In this episode of the podcast for the Sustainablity Series, Frances chats with guest David Baggs, CEO and Co-Founder of Green Tag – an international creditation for all types of eco products. David explains how products are able to be acceditated using their third party creditation process, that covers a diverse and wide range of products. This assists consumers to select healthier and more environmentally and sustainable products for their home.
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David Baggs – Podcast Guest
David Baggs, GreenTag CEO and Program Director, has helped to develop and lead the world’s leading ‘Beyond LCA’ based product ecolabel, Certification Mark and also Global GreenTag International’s Product Health Declaration, Environmental Product Declaration and Modern Slavery Declaration programs, which support the advancement and uptake of healthy, ethical and environmentally conscious products on the planet.
Voted one of Australia’s Top 50 Green Leaders and Top 100 Sustainability Leaders Globally, David is a world-renowned sustainability and materials expert and Life Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects. David is also a multi-award winning green building architect, author, Exemplar Global Lead Auditor, GBCA People & Wellbeing Expert Reference Panel member and Past President of the Australian LCA Society.
What is Global GreenTag?
Global GreenTag International simplifies the selection of environmentally, sustainable, healthy and ethical products for the building industry, using Global GreenTag Cert™ – one of the most scientifically advanced, third-party product certification systems in the world.
GreenTag is a trust mark/certification that manufacturers apply to their products to show different levels. They need to meet various standards and are then provided with either bronze, silver, gold or platinum on how good a product is based on their standards and criteria. Other marks could also be holistic sustainability marks, health-right marks (healthiness and use of a product), and marks on an ethical standard.
What makes a Green Tag Certification different to other sustainable/green product certifications?
Global GreenTag Certification provides scorecards and transparency for people who want to check further details. These labels not only rate the product itself but also the standard of the workers in the factories that make them.
There are 3 color-radar bands being used on different criteria: red, orange and green. These are used to label their top 3 priorities:
- Ingredients
- Workers
- In-use
They also use what they call an Ecopoint Score: a number between +100 or –100/ +1 or –1 (with up to 2 decimal numbers). A negative score is a good thing as this means that it’s taking away negative impacts that already exist. If the score is zero, it’s an environmentally healthy benign product; at plus one, it’s business as usual – base case.
GreenTag certification also reviews products for their asthma/allergy sensitivity claim underneath their health-right tag.
What are the different levels manufacturers can achieve with Green Tag?
- Bronze level – products under this level may not have banned highly toxic compounds but could have them in some of manufacturing levels
- Silver and Gold – like Bronze level, they do not have banned highly toxic compounds but may have some flagged materials along the manufacturing process.
- Platinum – products under this level do not have any banned compound on any stage/ level of manufacturing process and will not trigger any health concerns.
How can you find out if a product you are interested in is Green Tag certified?
- Search the name of the product and GreenTag on Google
- Go to the Green Tag website and search for the product. Can be done via:
- by keyword search
- by category search
- by manufacturer
- by certification type or relevance
- by recycled content
- by product health declarations
- by LCA rights
To know more about Global GreenTag, you may check their website: www.globalgreentag.com
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