through these very briefly one by one. Innovation

12 and design. What is important about this to remember is

13 that green homes is a new idea in the marketplace and it

14 is really important that we engage consumers as well in

15 what that means because if you buy a green house, you

16 want to operate those systems at optimal efficiency and

17 not -- and this perhaps is not the best metaphor, I say

18 that every single time I use it, though, and I keep on

19 using it -- but you do not want to operate a Ferrari like

20 a Chevy.

21 So, one of the things USGBC requires and LEED

22 is that the homeowners actually get an operating manual

23 and a walk-through so they understand how to better use

24 their home, how to really drive efficiency and better

25 performance out of it. 
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1 Sustainable sites and locations and linkages. 

2 So, where is your home? Is it transit-oriented

3 development? How are you developing the site and using

4 plantings? And if you use irrigation, are you using

5 irrigation smartly? So, it is not just the building, but

6 it is also the place that the building is located. 

7 Water efficiency, incredibly important, in my

8 home state of Georgia and if you are in California, it

9 has a big impact on your CO2 footprint for your home as

10 well. 

11 Energy and atmosphere. We looked to the

12 incredible work that has been forged by EPA with Energy

13 Star for homes and how LEED addresses that issue. It is

14 a tremendously important area of credits and where the

15 greatest weights in the rating system are headed, not

16 only in our residential program but in commercial. 

17 Materials and resources. Indoor environmental

18 quality. Awareness and education, as I shared, requiring

19 homeowner manuals so people really know what they are

20 getting. And it lines up with what we see coming from

21 consumer motivation. This is from research that was done

22 by the Shelton Group. You can see that people do have a

23 real concern that is changing their behavior around their

24 children’s future and their energy prices. But there is

25 a link, at this point, that is missing between consumer
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1 understanding of what a green home or what a green

2 product is and how that really connects to the benefits

3 that they want. 

4 And there is a wonderful opportunity, as I

5 shared early on, from our perspective, in expanding the

6 examples and the guidance given in the green guides to

7 help create a conversation that will allow marketers,

8 which I was one for a private company once upon a time

9 and made extensive use of the FTC Green Guides, to be

10 able to engage folks in a conversation that helps them to

11 move towards their goals in a way that ultimately leads

12 towards a broader market transformation without us

13 accidentally building a Tower of Babel around home

14 certifications and product certifications. Thank you

15 very much.

16 (Applause.)

17 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: Thank you, Michelle. Erin? 

18 MS. SHAFFER: Thank you very much. It is good

19 to be here. I am going to jump right into talking about

20 the green building initiatives and our green globes

21 tools. GBI is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) that was formed in

22 2004. Our headquarters are in Portland, Oregon, and we

23 are dedicated to accelerating the adoption of green

24 building practices. We are an ANSI standards developer. 

25 We have a standard right now going through a tool system,
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1 green globes for new construction, that is in the ANSI

2 process right now. We anticipate that it will be

3 completed by the end of the year, at which point it will

4 be the first green building standard that is an ANSI

5 standard.

6 Let me rephrase that because one of the things

7 that people confuse is rating system and standards. This

8 is a rating system as is LEED. It is not a standard. It

9 will be an ANSI standard, but it will still be a rating

10 system. We also have an existing tool and we have filed

11 opins which are anticipated to take that through the ANSI

12 process as well. 

13 We have a personnel certification system for

14 green globes assessors that follows the ANSI and ISO

15 standards. It will be the first real independent

16 third-party verification system. We help homeowners

17 associations start green building programs supporting the

18 National Association of Home Builders green building

19 guides, and we own the U.S. license to green globes for

20 new construction and existing buildings. 

21 So, what is Green Globes? Green Globes is

22 North America's first design assessment and rating system

23 for commercial buildings. And saying commercial

24 buildings, Green Globes can be used for multi-family

25 housing, health care, schools, through your high-end
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1 commercial office buildings. 

2 A little bit about the history of Green Globes.

3 It started with BREEAM in the U.K. and BREEAM stands for

4 the Building Research Establishment’s Environmental

5 Assessment Method. There are over 100,000 buildings in

6 the U.K. that are certified. In 1996, BREEAM was brought

7 to Canada and it was published as a Canadian national

8 standard. In 1999, it became a streamlined

9 question-based tool and changed the name to Greenleaf and

10 it was used for municipal buildings in Canada. In 2000,

11 it became BREEAM Greenleaf which was matured into an

12 online assessment rating tool and the name was finally

13 changed to Green Globes for Existing Buildings. 

14 At the same time, work was begun on a design

15 tool for new buildings. And that was really geared

16 toward the Department of National Defense and the General

17 Services in Canada. In 2002, the name was changed to

18 Green Globes for Existing Buildings and it was introduced

19 in the U.K. And Green Globes for New Buildings came

20 online. 

21 2004, BOMA Canada took on Green Globes Plus. 

22 It became Go Green Plus. It had a couple of different

23 names for a while. That same year, the Green Building

24 Initiative, who I represent, purchased the U.S. rights to

25 the new construction tool and, later, the existing
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1 building tool. 

2 GBI became the first green building

3 organization that is ANSI approved as a standards

4 developer, and then immediately we put our new

5 construction tool into the ANSI process. What that means

6 is at the end of that process, it is a true

7 consensus-based standard. 

8 So, Green Globes for New Construction is a

9 design assessment and rating tool and our Green Globes

10 for Continual Improvement of Existing Building can be

11 used to establish a baseline and then give performance

12 reports. It helps you improve the performance of a

13 building. 

14 There was a study done about a year and a half

15 ago by University of Minnesota and it looked at the two

16 major systems that are out there in America right now and

17 that's LEED and Green Globes. And it said 80 to 85

18 percent of the substance of the two tools is the same. 

19 We come at things a little bit differently, but the

20 substance overlap is significant. 

21 A couple of highlights, though, Green Globes

22 being web-based interactive is a little bit easier to

23 use, there is immediate feedback and it is less costly,

24 and Green Globes places a little bit more emphasis on

25 energy use, energy performance and it integrates life
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1 cycle assessment through the tool. 

2 Building on that, GBI commissioned some life

3 cycle assessment work looking at building assemblies, so

4 wall systems, floor systems, and had the systems

5 evaluated for five environmental indices, air, water,

6 waste, embodied energy and climate impact. That eco7 calculator for assemblies, as it is called, has been

8 incorporated within our Green Globes tool and can be

9 utilized in the design phase. We have also authorized

10 the generic version of the tool that I know other groups

11 are looking at incorporating. 

12 We have a couple of key partnerships. One of

13 them is with the Building Owners and Managers Association

14 in the United States, which is the international

15 organization. We have an MOU and are working closely

16 with them and many of their large members who are

17 property management teams in America. We also have a

18 partnership with EPA’s Energy Star office. 

19 We have been recognized by a number of

20 insurance companies, Fireman’s Fund, Liberty Mutual and

21 Travelers who give us reduced insurance rates for

22 commercial buildings that are Green Globes verified

23 buildings. We also are utilized by a couple of federal

24 agencies at this point and are developing pilot projects

25 with several others. 
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1 Our new construction tool has seven areas of

2 assessment. We have 1,000 points in our tool which gives

3 opportunity for partial points, it gives an opportunity

4 for us to leave non-applicable for a building, for

5 instance, a recycling facilities, the first green

6 recycling facility was built in Colorado on a hilltop. 

7 They did not want to have to put central air in just to

8 get the points. They were able to take off a total of up

9 to 10 percent of the total points so that it would not be

10 judged against them. 

11 But looking at the areas of points, we have

12 seven: Project management, site, energy -- energy is a

13 third of the points within the system and we link

14 directly to EPA's Energy Star tool, we utilize their

15 tools for the new construction and the existing building

16 -- water, a new water calculator has been developed

17 through the ANSI process, resources, emissions and other

18 impacts, and indoor environment. Indoor environment is

19 another area with significant points. 

20 For a Green Globes rating for a building, you

21 have to achieve at least 35 percent in order to achieve

22 one Green Globe. We have four levels: One, two, three

23 and four Green Globes. The top tier buildings are

24 similar to a LEED platinum. And I reference LEED just

25 because it is one that people are more familiar with. It
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1 was in the United States while we were in Canada.

2 For a third-party verification, if you want a

3 plaque on your wall so you can call your building a Green

4 Globes verified building, you need a two-step process. 

5 One is a paperwork review by one of our third-party

6 verifiers and the other is the site visit. We are the

7 only ones who do a site visit at this point. 

8 CSA America is developing an ISO certified and

9 ANSI approved third-party personnel certification program

10 for us. In order to enter that and hope to pass the exam

11 and become a third-party verifier for GBI, you would have

12 to have 10 to 15 years of experience, typically as an

13 engineer, architect, et cetera. And that is it and I

14 will be available for questions. Thank you. 

15 (Applause.)

16 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: Thanks, Erin. Now, we will

17 hear from Carlos. 

18 MR. MARTIN: Usually when I talk in these

19 forums about green building, I get really energized, but

20 am exhausted after this day. I do not envy you FTC

21 people at all who have to go through all of this.

22 No, in all honesty, I would like to thank you

23 all for inviting us because this actually weds to core

24 activities that NAHB is involved in. One is promoting

25 green building as an technological alternative for our
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1 builders and our modelers to offer their customers and

2 also to provide guidance to our builders on claims that

3 they make regarding the products they produce. 

4 So, given that, I would like to focus on -- I

5 will talk a little bit about our NAHB program and I would 

6 be happy to answer questions and provide sources for more

7 details on that. But I would like to focus a little bit

8 more on the actual claims that we make throughout our

9 program. And, so, in particular I want to talk -- I am

10 only going to talk about the program in relation to sort

11 of our reliance on technically rigorous standards, et

12 cetera, and how that affects the kind of claims that we

13 make in terms of how we define green building.

14 Just very quickly, the primary green program

15 offerings that we have are the guidelines and standards,

16 are rating systems, and then the certification and

17 verification. Now, we offer a variety of other programs

18 through NAHB Green and NAHB was officially launched this

19 February, but we have pieces of it that go back to 1998

20 in terms of the first green building subcommittee, the

21 development of the first national green building

22 conference, et cetera. And through of all those there

23 are some claims that are made, especially in our

24 educational venues, the largest residential trade show,

25 the International Builder Show, there are a lot of
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1 educational events that are provided there in which

2 claims are made that may affect consumers, et cetera. 

3 So, through all of these, we are very conscious of the

4 messages that are being given out. 

5 So, let me focus a little bit on our green

6 building guidelines and standards. Now, this is really

7 the meat of the NAHB Green Program, as it is for

8 practically all of our programs. The guidelines is the

9 older of the two rating systems. It was started by an

10 open committee process in 2004 and it contains green

11 building provisions similar to many of the other ones

12 that you have already heard. The guidelines, however,

13 only addresses single-family housing and there are three

14 sort of ratcheted-up thresholds, the bronze, silver and

15 gold. 

16 Since it was created, a variety of local

17 homebuilder associations that are members of the NAHB

18 Federation have certified homes to it and have developed

19 their own certification programs around it. Three years

20 later, after the publication of the guidelines, NAHB saw

21 the need to add rigor to the development of green

22 building rating systems in order to establish a

23 technically sound platform from which additional claims

24 and any other services could be developed. So, NAHB

25 agreed to work collaboratively with the International
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1 Code Council and to undergo the rigorous standards in

2 developing protocols that would produce the first

3 standard on residential construction submitted to the

4 American National Standards Institute, ANSI. 

5 My colleagues have already spoken to you about

6 it. Numerous people have already spoken about these

7 things. So, I will not get too deeply into the ANSI

8 process. But you should know it went through the 42

9 committee stakeholders representing all segments of the

10 green building industry, environmental groups, my

11 colleagues from Energy Star, from the Green Building

12 Council were all represented and, so, the standard sets

13 out a new threshold for green building in this country. 

