About once every other week I get contacted by one of our Architectural Woodwork Institute members confused over the changes in the certified wood credit.

 

Since the inception of the certified wood credit, it was understood that if you furnished and installed your products and purchased Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified materials your firm did not need to be chain-of-custody certified to apply toward the MR credit 7. However if you furnished only the product, your firm did need to be chain-of-custody certified to pursue the credit. The thinking was when your furnished and installed your product it did not leave your control.

 

This understanding and more changed in July 2010. In an addendum to the LEED 2009 v3 Reference Guides the United States Green building Council (USGBC) changed the rules in multiple ways.

 

The first change stated that if an entity changed the FSC product’s packaging or form except as is required for installation, they must be chain-of-custody certified regardless of whether they furnished and installed the product or not. This is what started the confusion, but it did not end there.

 

The next step the USGBC took is where the real confusion started. The new position USGBC took is that the entire product must be FSC certified to contribute toward the credit threshold for MR credit 7. They used a door as an example and said that all of the multiple components involved in manufacturing a door must be FSC certified or the door cannot be claimed as FSC certified.

 

Prior to this change, you could claim that a percentage of the door was FSC certified. At the time this addendum came out, I was working for a door manufacturer that was FSC certified, so I asked the question. Will we be able to continue to manufacture FSC certified door?

The problem in the door industry, at that time, was the cross bands under the face veneers, a relatively small percentage of the door. The door industry was using composite materials for cross bands, and we could purchase FSC certified composite materials from Australia. Does it really make sense to ship materials half way around the world for a small component of a product? What about the fuels and emissions used to transport the product? Is this the best use of materials for our environment?

 

Now let’s look at a cabinet manufacturer. If for instance a cabinet manufacturer can get all of the parts except the drawer material as FSC certified, then the cabinet cannot be claimed toward the MR credit 7. This being the case if you cannot get all of the parts as FSC certified, why bother getting any of the parts as FSC certified?

 

Will this backfire on the USGBC because less FSC material may be used? Only time will tell but in a marketplace where margins are thin to begin with, why go to the added expense of FSC certified products unless it will apply toward the MR credit 7.