Increasing Transparency for All
Sustainable products may be viewed from three perspectives:
- Environmental performance
- Material health transparency
- Building occupant health impacts
A key tool in the building product transparency toolbox is ingredient disclosure for the accurate, reliable and consistent reporting of product contents and their potential health impacts – at all stages of extraction, manufacture, use and end-of-life disposal.
- A product transparency label answers where a product comes from, what is it made of and where it goes at the end of its life.
- Some ingredient disclosures are evaluated by third parties.
- Material health, product circularity, clear air and climate protection, water and soil stewardship, and social fairness may all be considered in these disclosures.
Ingredient disclosure used in the building industry shares the following commonalities.
- Provides additional transparency beyond regulatory requirements.
- Uses some form of assessment protocol to evaluate the human and environmental health impacts.
These disclosures often require a significant amount of data collection in the supply chain to meet reporting thresholds and, therefore, are time- and resource-intensive for manufacturers to complete, specifically in multi-component, configurable and highly customizable products like those in the fenestration industry.
The methodologies for creating and maintaining material transparency reports continue to evolve.