14 Now, how does the certification process work? 

15 The other big part of our program. Along with defining,

16 which is what the rating systems are, there is a way of

17 promoting that definition and that is our certification

18 program. So, NAHB works with the NAHB research center,

19 which is a separate subsidiary, to develop the national

20 green building certification. Let me step you through

21 that process only to talk about the claims that could be

22 made at each step that we permit. 

23 The first step is to do the online scoring

24 toll, which generates a design report to the builder or

25 their modeler. What the builder and modeler can say at
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1 that point is basically that she has gotten Y points

2 achieved that meet X thresholds. It is not a

3 certification, it is not a warranty, it is not a

4 guarantee or anything. It is just self-certification

5 based on the rating system. Self-scoring based on the

6 rating system. See how difficult it is when you are

7 talking about accreditation, designation, certification,

8 et cetera. We will try to be very careful as we provide

9 these. 

10 The second set of steps are the verification

11 processes. Now, the work of a local trained, accredited

12 and audited verifier, who is audited by the NAHB research

13 center, is required for the next few steps. That

14 verifier has a set of instructions and guides for

15 performing the inspections and then that person submits

16 the list of documents based on the rating system to the

17 certifying agent. So, at this point, the claim can be

18 made that a builder can say that they are going for a

19 certification, et cetera, but they still cannot claim any

20 certification or home performance or anything like that. 

21 Now, once the verifier has signed off on the

22 inspections and documented and sent them to the

23 certification agent, the research center reviews for full

24 compliance based on the rating systems and then transmits

25 a certificate to the builder and a copy of it for the
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1 client, et cetera. The certificate states what you see

2 right, this house as originally built is in substantial

3 conformance with the NAHB model green home building

4 guidelines. This certification is not a representation,

5 warranty or guarantee of home performance. Basically,

6 that is all the stuff that you see in the fine line.

7 Basically, at that point what a builder can say

8 is that they have a certified emerald through the

9 national green building standard, et cetera. They can

10 make a claim that the house has been certified according

11 to a definition that has been set forth in the guidelines

12 of the standard. 

13 Now, a little bit more about certification

14 agent. We talked about the ANSI process for the actual

15 standard. The research center actually is an ISO 17025

16 accredited product testing laboratory. They are

17 accredited to a variety of ASTM and ANSI tests,

18 particularly those on material properties and structural

19 systems and building envelope. So, they have a variety

20 of accreditation programs associated with them. 

21 Now, what are the program claims that we

22 provide? NAHB is very careful, again, when it comes to

23 the claims not only about the program itself but about

24 the homes that are certified to it and the rating systems

25 that are provided under it. These claims I think can be
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1 broken out into two categories. One is those based on

2 the home performance and then the benefits that one gets

3 from that home performance. For both, we are careful to

4 reference peer-reviewed, technical field studies when

5 available, as well as to not overextend claims that do

6 not account for other factors that go beyond the actual

7 design. 

8 Let me give you an example. Say specific

9 design and construction, when properly executed, may

10 increase energy efficiency by basic engineering

11 principles or other studies, et cetera, of those

12 technologies. So you can say that. But an energy

13 efficient home will not guarantee a specific utility bill

14 because, obviously, there are a lot of other factors in

15 the actual bill, the utility rates, the homeowner's

16 behavior, long-term maintenance that allow for those

17 original technologies to be continued and to be

18 maintained in the same way. So, all those other like

19 long-term benefits have to be tempered based on the

20 actual performance we know is available. 

21 Just as a side note for manufacturer's

22 promotional claims, we generally do not repeat any

23 manufacturer’s promotional claims within our ratings

24 system. A lot of manufacturers’ certifications or

25 organizations that certify, for example, the lumber one
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1 that was discussed earlier today, we have included in the

2 guidelines their standard, but we do not repeat any

3 manufacturer’s claim to those rating systems. 

4 Now, just as an example. What happens on our

5 -- the benefits page for homeowners that we have listed

6 on NAHB Green lists out areas of benefits, operating

7 costs, maintenance, health and comfort. Obviously, you

8 cannot read all that. The environment. I invite you to

9 go to NAHB.org to further look at that. But we are very

10 cautious about using generic language about comparisons

11 with standard homes or traditional homes like a better

12 home or a more sustainable home. We do not make those

13 claims essentially and we do not provide blanket

14 quantitative assertions to any of those benefits. 

15 Now, one of the reasons that we are very

16 cautious about the program and certified homes claims and

17 benefits is that we have an in-house staff that has been

18 working for a decade on providing accurate guidance to

19 our home builders and our remodelers. Now, much of that

20 guidance comes to us, again, from this group that had

21 provided regular training and educational sessions at all

22 of our green building conferences, at all of our green

23 educational sessions, and the builders show. We have

24 in-house legal staff that provides regular technical

25 assistance and they provide guidance on everything from
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1 the actual warranties, from the consumer expectations

2 that are expected, and they have adopted green building

3 as an area in which they provide this guidance as well. 

4 So, as much as we would like to promote green

5 building internally at NAHB, we are very cautious of the

6 reminders and the disclaimers that are provided from our

7 legal staff to temper our marketing materials and make

8 claims to ensure that consumers are receiving accurate

9 and appropriate information. There is much guidance, we

10 believe, that needs to evolve on green building claims. 

11 That is especially true with the research and development

12 side of a lot of the discussions. This was true in the

13 last panel as well, that we would like to see a lot more

14 of this research come forward and substantiate a lot of

15 the performance and benefits claims that we would like to

16 see. 

17 So, in the meantime, consistency of terms,

18 reliance on credible standards and homeowner education

19 are all mechanisms that we believe can contribute to

20 appropriate green home claims. Thanks again for this

21 opportunity. 

22 (Applause.)

23 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: Thank you, Carlos. And now

24 we will hear from Sam Rashkin. 

25 MR. RASHKIN: Thank you very much. And this is
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1 an incredible amount of information to kind of come at

2 you all at once, so I agree with Carlos. I am going to

3 talk about Energy Star qualified homes as it serves as

4 another instrument for defining green. And a big part of

5 this is to start with the branding that we use, the

6 claims that we imply from the branding, how we justify

7 those claims and bring that to the market. 

8 So, clearly, Energy Star is a well-known brand

9 out in the marketplace. We like to say it is a national

10 U.S. Government backed symbol for energy efficiency, but

11 the core principles that drive where this brand came from

12 are two things. One, before a product has a chance to

13 earn the Energy Star label, it has to prove itself to be

14 cost-effective and, secondly, it has to meet or exceed

15 performance expectations consumers have for that product. 

16 We all know the experience of introducing CFL

17 lightbulbs in the mid-1980s, when they flicker, they

18 hummed, they did not produce as much light as they

19 claimed. There was a multi-billion dollar effort to

20 prove to the consumer public that this was a technology

21 that does not work. So, giving them away for free was

22 not the best market transformation you can make. So,

23 these are key principles for what we do, and following

24 those has led to success. 

25 The last nationwide survey for Energy Star
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1 reveals about a 70 percent consumer awareness across the

2 country for this logo and for the name. Now, in markets

3 where you get actual concentrated support by utilities or

4 state programs, that awareness jumps to more than 80

5 percent. Thirty-five percent of the public normally

6 purchase products with the label and 70 percent plus of

7 that group said they were influenced by the label in

8 making that product choice and 85 percent of households

9 would recommend. Now, I show you these because these

10 metrics are so critical to demonstrating a brand that has

11 truly arrived in the marketplace. 

12 Now, when I come to homes, there are three

13 points I like to make about the Energy Star label about

14 homes. We find it a daunting challenge that we are a

15 voluntary program. We have to go to builders and ask a

16 very change-resistant industry to work with us, embark on

17 applying new technologies, hire a new third-party

18 consultant to poke and peck around their product and see

19 if there is anything wrong with it and do all this for

20 our label. So, what it means is we have to indeed have a

21 very compelling value proposition. Everything we work

22 with in our program, so much is geared to how to develop

23 that value message for the builder partner because we do

24 not have our product on the shelf yet until they build to

25 our specifications. 
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1 And maybe one of the key things that we do is

2 we define truly energy efficient in the marketplace. We

3 set a very regular rigorous set of specifications

4 together by aggressive vetting with building science

5 experts, stakeholders across the housing industry, and

6 come up with a very, very strong set of specifications

7 for that point in time that we put it in the market, and

8 then we require third-party verification. Most of our

9 homes are verified by using the existing home energy

10 rating system or HERS (phonetic) industry that is in the

11 market and overseen by RESNEC, the industry association

12 for that group. In addition, we have special

13 verification options for modular and manufactured

14 housing. So, that is how we define truly efficient, with

15 specification and strong certification by third-party

16 inspectors. 

17 What we bring to the builders in terms of

18 value, we think, is a very high recognition with the

19 label itself and the various rewards we provide. Now,

20 the growth numbers are shown here. We are approaching a

21 million labeled homes at the end of this year, which is

22 truly staggering. In the early years when we were

23 struggling just to get out the door and were happy with a

24 few thousand homes, it is amazing to see ourselves

25 arriving at such a big milestone, a million labeled
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1 homes. 

2 You can see that we are tracking a little bit

3 of a decline as the industry has gone a little bit soft

4 in the last 18 months, but our number of builder partners

5 is staggering in the increased interest. Prior to the

6 soft market conditions, we were getting 30, 35 builders

7 per month join the program. The last 18 months since the

8 market has gone very soft, we have increased to over 300

9 builders per month joining the program. There is truly

10 an interest in building green and finding a way to make a

11 more value-based offering to consumers looking for new

12 homes because you have to have that. 

13 Some more metrics, just to show you what has

14 happened with homes, we now work with over 6,000 builder

15 partners actively labeling homes. We have labeled, to

16 date, over 860,000 homes and in over 25 markets, we have

17 20 percent or more market penetration. Again, very

18 substantial growth. And it all comes down to this label. 

19 It is easy to recognize, it is widely established, it is

20 widely recognized. This is our brand offering in the

21 marketplace and, coincidentally, it is our biggest asset

22 we have and everything we have to do from a program

23 management perspective is protect this label, it is our

24 biggest asset we have. 

25 So, how do we do that? How do we define green? 
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1 How do we bring this value to consumers? What I am going

2 to do in the next slide is compress three, four hours of

3 building science training into this one slide.

4 (Laughter).

5 MR. RASHKIN: So, bear with me. I am going to 

6 work with you on this. But you will at least get a

7 flavor for just the sound underpinnings that drive this

8 program’s specifications. The goal, the objective, if

9 you will, or the why is we want to build homes that are

10 affordable, comfortable, healthy and durable. And the

11 value proposition that we want that is compelling for the

12 builder is to reduce their risk. It is an incredibly

13 high risky proposition to be in that industry. While

14 increasing consumer satisfaction and having a way to

15 differentiate themself from their biggest competition. 

16 About 75 percent of the competition's used homes, three

17 out of four homes sold in the marketplace are used, and

18 what a compelling difference it is for a consumer to buy

19 a new Energy Star home. And from our perspective the

20 benefits are incredible in terms of environmental

21 protection and improved national security. 

22 So, how do we get there? It is very simple. 

23 You do three things. You control air flow, thermal flow

24 and moisture flow and you wind up with a great building. 

25 You learn these three filters and go through a set of
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1 plans or a house under construction and see if you

2 effectively addressed thermal flow, air flow and moisture

3 flow that you have a great building. And there are

4 various components of each of those that we know from old

5 physics classes and science courses we took in high

6 school how you do that. That is what we try to do. That

7 is the big how and that is where we spend two to three

8 hours with builders and with HERS raters and with all the

9 classes, we do training, what you do to get to Energy

10 Star, and it winds up being these set measures. 

11 What you will notice is there is a very

12 repetitive set of improvements that get you control of

13 air flow, thermal flow and moisture flow, air ceiling,

14 air barriers, better insulation, low E windows, and so

15 forth, and better equipment and right sizing and the keep

16 repeating as solutions for each of the various columns

17 that we are trying to solve, and the ones acquired by

18 Energy Star shown in blue here now. The ones that are

19 not in blue will be required soon by the next iteration

20 of Energy Star.

