What USGBC's PVC Report Means for GreenSpec

Now that the much-anticipated final report on PVC by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has been released (see EBN Vol. 16, No. 3), one may wonder how the report’s findings will affect BuildingGreen’s coverage of products and materials in EBN and our GreenSpec Directory. After a comprehensive and objective review, USGBC has determined that, relative to other common materials used in the four application areas examined, PVC is not uniformly bad enough, compared with the likely alternatives, that avoiding it warrants a point in the LEED Rating System. Will we continue to write about alternatives to PVC in EBN? Will we continue to include products in GreenSpec specifically because they provide alternatives to PVC in certain applications? I need to disclose here that EBN editor and GreenSpec coeditor Nadav Malin was a member of the PVC Task Group that wrote the PVC report under the auspices of the LEED Technical and Scientific Advisory Committee (TSAC).
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