(Mis)Understanding Green Products A DIZZYING ARRAY OF GREEN-PRODUCT CERTIFICATION PROTOCOLS ARE OVERWHELMING THE BUILDING INDUSTRY-EVEN STAUNCH ADVOCATES SEE A TOUGH ROAD AHEAD FOR ARCHITECTS COURTESY HERMAN MILLER INTERNATIONAL a O a.a. By Russell Fortineyar tan Rhode., the president and C.E.O. of Scientific Certification systems, or SCS„ certifies building products. He's been doing it since 1984. You bring him carpet you think is sustainable and hell certify it against the new NSF 140 Sustainable Carpet Assessment Standard. Bring him anything and he'll likely find a standard. somewhere, to use for certification. There are thousands of standards, most of which are accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), so Rhodes is in no danger of running out of work. But today. Rhoda doesn't want to talk about standards or certi- fication. If you're talking sustainabiliry. Rhodes says, so-called green building products don't much matter in the scheme of things. "Building envelopes are only IS percent of the total life-cycle impacts of any build- ing," he says, sitting in his office in Emeryville, California. For Rhodes, life-cycle impacts mean energy use, or the carbon footprint. He says the real question is how you reduce the energy impact of the work function— that other 85 percent consisting of the people who spend a minimum of 8 hours of their day sitting in your building, when not commuting—on the natural environment of your budding and the larger region. That one of the more influential people in the sustainable design world is growing impatient with the mounting army of building products purporting to be "sustainable" should be alarming. But talk to anyone who specifies, designs, builds, or certifies green products and you'll hear the same frustration lurking in their voice. "We're trying to balance delivering what the client wants on schedule and on budget. so adding this other level of complexity of having to understan