21 The key take-away point here is the

22 requirements for Energy Star are science-based and they

23 lead to a complete systems approach to how to build a

24 high-performance home that can, if not guarantee, almost

25 effectively promise, that the house has to be more
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1 comfortable, it has to be more durable, it has to be more

2 healthy and have lower bills for increased affordability. 

3 Unless you break the laws of physics, you have

4 to get those outcomes and that is the underpinning for

5 how we can make our brand promise. That is why when you

6 see these requirements for Energy Star, which are

7 effectively what you have to do without much choice. You

8 have to have your duct systems tight, you have to do an

9 incredibly well air-sealed home, you have to have

10 advanced windows, appropriate to the climate, efficient

11 equipment, the insulation has to be installed properly

12 because what we know about insulation is R value is much

13 less important than how it is installed. You can lose

14 about 85 to 90 percent of the rated R value of insulation

15 if you are not attentive to how you put it in place,

16 including complete air barrier assemblies. 

17 I have this one three, four hour course with

18 builders on how to do air barriers right. Because I

19 promise you 90 percent of the homes that I see, and I

20 travel and see tens of thousands of homes, do not do the

21 air barriers right. 

22 And then right sizing, making sure the big

23 investment in the cooling systems and heating systems

24 actually get the results we want. In the end, if you

25 field verify it in the field, you have Energy Star. 
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1 Now, we have other EPA programs that are based

2 on the same exact principles. We have energy efficiency,

3 Energy Star I just covered. For indoor environments, we

4 have something called EPA Indoor Air Plus. We have a

5 group from the Indoor Environments Division today and it

6 is the same basic concept. You have three principles

7 that get you an incredibly comprehensive approach to air

8 quality. You want to control sources of pollution, you

9 want to ventilate properly or ventilation and you want a

10 filtration system. If you do those three components, you

11 have an incredibly comprehensive approach that allows you

12 to promise a very effective, healthier indoor air quality

13 home. 

14 And the same thing with the water conservation

15 and a program called WaterSense. If you address the

16 indoor fixtures and you address the outdoor water needs

17 and you have homeowner guidance, you have a very

18 comprehensive approach to water conservation. 

19 So, it leads me to two roads to green, that we

20 find ourselves contrasting, if you will, with our EPA

21 labels with the broader green labels in the marketplace.

22 First is we are binary. Either you are or you are not 

23 Energy Star. I mentioned the EPA Air Plus label. That

24 is 35 specific requirements, with some variations for

25 climate, for how you achieve the label. Energy Star is
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1 very specific what you have to do. In contrast, the

2 green programs often have four tiers and then many, many

3 ways of getting to those four tiers by combining points. 

4 Energy Star also works at the systems approach that I

5 laid out versus a parts approach where you get points for

6 various categories. 

7 Third, we specify a minimum performance level

8 as -- without a lot of choice, knowing we are trying to

9 define that attribute, and the green programs are

10 striving to include all the choices that are in the

11 marketplace to achieve green and you can kind of choose

12 how you get to that performance by mixing and matching. 

13 And, also, we allow, because of the various labels that

14 are individual, to use component approaches versus going

15 all in and doing all green. For instance, if you want to

16 focus on water conservation and not materials, you can

17 make that choice. 

18 So, in the end, this is a simple definition of

19 green, energy, indoor environment and sustainable

20 resources, and EPA feels, in effect, we have three very

21 strong ingredient labels but do not provide the whole

22 label for green. So, it is kind of like this TV set I

23 saw in a fitness room where I was speaking at one

24 conference and I saw all these individual components for

25 the TV that were individual attributes, surround sound,
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1 HD, and also Dolby sound. In effect, we do not make the

2 TV, we do not make the green program. We make

3 ingredients that are very powerful attributes within the

4 green program. 

5 I am a Fast Talker of America, a proud member,

6 thank you very much. 

7 (Applause.)

8 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: Thank you all very much. I

9 just have to say that after hearing all this, I always

10 want to buy a new house. 

11 A number of you very helpfully gave some

12 suggestions about what we can do with our Green Guides

13 and I want to pick up on that. Carlos, you mentioned

14 that the guides should have consistency of terms and

15 stressed a reliance on credible standards. So, first, I

16 would like to ask the panel, what specific terms do you

17 think that we might need to add to the Green Guides and

18 maybe provide definitions for that would help with green

19 building claims? 

20 MS. MOORE: Well, I will start since I am

21 immediately to your left. I think there is an

22 opportunity to help people understand sustainability as

23 an aspirational goal versus green as being generally

24 descriptive of a whole basket of goodies that are

25 benefits-oriented from a consumer perspective. Because
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1 what we see happening in the marketplace, as it relates

2 to erroneous claims of green and people misapplying our

3 trademarks as well, which we do police very actively, is

4 that folks will apply terminology to single attributes. 

5 So, it has some recycled content, so it is green, it has

6 some bamboo in it, so it is green. And those kinds of

7 misunderstandings could be helpfully addressed by

8 creating more of a -- a broader based lexicon for people

9 to understand how single attributes fit into a multi10 attribute solution like a greener home. 

11 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: Does anybody else have a

12 thought?

13 MR. MARTIN: I would agree with that. I would

14 also like to add that I think that a lot of the --

15 perhaps the performance categories and the benefits

16 categories are ones that we could all come to some

17 standardization on. I think primarily because that is

18 what the consumer hears. And, so, if there are certain

19 things we say about energy efficiency that we are all

20 talking about the same, about what do we mean by energy

21 efficiency, what do we mean by improved environmental

22 quality, that sort of thing. So, just those overarching

23 terms. Obviously, there are a variety of different ways

24 to get there that exist. But having those overarching

25 terms would be helpful.
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1 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: Right. I guess I noticed

2 that with all these different rating systems, you have

3 different strategies and approaches to get to a green

4 building, but they all emphasize kind of energy

5 efficiency but they may get there in a different way. 

6 So, is there something the FTC could do, through its

7 Green Guides or through education, to make it easier for

8 consumers to understand these different standards and the

9 different claims? 

10 MS. SHAFFER: I think that it is an area that

11 the government does not need to carry a heavy hand at

12 this point. There is a lot of work going on in trying to

13 understand what green building is for people who are

14 building as well as those of us who have rating systems,

15 and it is an area that there needs to be additional

16 research. USGBC did a study recently, the New Building

17 Institute did a study for them and released looking at

18 the four levels of LEED buildings and showed that 50

19 percent of the buildings did not achieve the baseline

20 Energy Star level. That is really helpful and useful

21 information and that is what we all need is more studies

22 looking at buildings' performance after they are either

23 plaqued or not. And that is an area we don't have a lot

24 of information. We don't really have a great deal of

25 data on health of workers in green buildings. 
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1 So, I do think that the definition of what a

2 green building is or the attributes of what might

3 encompass a green building is an area you might want to

4 look at, but it is an area that there is a lot of work 

5 going on. 

6 MS. MOORE: I think there are some examples as

7 well that are happening in Europe that might be

8 interesting to looking to as a long-term horizon.

9 Certainly, and I believe this is true, that any of the

10 residential rating systems, at this point, look to Energy

11 Star as sort of the engine under the hood and I believe

12 that Sam has probably sat on an awful lot of our

13 committee calls to that point. But there are a number of

14 us who use the nutrition label from products, and if

15 there were a common vernacular, particularly since many

16 of the rating systems have a common core of issues that

17 they are looking at, if you are talking about a green

18 home or if you are talking about a green building, you

19 look for performance or look for different

20 characteristics in these attributes. So, there is that,

21 sorry, common lexicon that is being developed around the

22 discussion. 

23 So, if we do, eventually, evolve in this

24 country toward a labeling system for buildings,

25 commercial or residential or for otherwise, there is a
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1 foundation, some capacity in the marketplace to be able

2 to have that discussion. 

3 MR. RASHKIN: Just to weigh in on this, the

4 challenge I think for FTC gets back to the metrics. With

5 energy efficiency, you have a metric whether it is

6 percent relative to code or even a percent energy

7 savings, there are numbers that consumers can relate to. 

8 Once you get past energy and you start looking at indoor

9 air quality, what is the metric? How do you provide

10 guidance to consumers and how do you gauge whether a

11 standard or a label meets that? 

12 When you get to water conservation, maybe there

13 is some percent water savings, but relative to what

14 again, there is no code reference. And for materials and

15 for a lot of these factors that relate to green, I do not

16 know how to get a hold around the metrics. And

17 symptomatic of that is the fact that if you look at the

18 rating systems, they vary from about 100 to 150 points to

19 few thousand points, and even the point systems mean

20 something very different. So, a consumer can look at one

21 green rating and then another and see 10 points means a

22 lot in one and 100 points means a lot on the other. It

23 is going to be a very big challenge. 

24 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: Well, that relates to a

25 question that came from the audience which I am going to
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1 slightly rephrase, but the idea that consumers are seeing

2 LEED Certified Silver or Green Globes verified or NAHB

3 Gold, how are they perceiving that claim? What

4 environmental benefits are they even taking from that

5 simple certification language and how are those specific

6 environmental attributes that are being certified being

7 communicated to consumers through just that simple

8 certification language?

9 MR. RASHKIN: I would not mind weighing in on

10 that one only because I spend too much time traveling and

11 I do not know what to do with myself a lot. I mystery

12 shop thousands of homes and ask sales agents questions

13 and see how they portray the green home to a consumer. I

14 do that because I think, in the world of housing at

15 least, I think one of the biggest educational experiences

16 happens face to face between the home buyer and the

17 person selling them the house. And, so, there my message

18 gets back to if that is your goal, how do you get a

19 consistent message to the consumer, what kind of controls

20 do you have in the sales process? 

21 Again, one of the reasons why, again, I think

22 it is so important we are binary with Energy Star is what

23 I have experienced when there are multiple tier programs

24 in a marketplace is that the pressure to sell is so great

25 the salesperson is willing to convey very strong
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1 stretches of meaning to make that sale. So, if they are

2 selling a premium platinum product, they will say

3 everything else is riffraff. If they are selling a very

4 bottom end certified level product, they are saying this

5 is everything you need, and I find I am not getting clear

6 information when I mystery shop.

7 So, at the end of the day, you know, all this

8 becomes how do you control the sales process and that

9 takes tremendous resources and it is very challenging and

10 intentions can be good, but I do not know if the

11 infrastructure right now is able to handle the very

12 complex nature of green. 

13 MS. MOORE: From the USGBC perspective, I will

14 share a little bit of our experience from the commercial

15 marketplace, although I know the conversation here is

16 focused on green homes. The certification seal that

17 conveys LEED Silver, Gold or Platinum can only be used in

18 concert with the actual building that is being certified. 

19 So, if you build your spec house in a development and

20 only the model home is certified, that is not something

21 that can be applied to any of the other homes if they

22 have not actually been through that process. Similarly,

23 we have had that experience on the commercial side as

24 well. 

25 And the investment that we are making in
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1 education right now to help develop the capacity on the

2 market side, not only to engage the people who are

3 involved in sales and marketing of these homes but also

4 the builders themselves and understanding how to apply

5 the label, USGBC has also undertaken a very deliberate

6 consumer education initiative and that is expressed at a

7 website that we have created called thegreenhomeguide.org

8 and a website that we continue to advance, build more

9 curriculum in to connect with Green Bill 365, which is an

10 online education portal that address both the builder and

11 the consumer, and also marrying that with educational

12 programming that we provide for even product

13 manufacturers and constituency at Green Build every year. 

14 We have seen a huge transformation in the

15 commercial marketplace. That is demonstrated by the many

16 people here who have been involved in this dialogue

17 today. There is extraordinary expertise among

18 architects, engineers, builders, increasingly trades

19 people on the commercial side of this sector to have a

20 fairly sophisticated conversation about what green

21 building means and what it means in terms of performance. 

