United States. The Adhesives and Sealants Council (ASC) submitted a request to eliminate two of the credits proposed by the U.S. Sustainable Building Council (Usgbc) as a final effort to revise the 2012 LEED rating system.
Specifically, the ASC questioned the particularity of a credit that measures products manufactured in the United States by their ability to meet the requirements by the European Chemicals Agency (Echa) under the Reach program.
"It is ridiculous that the Usgbc expects U.S. manufacturers to comply with a European regulatory program, when companies sell most of their products in North American construction markets. In addition, it appears that the Usgbc wants U.S. products to be governed by European laws; from a practical perspective everything indicates that some adhesives and sealants that can be removed by this credit simply cannot be sold in Europe," said Mark Collatz, director of government relations at the ASC.
Collatz added that they had seen three previous drafts on LEED 2012 and that none of them mentioned Reach in any way or form.
The ASC also protested against another credit that would require building materials manufacturers to include a list of chemicals identified by the Clean Production Action's Green Screen that represents a variety of chemicals without specific range properties and that was developed without industry involvement.
Collatz argues that this may increase the lack of knowledge of builders and could lead to the selection of less environmental products. "It's not a science-based decision and there's no transparency in how they selected and inserted this into the LEED project."