22 It is ready for an investment in R&D, like the

23 NBI study that Erin referenced that showed that 35

24 percent energy savings was typical of LEED certified

25 buildings or many of the two million that USGBC is
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1 putting into research to help understand things like the

2 reality of claims of increased productivity in green

3 buildings, for instance. 

4 So, we are looking at the residential

5 marketplace not just as a snapshot today and making

6 decisions on that basis, but really understanding how we

7 can invest into developing a lexicon and building a

8 dialogue and leveraging the work that NAHB is doing to

9 really educate their builders and the extraordinary

10 foundation that EPA has created with Energy Star. There

11 is a way for us to create and transform in the future

12 where that Tower of Babel that we are all concerned about

13 around green home claims and what does it really mean to

14 the consumer and how can manufacturers appropriately

15 differentiate themselves is something that we can really

16 work through as a community. I think that what has

17 happened on the commercial building side of the

18 marketplace is a wonderful demonstration of what is

19 possible.

20 MR. MARTIN: There is certainly a lot of

21 precedent regarding what claims builders can make that

22 existed for several decades right now, to go beyond green

23 buildings. So, that might be helpful for FTC to review,

24 looking at what kind of warranties are acceptable, what

25 sort of legal precedents have occurred regarding those
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1 warranties and any potential other physical claims of the

2 physical construction of the home. So, that might be a

3 good starting point for you all to perceive how green

4 building fits into that. 

5 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: A lot of green building,

6 obviously, the green building claims and a lot of the

7 products center around these certification programs and

8 Carlos mentioned reliance on credible standards. So, I

9 am wondering whether you all think that the FTC Green

10 Guides should perhaps set more specific guidance for

11 reliance on certification and seals to substantiate

12 environmental benefit claims and even there has also been

13 a lot of talk today about ANSI developed standards versus

14 consensus-based standards, open standards and whether you

15 think the Guides should provide some information about

16 that. Kirsten mentioned there is the first party

17 certification and then there is second party and third

18 party. Would it be helpful to the building industry to

19 weigh in on which of those types of standards and provide

20 more guidance on the use of those standards that could

21 provide substantiation for some of these claims? 

22 MS. MOORE: Going back to Kirsten's slide,

23 there is a wonderful opportunity to differentiate between

24 marketing labels versus industry standards versus

25 third-party created programs because there is different
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1 levels of scrutiny as a consumer that you might want to

2 apply in those different circumstances. 

3 Speaking as someone who has experience on the

4 product manufacturing side as well, it could be helpful

5 in that circumstance, too, because there is, you know,

6 looking back at that slide that talked about the growth

7 of the potential market for green building products and

8 services, there are a lot of people who are seeing

9 certifications of different single attributes as a

10 business opportunity and are moving into that space where

11 there may not be a credible third-party certification

12 program today. And I imagine that manufacturers would be

13 very helpful or very appreciative of helping to kind of

14 sort through the differences in the labels out there. 

15 I think that one thing that the Green Guides

16 could do, also, that would very concretely be supportive

17 of helping to address this is to give broader examples of

18 how labels can be credibly applied. My favorite example

19 of a company using USGBC's marks really inappropriately

20 that we are working through addressing is a paper

21 manufacturer that uses the USGBC member logo on all of

22 their tissue paper packaging and the USGBC member logo is

23 actually bigger than the product logo on the package and

24 this product is actually present in USGBC's very own

25 bathrooms at 1800 Massachusetts. So, I see it every time
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1 I duck in there and every time I get on an airplane. 

2 But, you know, that is contrary to our guidance. 

3 Obviously, it is something that we're pursuing. 

4 But having that present in the Guides, the FTC

5 has a much broader voice to engage the community that any

6 single 501(c)(3) nonprofit or governmental agency would

7 have that is focused on specific program implementation. 

8 MR. SHAFFER: And I think one of the things

9 that is really helpful, we already talked about looking

10 at the attributes that would encompass a green building. 

11 I think that it is important to distinguish between a

12 brand new built building and a building that has been in

13 operation for 5 years or 10 years or 15 years and that

14 the operation or the performance of that building is more

15 important than what it was 10 or 15 years ago when it was

16 built. So, I think that that is an important educational

17 aspect, that there needs to be performance data. A lot

18 of that data is what is in Energy Star on the energy

19 piece, but it is your utility data, are you changing the

20 air filters on the oil just like you operate your car. 

21 That is a really important aspect that people need to

22 understand. 

23 MR. MARTIN: I would actually caution the FTC

24 about going too far into speaking about standards. 

25 Obviously, there is a lot of education about what
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1 standards are that needs to happen for consumers to

2 understand. But when you talk about these, it is

3 bordering on building regulation and the building

4 regulations vary. It is probably one of the most complex

5 -- I should not say that if there is anybody from any

6 other industry here.

7 (Laughter.)

8 MR. MARTIN: I think it is one of the most

9 complex regulatory systems that exists in the country for

10 an industry. So, I think home buyer, homeowner, consumer

11 education about what standards mean is probably a more

12 useful vehicle for FTC. 

13 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: I just want to clarify, are

14 you saying that we should not be saying what the standard

15 should say or even weigh in on a standard that is --

16 saying something to the effect of in the Guides, a

17 standard that is developed by a third party through an

18 open consensus-based process can likely provide

19 substantiation for X type of claim. Are you saying the

20 agency should not even do something like that or just

21 that they should not get involved in developing building

22 standards?

23 MR. MARTIN: The latter definitely is the case. 

24 For the former, I think it is a fine line that you are

25 going to be playing because you obviously want to
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1 describe what standards are for the consumer to

2 understand what they are reviewing. And, so, in some

3 ways, you do not want to just say caveat emptor and leave

4 it at that, you want to provide some guidance about how

5 they can make logical decisions about what their green

6 building options are. 

7 So, keeping the market open, obviously, as we

8 were saying there are a lot of different rating systems,

9 a lot of standards out there. Explaining how to

10 distinguish between all of them is probably a more

11 beneficial vehicle for FTC if that makes sense. 

12 MR. RASHKIN: Maybe the best education that the

13 FTC can do is provide guidance to consumers what to look

14 for when it comes to a green label, and you can pick your

15 criteria. It could be, again, a percent better than

16 code. On energy, that there are measures that at least

17 assure certain health benefits in certain categories,

18 that there is some sort of ways that systems integration

19 is incorporated in developing recommendations as part of

20 the green standards. It is not just unrelated

21 recommendations, but someone is looking at is there a

22 systematic way of how these parts interrelate and, again,

23 that there is third-party verification of some type.

24 But you can come up with various criteria that

25 should be part of any green label and then say that is
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1 what you look for. But beyond -- like we are not a

2 consensus-based approach and to have something that says

3 a standard has to be a consensus-based standard would

4 trouble us because we just find we like a different

5 approach that is more nimble and allows us to move more

6 quickly where we gather information from all the

7 stakeholders very aggressively, but we kind of adjudicate

8 the final standards that we put out without a consensus

9 process. That allows us to move quickly and make

10 decisions. It is just another way to go that we find

11 preferable. 

12 So, I think there are certain criteria and you

13 have to explore what they are. But I am not sure how

14 much more specific you can get than that. 

15 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: Is there even kind of an

16 accepted metric for what is a green home? 

17 MS. MOORE: I think there is a good opportunity

18 with regard to FTC's work in this area to look at

19 bridging the gap between how green homes or green

20 products for the home get sold and how consumers think

21 about having a green home. The consumer research that

22 NAHB commissioned, the stuff that we are about to come

23 with says consumers think about energy efficiency, they

24 think about environmental footprint. First and foremost,

25 they think about having a healthier place for their
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1 families to live. 

2 But if you are going into the Home Depot, you

3 are seeing lightbulbs and air conditioning systems and

4 windows and all these individual product oriented

5 approaches and it is really difficult to figure out how

6 to bring that together into a system. So, to harmonize a

7 vernacular that allows consumers to marry what they see

8 if they go to the store or what they see if they are

9 talking to that sales agent trying to up-sell them on a

10 granite countertop versus the kind of benefits they want

11 to achieve for themselves and their family, that could be

12 a helpful dialogue for the marketplace overall to just

13 begin to create the bridge because you all do not want to

14 have to reprint this whole thing in your Green Guides in

15 terms of detailed technical guidance. 

16 MR. RASHKIN: What Carlos said was pretty

17 important because we agree with NAHB quite a bit about

18 how difficult it is to make claims. We caveat and cast

19 every benefit about these homes very carefully and choose

20 our words. So, I think one of the things you can do at

21 FTC is say no green program can make claims about percent

22 more healthy, percent more water savings. You can just

23 realize that there are so much behavioral factors

24 associated with these homes that you can forbid certain

25 claims as part of any green program. That can start
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1 going a long ways to avoiding some of the abuses that are

2 happening. 

3 MS. ROSEN SPECTOR: All right. Well, I guess,

4 Sam, you get the last word. That is the end of this

5 panel and we will start Panel 5 at 3:45. I want to thank

6 the panelist for a very informative and interesting

7 discussion. 

8 (Applause.)

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1 SESSION 5: PUNCH LIST FOR GREEN BUILDINGS - ROUNDTABLE 

2 ON CONSUMER PROTECTION CHALLENGES & THE NEED FOR FTC 

3 GUIDANCE

4 MR. KOHM: The last session will be a little

5 different. Often, when we do these last sessions, there

6 is some fall-off at the end and then I invite everybody

7 to move to the middle and come forward, in which case

8 nobody does, and everyone else is kind of following form. 

9 But if you would like to feel free to come forward and

10 move to the middle. 

11 We have a distinguished panel and we are going

12 to -- the roundtable discussion on the table that is not

13 round, for the folks who do deception, is a little

14 different. We are not going to have presentations. We

15 are going to engage in a discussion. If there is

16 anything that you all want to ask, there will be plenty

17 of time in this last panel to send questions forward and

18 to get them asked. So, get out your cards and if there

19 has been something you have been dying to ask all day or

20 if there is something that comes to your attention, then

21 feel free to send the cards forward. 

22 On the last panel we have Allen Blakey from the

23 Vinyl Institute; Christine Chase from Green Seal; John

24 Girman from the EPA; Sophia Greenbaum from the

25 Sustainable Buildings Industry Council; Thomas Reardon
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1 from the Business and Institutional Furniture

2 Manufacturer’s Association; and John Spears from

3 Sustainable Design Group. So, thank you very much for

4 joining us. 

5 Let's start off with kind of a review of what

6 is going on in the marketplace. If we can kind of just

7 go down the line for the first question and tell us what

8 kind of green claims you see that are going on in the

9 marketplace right now, what are the hot green claims. I

10 am not sure if we are in the same order here, but, Allen,

11 why don't you start us off? 

12 MR. BLAKEY: Well, vinyl is the most widely

13 used plastic in building and construction. It is a

14 synthetic material. Now, it is fair to ask are synthetic

15 materials green, but when we are talking about a

16 complicated thing like a building, it is unavoidable that

17 you will have synthetic materials in buildings and vinyl

18 can contribute. It does have benefits and advantages. 

19 So, I think there is a tension between what sorts of

20 products and materials do the job in green buildings. 

21 That is one of the issues that we are seeing. 

22 MR. KOHM: Okay. And, Christine, what kind of

23 claims do you see going on out there?

24 MS. CHASE: Some of the things we are looking

25 at, at Green Seal, we sort of do have the product
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1 standards. So, a lot of the confusion I think has to do

2 with how individual standards fit within a greater

3 context, be it a more broader building standard and how

4 that interaction is. I know that there is a lot of

5 confusion from contractors that we receive. 

6 In addition to that, some of the things that we

7 are working on are more service-based standards. So,

8 this is basically after a building is built or, you know,

9 is developed and that sort of thing, how you maintain and

10 how you clean it, what kind of products you bring into

11 the built environment at that point will really affect

12 indoor air quality and other health effects. So, those

13 are some of the things that we are looking at as well.

14 MR. KOHM: Okay. And, John? 

15 MR. GIRMAN: Several things. I think one of

16 the things that was touched on very well in the last

17 panel by Michelle Moore, and that was the definition of

18 green, what is green. She mentioned a lot of attributes

19 that could be used to define green, recycled content,

20 durability, maintenance, indoor air quality, energy

21 efficiency and others. I think one of the problems is

22 when something meets maybe two or three of these things

23 is it really green and these things are not discussed

24 very widely in some of the ads. 

25 The other more specific things that we see at
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1 times, for example, the issue of natural versus synthetic

2 does come up as a claim and there is a notion that

3 somehow if something is natural it is automatically green

4 and that is not always true. There are other things like

5 that as well. 

6 MR. KOHM: Okay. Sophia? 

7 MS. GREENBAUM: We are an educational

8 organization, so do not necessarily have a prescriptive

9 definition of green. We do support some of our members

10 that have green building standards including NAHB and

11 U.S. Green Building Council. But what we really look at

12 is some of the interactions between sustainable design

13 features and costs, life cycle analysis, security,

14 accessibility, safety and durability. So, we have more

15 design practitioners and building owners coming to us

16 looking for the crossovers between sustainability and

17 other design attributes. For example, in schools, you

18 might even have acoustics being considered in terms of

19 sustainability because it is an important aspect of

20 indoor environmental quality. 

21 MR. KOHM: Tom? 

22 MR. REARDON: Well, the furniture producers

23 have been fielding a lot of different requests from their

24 customers. The U.S. Green Building Council and LEED have

25 done a tremendous job in elevating the awareness and the
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1 importance of evaluating environmental impacts of

2 buildings and construction projects. Our manufacturers

3 produce products that go in these buildings. And,

4 increasingly, the customers are focusing on recycled

5 content, emissions of VOCs from product, certified woods,

6 and sustainability is much larger than that. 

7 So, as an industry, we saw a need for some

8 harmonization and some commonality among the different

9 attributes that define sustainability or green and I

10 think the entire marketplace can benefit from some

11 standardization in that area. 

12 MR. KOHM: And, John? 

13 MR. SPEARS: Thanks. Well, I am coming from a

14 perspective, I design homes, green, solar,

15 self-sufficient, sustainable, whatever you want to call

16 it. And in the early '70s when I started the terms were

17 all different but everything else was the same, and the

18 customers have not changed in their interest in demand

19 for quality housing. 

20 The first thing they care about is indoor air

21 quality. They want to know is this house healthy or

22 isn't it and all of the details about the various

23 volatile organic compounds and percentages of this and

24 that are very irrelevant to that market audience, the

25 consumer of the house. 
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1 The second thing they want to know is, and even

2 more so today, is can I afford to pay the energy bill. 

3 So, there needs to be a metric and a measurement that

4 says this is efficient or it isn't or some way of

5 distinguishing houses by their energy efficiency. And

6 this is where the Energy Star program, for instance,

7 comes into play really making it much easier for a home

8 buyer to distinguish products. 

9 And then the third area, which is more and more

10 of interest but way down the priority list, is the

11 environmental footprint. 

12 The key problem is, in my mind, with consumers

13 and rating buildings green or sustainable is the

14 difference between a component rating like a rating on a

15 product, whether it has recycled content in it or not,

16 and a rating of a building which is actually a system, a

17 compilation of lots of products that go into a system

18 that then has a performance. When people buy homes, they

19 buy a system. When they go to Home Depot, they buy a

20 component and the audience for that rating is the

21 consumer versus the audience from a manufacturer to an

22 integrator who might be making a product out of some raw

23 material. So, there are lots of levels of this that have

24 to be addressed. 

25 MR. KOHM: That is an excellent point that I
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1 was going to get to later, but let’s get to it right now. 

2 When you are buying a building as opposed to the

3 components of a building, or our last workshop was on

4 packaging, when you are dealing with something fairly

5 tangible and fairly simple, you are buying a complex

6 system. How does that change what kind of claims people

7 can make for that good, for the building, whether you are

8 selling the building or renting it? Does anybody have

9 comments about that? John?

10 MR. GIRMAN: Just a few comments. I think the

11 issue is inherently easier if you are dealing with just a

12 product because you can say, for example, that it is

13 going to emit so many milligrams or micrograms of a

14 particular pollutant per volume of the thing or per

15 weight. That is relatively easy and you can test and

16 meet it. It is much harder when somebody tries -- but

17 perhaps less understandable to the consumer, I should

18 say. 

19 But when you are talking about a building, as

20 John said, you are talking about a system, it is a

21 complex thing. And it is very difficult to guarantee,

22 for example, even though we can measure energy use, we

23 can know what we put in in terms of appliances what they

24 would use, it is very difficult in the end to project

25 what that particular home is going to use in terms of
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1 energy because there is a variation in climate and

2 weather, there is the variation in how the place is used

3 and how well it is maintained. 

4 It gets even harder, and Sam Rashkin in the

5 earlier panel hit the nail on the head. It is even

6 harder to do that for indoor air quality because we do

7 not have a good metric for measuring, at least not one

8 that is agreed upon by a lot of people. So, to guarantee

9 a health claim, for example, does not make sense, you

10 cannot do it. You can, however, say that if you have

11 these systems in place or are doing this and maintain

12 them that you are reducing your risk of having health

13 problems, that probably is a legitimate claim. It is not

14 a guarantee, but reducing risk is what really should be

15 your goal. 

16 MR. KOHM: It strikes me that for -- that we

17 say in the Green Guides right now, for example, that you

18 should avoid making general green claims, the eco19 friendly claims, the green, environmentally friendly

20 claims because it is very hard what consumers take from

21 that and, therefore, very hard to substantiate. It

22 strikes me that that becomes a much more complicated

23 issue for a complex system like a building. Does anybody

24 have any comment either on that or what you think

25 consumers take away when somebody makes a general green
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1 claim about a building? 

2 MR. SPEARS: I think consumers are very

3 gullible and they get most of their information about

4 their purchases from salespeople that represent the

5 companies that are trying to sell them something. So,

6 education, third-party education about how to be an

7 intelligent consumer of houses, products, things that you

8 do is really, really important. And standards and

9 ratings have a real role to play in those things. 

10 And I think one of the best things that can be

11 done is saying, when you are shopping for energy

12 efficiency, here are the kinds of standards you can look

13 for and the kind of labels to look for on the products

14 and on the buildings. So, when you are shopping for

15 things for indoor air quality here are the kind of labels

16 and the kind of standards you should be looking for on

17 those. And that is about the best you can do. 

18 MR. KOHM: I was speaking to a reporter

19 yesterday who asked me about the idea of the hidden

20 trade-off. This area, like all areas, has its jargon,

21 and the idea being that you tell the truth about

22 something that is green but there is a trade-off

23 involved. And what that means for the FTC Act, that is

24 often a green-washing sin. And that is not necessarily,

25 depending on how you do it, a violation of the FTC Act. 
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1 But it strikes me that it is a real problem when you make

2 general green claims and maybe a particular problem when

3 you have complex systems. 

4 Could you all talk a little bit about what the

5 hidden trade-offs are you see and the kinds of claims

6 people make for buildings that may be confusing to

7 consumers? 

8 Allen, if you wanted to comment on something

9 else, go ahead. 

10 MR. BLAKEY: I will bridge from the last

11 question to the current one or try to anyway, thank you. 

12 The difficulty with the complexity of a building makes

13 product and material choice difficult because it is one

14 thing to -- I mean, we know from meetings that you have

15 had, workshops this morning, for example, that it can be

16 difficult simply to determine what is environmentally

17 friendly in the way a product is produced. But what life

18 cycle studies show is that the use phase in a long use

19 product, i.e., in many buildings where things are built

20 and designed to last for decades, the use phase will

21 dominate in the life cycle. 

22 So, the chemical basis of a product versus the

23 organic basis of a product can become, according to life

24 cycle studies, less relevant and, yet, there is intense

25 competition and we think a lot of misleading marketing
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1 being done on market differentiation in green buildings. 

2 MR. KOHM: That is fascinating. Can you give

3 us an example of where that might occur? 

4 MR. BLAKEY: Yeah. PVC-free, for example, is a

5 term that we run across sometimes. And there are

6 problems with going free, you know, anything free, as we

7 see it. One is that often the advertisement, where this

8 typically appears, says nothing about what the product

9 actually is made of. So, the consumer does not know. 

10 There is an implication, of course, that if it is free of

11 this material, then it is healthier or more

12 environmentally friendly. I guess we even question

13 sometimes whether the advertiser, the product

14 manufacturer knows for a certainty that it is PVC-free

15 because sometimes these are products that are made of

16 multiple materials. 

17 MR. KOHM: John, you will be next, but it

18 strikes me that, at least potentially, that there are

19 claims that could be made that are true where the

20 implications are false, in other words, that you say

21 something about the chemical versus organic input of a

22 particular product at the time. But over the life cycle,

23 in fact, it is greener, in some sense, to use the

24 chemical product rather than the organic product because

25 over the lifetime it degrades less or you have to renew
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1 it less often. 

2 Are there examples like that or am I just being

3 a lawyer and making things up that are logical but

4 untrue? Anybody want to help me out there? 

5 MS. CHASE: I guess I can speak to that a

6 little bit. Some of the things that we speak to,

7 particularly about the point that you make, is that is 

8 sort of the difference when you get into some sort of

9 single attributes a lot of times. I think for a lot of

10 times single attributes are definitely an important way

11 to distinguish products. But I think the hidden trade12 off is probably one of the dangers of doing so. So,

13 having a certification that looks at the life cycle of a

14 product and looks at all the different impacts that it

15 could have is one way to distinguish it and to take all

16 those sort of different factors into account. 

17 MR. KOHM: John, I am sorry, you were supposed

18 to be next, so...

19 MR. GIRMAN: Not a problem. Sure. You talk

20 about things that could be true, but there is more to the

21 story that is not being told and is necessary to

22 understand something. I think emission rates are an

23 example. If something is going to be called low

24 emitting, what does that mean? Does that mean it is low

25 emitting for a very long time? In which case, you may
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1 get a high exposure or is it something that is high

2 emitting at the very beginning but then is low emitting

3 later on? 

4 When a product is tested is also very important

5 and that could be very misleading because if something is

6 tested within 24 hours of being manufactured that means

7 one thing. If it is tested 14 days later, that may be

8 more meaningful to the people who are moving into the

9 house. So, that is a case where they have to -- giving

10 information is not enough. You have to tell people what

11 the information means, what does low emitting mean. 

12 MR. KOHM: And it seems that VOCs would be an

13 example of that.

14 MR. GIRMAN: Exactly.

15 MR. KOHM: Is there any standardization on what

16 people mean when they talk about VOCs and emissions? 

17 MR. GIRMAN: No, some testing programs do tell

18 you when it is being tested so you have some ability to

19 check on that. But that is not generally something that

20 people even know enough to ask about. 

21 I think another thing where something is

22 misleading is very often something will be touted as

23 being natural, and the implication is that natural is

24 green and good. We get calls like this all the time from

25 the public and I remind them that bee stings are natural,
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1 snake venom is natural, poison ivy is natural, but they

2 are not benign and natural does not mean benign. There

3 are some cases where you would much prefer to use a

4 synthetic product that is much more durable and would

5 last a long time, has easier maintenance and perhaps

6 emits less. 

7 So, going back to what some of the panel has

8 said on earlier panels, you have to look at the whole

9 thing, you have to look at things holistically. Life

10 cycle analysis can help on that, but you really have to

11 look at things as a system. 

12 MR. KOHM: Is there any specific example you

13 have of a product that might be not natural but over a

14 lifetime analysis be more green in a broad sense than its

15 organic counterpart? 

16 MR. GIRMAN: I do not think there have been

17 sufficient good analyses that show this, but let me throw

18 one thing out that might be interesting to at least one

19 panelist. That is that linoleum is often touted as being

20 an environmentally friendly product and the reason is

21 because it is a natural product, although I have never

22 seen a linoleum tree, perhaps you have. 

23 (Laughter.)

24 MR. GIRMAN: So, it is really composed of many

25 things. But the thing is Tunga Sawhammer (phonetic) in
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1 Germany has tested a lot of products, both natural and

2 synthetic, and he found that many natural products are

3 much higher emitters of VOCs, linoleum, in general, being

4 a much higher emitter of VOCs than vinyl, for example. 

5 Now, that is half the story, getting back to

6 what you said earlier, because the thing is you have to

7 also look at what things are being emitted and for how

8 long and what their health effects are. So, it is a very

9 complex thing that you have asked. 

10 MR. KOHM: Tom? 

11 MR. REARDON: Yeah, I just support that. I

12 think it is very easy to make well-intentioned single

13 attribute claims or even multi-attribute claims that do

14 not necessarily look at the whole story and potentially

15 give a misleading impression to what could be a somewhat

16 uninformed consumer. 

17 MR. KOHM: Can you give us a hypothetical

18 example -- they do not have to be specific companies or

19 ads -- of where that might occur? 

20 MR. REARDON: Well, I mean if you are -- 

21 MR. KOHM: Now, everybody is on notice that I

22 ask for examples all the time. You can think in advance. 

23 (Laughter.)

24 MR. REARDON: I did not bring anything to share

25 with the class. 
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1 MR. KOHM: If you brought some, it would have

2 to be enough for everybody. 

3 MR. REARDON: And I was not sure how many to

4 expect.

5 (Laughter.)

6 MR. REARDON: Any claim about energy

7 consumption of the product, I mean, that is looking at a

8 very specific attribute, but it does not address

9 emission, it does not address embodied energy that was

10 used to create the product or how recyclable the product

11 is. Sustainability is just so multifaceted that really

12 looking at any one single attribute really opens the door

13 for misperceptions. 

14 MR. KOHM: I want to come back to the single

15 attribute, but first, John Spears. 

16 MR. SPEARS: I have an example for you. One of

17 my pet peeves is a product that claims, this is under the

18 category if it sounds too good to be true it probably is

19 not, claims that a paint has an insulation value as good

20 as a fully insulated wall that might be six inches thick. 

21 And they make the claim, they site its R value, which is

22 a single attribute, and they claim it is NASA tested,

23 therefore, it gives it credibility. But it is

24 misrepresenting totally the term “R value,” but R is the

25 number that everybody relates to so it is a number people
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1 think is the actual attribute you are looking at. So,

2 they are using the terms incorrectly. 

3 Giving it credibility by giving it, you know,

4 NASA tested, there are no -- and even the like ASTM

5 standards that they will claim for the testing do not

6 really give you technically an R value. So, if you took

7 this paint, painted it on your wall and assume that it is

8 going to cut the heat loss of your building the same as a

9 fully insulated wall would, you are not going to get that

10 performance because, I mean, technically what they are

11 doing is they are claiming the performance in radiant

12 heat transfer and not in conducive heat transfer and R is

13 not the right value for doing that. 

14 The other one has to do with insulation in

15 general, the difference between types of insulation and

16 their various attributes. For instance, the difference

17 between a loose fill insulation in a wall and a foam

18 insulation which might fill a cavity and make that cavity

19 actually airtight as well as making it insulating. A

20 poorly insulated wall with a loose fill insulation is a

21 very leaky wall and probably will not even come close to

22 achieving the values that are specified by the material

23 in a standard product test of that material under ideal

24 conditions. You foam that same wall and you get

25 significantly better performance because you have reduced
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1 air infiltration, the performance is more like the

2 standard test method conditions when you get it. 

3 So, there is lots of variety in claims when you

4 take a single component performance factor that may be

5 tested with an ASTM test and very valid, but when it is

6 applied in the field it has very different performance

7 characteristics. 

8 MR. KOHM: Okay. We are going to go to Sophia

9 first, but before we do that, I want to tell the panel

10 what my next question is going to be and give you some

11 time to think. It springboards off John's last comment. 

12 What are the one or two worst kinds of claims that you

13 are seeing in your area in the marketplace now? 

14 Sophia, first to you? 

15 MS. GREENBAUM: I guess this can kind of tie

16 into that, but I just wanted to take a step back. You

17 were talking about consumer knowledge and I think

18 consumers, at this point, are up against two things, it

19 is the lack of technical knowledge of building and the

20 building industry and building products, but also the

21 building systems, and also the amount of eco fluff that

22 Kirsten mentioned before. And I think until we can

23 really gauge where consumers are and where their

24 understanding is, it is going to be a challenge to

25 provide a good context for some of these environmental
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1 building claims. 

2 MR. KOHM: Can we just go down the line and if

3 you can tell me kind of what the worst things you are

4 seeing, the one or two worst things you are seeing in the

5 marketplace now? 

6 MR. BLAKEY: I think, in addition to being free

7 of something, it is comparative claims that are based on

8 very little data or no data. Sometimes they are single

9 attribute comparative claims, sometimes they are tied to

10 a website that some group has put up that is perhaps a

11 pressure campaign organization and it is clear to us, it

12 seems clear to us that the marketing organization has not

13 really investigated, it has not done its own research or

14 investigated the quality of the research that leads to

15 the claims on the website that they are linking to. 

16 Six degrees of separation, I guess we would

17 say, as we mentioned in some previous comments. 

18 MR. KOHM: Christine?

19 MR. CHASE: I guess I would say, I do not know

20 if they are necessarily the worst, but some of the ones

21 that I have seen that have been my pet peeve are sort of

22 the earth-friendly and safe for people, planet and

23 yourself or something like that. I saw one ad campaign

24 with a baby with a cleaning product and it sort of

25 implied that it would be safe for a baby, which all
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1 products have impacts as far as environmental goes, but

2 particularly products that, you know, have chemicals in

3 them. Maybe they have sort of bettered them. That is

4 one certain thing, but I do not think any cleaning

5 product would be safe for your baby to drink, and that

6 implication, I think, is definitely a dangerous one to

7 make.

8 That is something that we definitely try to

9 keep at bay and provide a certification and provide a

10 standard to show that it is a comparative product and not

11 necessarily an absolute. 

12 MR. KOHM: Thank you. John? 

13 MR. GIRMAN: Yeah, I do not monitor ads like

14 that, so I am having trouble coming up with examples. 

15 But one thing that strikes me is occasionally you will

16 see a claim that green buildings have X percent better

17 indoor air quality and there is no way of knowing how

18 they measured that, if there was really a study that did

19 that or what that means. 

20 Another one that might be a little off target,

21 but it is nonetheless a problem because it comes up many

22 times, and that is the use of plants, and they are green,

23 as air cleaners indoors and the claims that are made are

24 pretty outrageous. 

25 MR. KOHM: Sophia? 
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1 MS. GREENBAUM: Right now in the current Green

2 Guides there is a principle that addresses packaging and

3 addresses where the Mobius strip of recycling is put on

4 the packaging. So, it is describing either the packaging

5 or the product, but should not be ambiguous. And I think

6 one of the things that we could do better in our industry

7 is distinguish more between professional accreditation,

8 membership in an organization and product or building

9 certification. Because sometimes you can go to a design

10 professional's website and if they have the logo of a

11 certain organization, it might make you think that all of

12 their products or their entire portfolio will be Energy

13 Star when it is really taken out of context. 

14 MR. KOHM: Thank you. Tom? 

15 MR. REARDON: I was having a hard time coming

16 up with a specific example, but one just came to me. I

17 did see an advertisement recently where the product

18 manufacturer was saying that this certification that they

19 were claiming compliance with was required for LEED

20 certification. And, you know, LEED is a credit-based

21 system. They are all optional, so there really is no

22 credits that are required for LEED certification. So,

23 that was very misleading.

24 But I think most of the time it is really a

25 matter of vagueness, you know, eco friendly,
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1 earth-friendly kind of thing. The manufacturer, I think

2 most of the time, just wants to jump on this green

3 marketing bandwagon and say something. It is fairly

4 obvious that they are not aware of the FTC guidelines in

5 this regard and maybe some education and awareness in

6 that regard would help them make more appropriate claims. 

7 I do not know that it is really malicious, I think it is

8 just uninformed. 

9 MR. KOHM: John? 

10 MR. SPEARS: The one I come across all the

11 time, I told you my pet one which was the insulation

12 paint. But the one I come across all the time a product

13 manufacturer -- and then this is not in their printed

14 material, it is the salesman pitching you. Oh, well, our

15 product, all our products are LEED certified. 

16 (Laughter.)

17 MR. SPEARS: Well, LEED does not certify

18 products. But they are pitching that out there all the

19 time. And you hear it everywhere, at the trade shows and

20 stuff. Our product is LEED certified. 

21 MR. KOHM: This is an area, in green marketing

22 in general and buildings in specific, where certification

23 seals make a lot of sense because the way we describe it,

24 because we have so many economists at the FTC, is that

25 these are essentially credence goods at least as to their
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1 green components. In other words, if I had an apple and

2 was selling it and told you that it was red and delicious

3 and juicy, you could bite into the apple and then tell if

4 I was telling the truth and then you could complain to

5 the FTC or you could complain to the person who sold it

6 to you or you can exercise your right and not go back and

7 buy apples from that person again. That is much more

8 difficult with a lot of green claims. And, so, there is

9 a real role here for certifications and seals. 

10 I just wanted to ask Sophia, in particular, and

11 anybody else who wants to pipe in, are we getting to kind

12 of certification overload? Are there so many

13 certifications that it is hard to get the message out? 

14 MS. GREENBAUM: I think there definitely are a

15 lot. That is hard to -- you cannot argue with that

16 point. But I think that the certifications provide a

17 certain efficiency to consumers and design practitioners

18 and so long as they can find explanations of those

19 certifications, I do not think it is a problem. 

20 When I was looking at this panel and some of

21 the topics that we were going to discuss, I was imagining

22 that perhaps we could recommend that the FTC provide the

23 registry of these certifications. But there are already

24 organizations that are doing that and the building

25 industry has been good with filling those voids. I
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1 believe there is a group that is run by Consumer Reports,

2 they have a website greenerchoices.org and they do not

3 deal with all of the building certifications that are out

4 there, but they provide a good template for starting to

5 look at just check boxes, is the certification program

6 vetted by a third party, is it consensus-based, is it

7 transparent. 

8 So, tools like that are helpful and I think the

9 certificates are worthwhile because they add

10 efficiencies. It is those claims that do not have a

11 context that make it more challenging for consumers to

12 sort out. 

13 MR. KOHM: Okay. 

14 MR. REARDON: If I could add. 

15 MR. KOHM: Okay, Tom? 

16 MR. REARDON: I definitely support that. I

17 think the most important thing to the consumer is the

18 question of what is this claim based upon. Ideally, from

19 my opinion, it is based on an open, publicly available,

20 consensus-developed standard so that the consumers can

21 know exactly what the criteria was and what it conforms

22 with. 

23 Secondarily is who is making that claim? Is it

24 a first party claim made by the manufacturer? Some

25 customers may have less credence and credibility in that. 
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1 Is it a second party claim? Is it a third-party claim

2 being made by some independent organization? 

3 But, yeah, first and foremost, what is the

4 claim based upon and then, secondarily, who is making the

5 claim. And in our marketplace, with this proliferation

6 of logos and identities ideally, regardless of who is

7 making the claim for certification, they should be using

8 the common mark of conformance to the underlying

9 standard. So, again, whoever is making that claim, it is

10 the same identity being transferred to the marketplace

11 and a consistent message going forward. 

12 MR. KOHM: Allen? 

13 MR. BLAKEY: I just wanted to take a little

14 different tack and say, first off, I think competition is

15 a good thing. I think that is what you all would

16 probably agree with. And, so, indeed there may be more

17 certification and standards bodies than we can figure out

18 which ones to use. But I think competition is a good

19 thing in that. 

20 But we have a concern that there is openness

21 and transparency and then there is openness and

22 transparency. Some third-party organizations, we

23 believe, are financial conflicts of interest with

24 industry representation and financial conflicts are well

25 recognized and there are lots of rules for that. But
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1 there is another kind of bias. There is ideological

2 bias. And we believe that there are certification bodies

3 that are suffering from ideological bias and that this is

4 an anti-competitive result. And I believe that it would

5 be in FTC's interest, it would be in consumers' interests

6 -- and it is my understanding that you do have an

7 extensive history of looking at antitrust aspects of

8 standards and certifying organizations. 

9 MR. KOHM: The FTC does, that is correct. 

10 MR. BLAKEY: The FTC does. This is an issue

11 that perhaps the FTC would be interested in looking into. 

12 And how does an organization ensure that it has

13 balance among its representatives? In a building, if a

14 standards body has an industry representative on a

15 building standard, how can you have one industry

16 representative for all of the industries that are

17 involved in putting together a building? Is it the

18 building materials, is it the energy systems, the water

19 systems and so forth? So, I think there are questions

20 that need to be asked about the true openness and

21 transparency.

22 A third aspect I just wanted to mention is that

23 sometimes openness and transparency has to do with the

24 general vote once the standard provision has been issued,

25 but the development of the standard provision or the
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1 policy is done in a very non-open, selective, exclusive

2 group that does not have adequate representation in our

3 view. 

4 MR. KOHM: Christine? 

5 MS. CHASE: I think, Allen, your points are

6 well made and you definitely want, when you have a

7 standard setting body, particularly a credible one, you

8 want it to be based on scientific rigor and make sure

9 that you have a balanced representation of people at the

10 table when you develop that standard, so that when you

11 are moving forward, you have something that is meaningful

12 and also addresses all the different issues. 

13 I think one of the things that I was just going

14 to address about sort of the multitude of different

15 standards out there is that, you know, some of the things

16 that we are facing is that there are a lot of different

17 standards and what we are trying to do is sort of a more

18 of educational and awareness and sort of a lot of it is

19 knowing your certifier, who is behind it and who is sort

20 of creating it. How a standard is created, that is a

21 very important factor as well. And then looking at some

22 of the different issues as far as openness, transparency

23 and whether it is a profit driven or non-profit, and

24 those sort of ideas. 

25 I do not necessarily know if it is something
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1 that -- I think some of the underlying principles may be

2 something that FTC can touch upon, but definitely I would

3 say from a greater consumer awareness point of view,

4 definitely understanding the certifying body is an

5 important factor to consider. 

6 MR. KOHM: Is there a way that the FTC can

7 promote that understanding? 

8 MR. CHASE: I think that maybe some of the --

9 looking at the Green Guide, they do have a specific area

10 that talks about eco labels and seals and perhaps

11 definitely embellishing that and being more descriptive,

12 perhaps giving examples and that sort of thing within the

13 context of the Green Guides would be very helpful I

14 believe. 

15 MR. KOHM: I will not put you on the spot right

16 now, although if you want to be you are welcome to. But

17 if you or other people want to comment on what some

18 examples are that we might give in that space, that would

19 be very useful. 

20 John Spears? 

21 MR. SPEARS: Referencing your question about is

22 there a proliferation of standards out there or guides or

23 labels, looking at the consumer in a residential home

24 market, there is really only one label out there that has

25 market penetration that people are aware of. There are
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1 others that are moving into that, but Energy Star is

2 clearly the lead in the market for labeling of energy

3 efficient buildings. 

4 There are standards out there for indoor air

5 quality. The American Lung Association's Health House,

6 for instance, is one that works very hard to address

7 that. And, again, it is a set of attributes that you

8 either meet or you don't to get that label. But it is

9 not well-known or widely out there. 

10 And then at the consumer level the appliances,

11 again, it is Energy Star which, in my mind, has really

12 been the moving force to get the consumer to look at

13 energy, look at indoor air quality, look at water

14 conservation, and to provide a reference to go by. The

15 other standards are probably much more focused towards,

16 or guidelines, using the correct term, are probably more

17 focused towards the professional that are building the

18 buildings or designing the buildings. Like LEED is much

19 more oriented to the architects and the builders than it

20 is to a consumer. The same thing with many of the other

21 systems. 

22 So, you got to really look at the market for

23 the rating. Who is it communicating to? 

24 MR. KOHM: Question from the audience. What

25 are the most pressing issues in indoor air quality and
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1 green building at this time? What claims are being made

2 in this area that concern you? And why don't we start

3 with John Girman. 

4 MR. GIRMAN: I think one of the biggest

5 problems in terms of indoor air -- first of all, let me

6 set the stage. We believe there's really a hierarchy in

7 terms of controlling indoor air quality sources,

8 ventilation and then air cleaning in some cases. So,

9 addressing sources first as the thing that -- most of

10 what we are discussing right now, I think that one of the

11 biggest problems is the fact that we build buildings and

12 test products one by one. And, so, we do not build on

13 previous knowledge. 

14 And if I can just dream for a moment, I wish

15 that every product that we tested would be identified as

16 far as what it was, who made it and everything else and

17 go into a database. So, then the person down the road

18 who builds a building and wants to use similar products

19 could just access that database and find out what it is

20 without having to pay the expense of testing that product

21 again. We are doing it one by one by one. It is a very

22 expensive and time-consuming way of doing things and it

23 means buildings are not being built green than could be

24 otherwise. So, if there was some way to translate the

25 knowledge we have from existing building and existing
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1 testing into future buildings that would make me very

2 happy. 

3 MR. KOHM: Anybody else want to comment?

4 MS. CHASE: Yeah, I just want to reiterate what

5 John said. I think a lot of times the indoor air quality

6 is being impacted by a variety of different sources. So,

7 it is a combination of the paints that you use, of the

8 cleaners that you bring in, of the furniture, of the

9 carpet, of the wall covering and, so, that sort of

10 combination of different factors definitely contributes

11 into, and then you sort of look at the building and how

12 it is ventilated and that sort of thing and there are

13 factors to consider, different. So, that, I think, would

14 be definitely a very difficult way to check or to average

15 the impact of the overall indoor air quality of the

16 environment. 

17 MR. REARDON: Just add to that and maybe expand

18 on it a little bit. There are relatively static sources

19 of indoor emitants, air pollutants, whether it is a piece

20 of furniture, the carpet or a wall covering, and then

21 there are continual sources, like copy machines and

22 things like that that -- and even human beings. I mean,

23 we emit VOCs in our deodorants, in our mouthwashes and

24 things that we bring into the workplace, too. So, it

25 really is a multifaceted perspective we need to take. 
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1 MR. KOHM: John? 

2 MR. SPEARS: I think one of the things that the

3 FTC could do is eliminate this whole notion that John

4 just brought up about the fact that there are sources, so

5 when you buy a product to put in the building or when you

6 bring materials into the building, you can look at the

7 ratings of those materials and at what their emissions

8 are. The building is actually a system, so you need to

9 look at ventilation and how that then controls those

10 sources, the ones that you build the building with as

11 well as the ones that you bring in on a daily basis. 

12 And then the third one is the cleaning. A lot

13 of times you see claims from air cleaning companies that

14 that is the silver bullet that is going to make your

15 building pristine. But, in fact, it does not necessarily

16 do that. It is just part of the system's approach. So,

17 you have really very different categories, very different

18 audiences, again, for the standards. And when you get to

19 the consumer, you really have to have a standard that is

20 the system's look at the whole system, how it is put

21 together, and then the manufacturers and the

22 professionals that design the buildings need to look at

23 the individual components and how they go together. 

24 MR. KOHM: Let me ask you all kind of the

25 $64,000 question. And I will let anybody start who
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1 wants, and if nobody wants to be the first one, then I

2 will pick somebody. What are one or two revisions that

3 you think would be most useful that the FTC could make to

4 the Green Guides? 

5 Allen's going to be on the block if he does not

6 -- if somebody does not help him out here. 

7 MR. BLAKEY: Opinions do not count, you need

8 data. The reiteration of the inappropriateness of these

9 broad eco friendly sustainability -- I know that

10 sustainability is a process, not an endpoint. It is a

11 management tool. Perhaps there are appropriate ways to

12 use these terms, but I think that is something FTC needs

13 to look at. Opinions do not count. Some of the broad,

14 sweeping terms. The more you can measure it, the more

15 you can show it with data, the better off life cycle data

16 is. Is it perfect? No. Is it easy? No. It is

17 complicated. There are gaps in life cycle comparisons. 

18 But if you do not have life cycle data

19 comparing two products -- and it is a very narrow

20 science, you cannot really do a life cycle of a material

21 versus a material because so much depends on the

22 particular application. But absent full data to support

23 your claim, you are really not able to justify it. 

24 MR. KOHM: Thank you. Christine?

25 MS. CHASE: I guess I will just sort of build
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1 upon what Allen said and a lot of it I think has to do

2 with substantiation. So, if you are making claims, be it

3 overly broad or that sort of thing, show what you are

4 creating, the proof of why you are making that claim. I

5 think if there is a basis, if there is a third-party

6 certification involved or not, what is making you make

7 the claim, and then do so in a context that has sort of a

8 life cycle consideration so you can avoid some of these

9 hidden trade-offs. 

10 MR. KOHM: John? 

11 MR. GIRMAN: I think that the two previous

12 responders really listed it very nicely. I think bring

13 the data, have the data available, the transparency of

14 the certification, what it means. It is also useful to

15 have in the guide what it does not mean and there are

16 some things in there you might want to go into in

17 certification in a little more detail. 

18 One thing that I think consumers need to know

19 is that this is an area that is evolving and changing

20 fairly rapidly. So, what is true last year may not be

21 true this year. So, they need to keep on top of things

22 and use current information. 

23 I think that one thing that consumers sometimes

24 get confused about because it is never discussed is the

25 difference between emissions versus the formulation or a
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1 content of a product. Those are two different things and

2 they are looking at two different outcomes. For example,

3 emissions might be more related to health and indoor air

4 quality whereas the content might be more related to

5 sustainability and the ability to recycle and reuse the

6 product. So, I think that people need to know that all

7 certifications are not created equal. 

8 I mentioned earlier about when a product is

9 tested and what it means in terms of trying to interpret

10 what the emissions might mean. I think another thing

11 that is very important, if you are testing for chemicals,

12 what were the chemicals you tested for? And that list is

13 very important because nobody is going to be able to test

14 for everything and, so, you need to know what things

15 might be overlooked that might be important and I think

16 consumers need to know that. 

17 Another thing, I do not know the extent to

18 which it comes up now, but I predict that it will in the

19 future, is that total volatile organic compound content

20 is a very poor indicator of health. It is used that way

21 as a surrogate, but it just does not work. There have

22 not been studies, at least very, very few studies, that

23 suggest even that you can use TVOC or total volatile

24 organic content as an indicator of health and, yet, it is

25 a very cheap and inexpensive way of doing it so a lot of
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1 folks love it. You can do it, but it is like looking for

2 the key under the lamppost. 

3 MR. KOHM: Do you think that is what is being

4 conveyed when people talk about VOCs? 

5 MR. GIRMAN: I think sometimes that is what

6 people have in mind. If it has not occurred yet it will

7 because it is such a cheap and easy way to do emissions

8 testing and it is what some people will gravitate towards

9 unless we educate consumers. 

10 I should also say we are talking about

11 consumers, we are not just talking about the public. If

12 an architect is asked to build a green building or

13 intends to do that, some of the architects are not very

14 well educated, also. Some education has to go to them. 

15 And product specifiers are not very well educated, too,

16 about the large list of attributes that we talked about

17 in various panels. 

18 MR. KOHM: Can I just get you to lean into the

19 microphone a little bit. I’m sorry.

20 MR. GIRMAN: Sure, no problem. We need to

21 educate product specifiers about the large list of

22 attributes that we need to look at to really have a green

23 product. It is not just one or two things. They need to

24 consider all these things. So, there is education, not

25 just of the man or woman on the street, but the product
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1 specifiers, some of the people in the building trades

2 themselves. 

3 MR. KOHM: Sophia? 

4 MS. GREENBAUM: A couple things change. To

5 reference what Carlos from NAHB mentioned earlier, I

6 would definitely distinguish between design and

7 performance of buildings. In the commercial building

8 industry, we are taking a look at performance metrics and

9 standards, but I do not think we are quite there yet to

10 be able to guarantee those based on design that is on

11 paper. I think that is an important distinction that

12 should end up in these marketing claims. 

13 The second change, which Christine also touched

14 on, was embellishing the use of the labels, the

15 appropriate use of the labels. And, again, I mentioned

16 earlier whether it is a professional accreditation, an

17 organization membership label or a product label, they

18 need to be used appropriately. 

19 And then the last change that I might suggest

20 would be expanding the environmental terms so that they

21 really address some of the marketing claims that are

22 being made for buildings and green buildings. Two of the

23 most common that might be pressing right now would be the

24 health claims and the energy efficiency claims. 

25 MR. KOHM: Before we move on, let me just
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1 explore a little further this idea of time because in a

2 building, the product is used over a much longer period

3 of time than packaging, for instance, or other consumer

4 goods. Do you think that it is deceptive not to or

5 misleading not to talk about time when you are talking

6 about the attributes of a building, for example, if you

7 have a certain energy efficiency that may degrade over

8 time or depending on use, and if it is, should the FTC be

9 saying in its Guides that it, in fact, is misleading if

10 you do not give a time period or you do not indicate that

11 your claim is time qualified? I would just open that up

12 to the group. 

13 MR. SPEARS: Well, some of the standards

14 already take that into account, for instance, on foam

15 insulation, for instance, particularly, the rating that

16 they give that through an ASTM standard process is a

17 time-rated average over the life expectancy of the

18 product. The biggest issue is really maintenance. Is

19 the building going to be maintained because if the

20 exhaust fan craps out and nobody replaces it, then the

21 indoor air quality goes away. 

22 MR. KOHM: Although you do not have to make

23 these claims through certifying bodies, you can make them

24 directly to the public. If one were to do that, then

25 there would be -- do they need to be time-qualified in
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1 the same way the certification is? Any thoughts, Sophia? 

2 MS. GREENBAUM: I would just cast it in terms

3 of performance maybe instead of the time because the

4 performance element captures that operations and

5 maintenance, and when you are designing the building, you

6 can make assumptions about how it will be occupied or how

7 it will be maintained, but those might not come to pass

8 if you do not have the training for the building owner. 

9 But at the same time, it is a good start to start making

10 those assumptions, to design for a higher standard. But,

11 again, the performance is the issue. 

12 MR. KOHM: John? 

13 MR. GIRMAN: I think I am saying much the same

14 thing. It is not just time-qualified, but you have to

15 qualify that the appropriate maintenance and operation

16 has to occur for the building and building systems, and I

17 think that is something that needs to be stressed. 

18 People very often have more control than they think they

19 do. Getting the product or a new building is one thing. 

20 Taking care of it is another thing and we sometimes fall

21 down because we made the purchase and it should last for

22 how long, we can forget about it for a while, and you

23 cannot. 

24 MR. KOHM: Let's move on with this general one

25 and then I have one more question. Tom? 
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1 MR. REARDON: I would definitely support all of

2 the suggestions made thus far and maybe reiterate

3 something that a speaker earlier today said, that to

4 remember that these FTC guidelines are not just for

5 retail consumers of products, they are for business

6 consumers of products, too. And I go back to the comment

7 I made earlier that I think increased education and

8 awareness would definitely be helpful here and it is

9 something like an organization like my own could probably

10 assist with making sure my members are aware of these

11 guidelines and helping coach them a little bit on

12 appropriate environmental claims as other industry trade

13 associations could also. 

14 MR. KOHM: And industry trade associations are

15 a great way to get the word out. And if there are things

16 that, now or if you intend to, which I hope you do

17 comment later, if there are things that the FTC or

18 materials that the FTC could develop or provide that

19 would help industry trade associations get those kinds of

20 words out, that kind of word out to their members, then

21 that would be very useful for us to know. 

22 MR. GIRMAN: Well, I commend you on this

23 exercise. Certainly, these things need to be reexamined

24 as our society advances and we have new perspectives on

25 this. I would also encourage you to try and keep it
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1 simple, though. Simple and understandable for the

2 audience. 

3 MR. KOHM: Well, just so you do not get the

4 wrong idea, our materials may be written in the first

5 instance by lawyers, but they have to go through non6 lawyers before they go out to the public.

7 (Laughter.)

8 MR. KOHM: They translate them into English. 

9 John, do you have a general comment on two or

10 three things that you think would be most useful for the

11 FTC to do with the new Green Guides? 

12 MR. SPEARS: Yeah, as I mentioned before, I

13 think for consumers, I am relating to the consumer, the

14 buyer of a house or the buyer of a product at Home Depot

15 to go into their homes, what would be really, really

16 useful, and this could also be useful for the

17 professional product buyer, but a very clear listing of

18 the major ratings, standards, certifications, labels that

19 are out there, and some description of them in terms of

20 the categories we have been talking about. 

21 So, for instance, when a home buyer wants to

22 buy a house and go to the FTC guide and say, oh, well,

23 there are three different ratings I can use or I should

24 look for, then go to the home builder and say, are you

25 rated any of these, it would be a very simple process. 
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1 And then making it clear as to what those ratings are and

2 who is doing the rating and what is the process. 

3 MR. KOHM: Thank you. Christine, a specific

4 question for you. How does Green Seal communicate the

5 specific environmental attributes that have been

6 certified to consumers to avoid the perception of a

7 general green claim?

8 MS. CHASE: I think that is a good question. 

9 Something that Green Seal does is makes sure that all of

10 our standards are open and transparent. Each of our

11 different standards that we have developed are available

12 online. They are downloadable and people print them out

13 and use them. The benefit of this, not only is it the

14 same thing that we use whenever we certify a product, is

15 that also different people who would need to use it, be

16 it specifiers or government or just someone in general,

17 some people use it as a guide or pick out different

18 elements that they find important. All of those

19 different criteria, they are very specific and they are

20 laid out within a different category online. 

21 MR. KOHM: The Canadian government has recently

22 promulgated guidelines that indicate that a general green

23 claim has to be supported by a full life cycle analysis. 

24 Do you all think that is a good idea? Is that something

25 the FTC should look into or does that have competitive
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1 problems? Tom? 

2 MR. REARDON: I think it is definitely a

3 worthwhile aspiration and the direction that we want to

4 head. I am just not certain that the data and the

5 science has developed to the point that it is truly

6 viable yet. 

7 MR. KOHM: Anybody else? Okay. I am sorry, go

8 ahead, Sophia. 

9 MS. GREENBAUM: I would just echo Tom's

10 sentiments just to say that there is not necessarily a

11 single methodology out there for establishing those life

12 cycle analyses. 

13 MR. REARDON: But, ultimately I think that is

14 nirvana. 

15 MR. BLAKEY: I guess I agree with those

16 comments. But if you are making a general green claim,

17 that does imply so many things in buildings. Energy,

18 water, materials, indoor air and so forth. And I think

19 one could make the case that you do need almost life

20 cycle type data. You certainly need more than if you are

21 making a single attribute claim. 

22 MR. KOHM: Christine? Oh, I’m sorry. Go

23 ahead.

24 MR. BLAKEY: Just the last thing is I am not an

25 expert on the life cycle databases and methodologies, but
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1 my understanding is that they are growing. I mean, there

2 are many gaps in the life cycle data of every product and

3 when you are doing life cycle comparisons, you end up

4 doing apples and oranges. But the more data that is

5 contributed and the more it is peer-reviewed, I think the

6 sounder, the larger, and the more effective the ability

7 to do this becomes. 

8 MR. KOHM: Christine?

9 MS. CHASE: Yeah, I think the really important

10 thing here is one of the things, the idea is certainly to

11 have a life cycle approach. But I agree with what has

12 been expressed before is that there is a lack of data and

13 sort of a lot of different methodologies and you do not

14 really want to be bogged down -- sometimes I think it is

15 definitely very important and something that we are

16 striving towards, but you do not want to stop everything

17 in order to do a full life cycle analysis before you can

18 sort of proceed forward, but definitely something you

19 strive towards. 

20 MR. KOHM: John? 

21 MR. SPEARS: Well, there is is life cycle

22 analysis and then there is life cycle analysis and then

23 there is cradle-to-cradle analysis. The terms are

24 general; the methodologies are varied. I think we are

25 probably more interested in what has been termed cradle-
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1 to-cradle analysis rather than life cycle analysis

2 because where do you end the life cycle of a product? 

3 And, so, if you are going to say we should say life cycle

4 analysis, there needs to be a whole discussion what that

5 is. 

6 MR. KOHM; Okay. We have had a long day and

7 you all have been up here for a long time, but I just

8 want to give everybody one last chance. If there is

9 something you've heard today or something you want to

10 communicate to the FTC or the audience, this will be the

11 last question. 

12 I’m sorry. Allen? 

13 MR. BLAKEY: Once again, I feel like I am late

14 on the draw here. Thank you for the opportunity. I

15 would encourage -- I know you asked a question at an

16 earlier panel today what can the FTC do. I would

17 reiterate what I think someone said earlier, workshops,

18 work through trade associations. I think there is a need

19 for FTC to raise the consciousness and awareness of the

20 marketplace. Thank you. 

21 MR. KOHM: Okay. John? 

22 MR. GIRMAN: I think one of the difficult

23 things that is facing all of us in this and it is not

24 just FTC's job, but to be able to define what it really

25 means to be green, what the attributes are. Unless we
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1 can agree on some common understanding of what that

2 means, it is going to be very difficult to define the

3 rest of the things on what we should or should not be

4 doing and how we should discuss that. So, I think that

5 is one of the first tasks. And as I said, I would love

6 it if FTC did it, but it probably involves a much larger

7 community to do that. 

8 MR. KOHM: Thank you very much. At the

9 beginning we promised that we would start and stop on

10 time. The hidden promise is that we would stop a little

11 early. 

12 To all our distinguished panelists, to

13 everybody who has stuck it out with us today, all day,

14 and to everybody across the country and across the globe

15 who watched on the webcast today, thank you very much. I

16 want to remind everybody, as I did this morning, that

17 this is part of the process of developing the Green

18 Guides. The record is open until August 15th and we hope

19 that all of you will take the time to comment. You can

20 do that on the website. 

21 And, again, when you are commenting, we are

22 very interested in what kind of claims that are out there

23 that are problematic and what kind of guidance the FTC

24 can give to help marketers and sellers not step over the

25 deception line. That is really the line we are looking
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1 for. We are not an environmental standard setting

2 organization. And, in fact, we are not an environmental

3 organization at all. So, we are not looking to what is

4 the optimal environmental solution. We are looking for

5 the solution that allows for competition of these claims

6 on a non-deceptive basis. 

7 Thank you all for joining us and we hope to see

8 you at our next workshop. 

9 (Applause.)

10 (Whereupon, at 4:47 p.m. the workshop was

11 concluded.)

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1 C E R T I F I C A T I O N O F R E P O R T E R

2 MATTER NUMBER: P084203 

3 CASE TITLE: ECO IN THE MARKET - GREEN BUILDING AND 

4 TEXTILES 

5 DATE: JULY 15, 2008 

6

7 I HEREBY CERTIFY that the transcript contained

8 herein is a full and accurate transcript of the notes

9 taken by me at the hearing on the above cause before the

10 FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION to the best of my knowledge and

11 belief.

12

13 DATED: AUGUST 6, 2008 

14

15 

16 ROBIN BOGGESS 

17

18 C E R T I F I C A T I O N O F P R O O F R E A D E R

19

20 I HEREBY CERTIFY that I proofread the transcript for

21 accuracy in spelling, hyphenation, punctuation and

22 format.

23

24 

25 ELIZABETH M. FARRELL