CERTIFYING ORGANIZATIONS

Climate Care offers individuals and companies a way to address their impact on global warming and play their part in building solutions for a sustainable climate. Climate Care calculates the carbon dioxide individuals or companies emit (measured in tonnes of CO2) and sell offsets to those individuals and companies for all or part of their CO2 emissions. They use the money from selling offsets to help protect the climate from further damage by investing in high quality, carefully scrutinized renewable energy projects, energy efficiency projects and projects which remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Climate Care’s projects are scrutinized by its Environmental Steering Committee which includes members from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Forum for the Future.

www.climatecare.org

Climate Care provides the certifications and offset options for the Cool Carpet™ program in Europe.

Environmental Choice's Ecologo® is Canada's symbol of environmental responsibility and its only national and comprehensive eco-labeling program. The Ecologo program is designed by Environmental Choice to help customers make informed choices and to encourage the supply of, and demand for, products and services which cause less stress on the environment.

Environmental Choice establishes stringent criteria against which products and services are assessed. The process of Ecologo certification includes assessment of quality, performance, environmental and safety aspects of the product. The development of criteria begins with research on the environmental impact from raw material, production, transportation, and use and disposal based on the latest scientific, technical and marketing information available. Guidelines are built in consultation with industry, relying on independent experts from all sectors. Some areas of comprehensive impact assessment include material and energy intensity of product, quality, performance, life, water usage, waste minimization, air emission, chemical substances of concern, indoor air quality, product safety, recyclability, recycling of product, general design and delivery of product,quality, and environmental management systems.

The Ecologo is a registered trade mark of the Federal Ministry of the Environment. It may only be used in association with products and services that are certified by Environmental Choice. The process of approval for use of the Ecologo on products also includes a public review period.

www.environmentalchoice.com

InterfaceFLOR Commercial (Canada) has earned certification in this program for its products. 

The Good Environmental Choice Label (Australia) is the only environmental labeling program which indicates the environmental performance of a product from a whole of product life perspective for consumer goods. The label is awarded to products that meet voluntary environmental performance standards which have been created and assessed in conformance to international environmental labeling standards. The program is internationally recognized and growing in demand and awareness throughout different industries.

InterfaceFLOR Australia is the first and only carpet manufacturing company in Australia to receive accreditation from Good Environmental Choice Australia. The accreditation includes all InterfaceFLOR modular products manufactured in Australia as well as those manufactured in the U.S. for Australian markets.

The Good Environmental Choice Label ensures that InterfaceFLOR products specified with Interface’s exclusive Inter-Tac® adhesive qualify for maximized credit in the Green Building Council of Australia’s Green Star™ Rating Tool, for both Flooring Material (Mat-2) criteria and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) criteria pertaining to low volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions.

The Good Environmental Choice Label defines all InterfaceFLOR products as “Environmentally Innovative,” eliminating the need for the specifier to subject InterfaceFLOR products to a separate evaluation process for each Green Star registered project.

All InterfaceFLOR products have been assessed by Good Environmental Choice and certified to meet requirements for durability, environmental management systems, product stewardship, eco-preferred, modular and designed for disassembly sections under Green Star Mat-2. Additionally, InterfaceFLOR’s exclusive Inter-Tac adhesive was independently certified as a low VOC product that meets the Green Star criteria.All products manufactured and sold by InterfaceFLOR Australia also meet the U.S. based Carpet and Rug Institute’s Green Label Plus™ test protocol for total VOC emissions and individual chemical concentrations, a key factor in their qualification for full IEQ criteria points in Green Star. Furthermore, there is the potential to attract further innovation points in Green Star registered building projects if the Cool Carpet option is selected, thereby offsetting all of the CO2 emissions associated with the life cycles of the specified products.

www.aela.org.au

The Green-e Renewable Electricity Certification Program is administered by the non-profit Center for Resource Solutions, based in San Francisco, California. The Program provides an easy way for consumers to quickly identify environmentally superior electricity products in competitive markets. Electricity providers selling Green-e certified electricity are required to abide by stringent generation and disclosure requirements to ensure that consumer protection and environmental standards are met. Through this effort, the Green-e Program hopes to expand the retail market for renewable electricity products and for power from cleaner nonrenewable generation.

www.green-e.org

In 2003, InterfaceFABRIC signed a five-year contract to purchase 12,500 MWh of Green-e certified RECs (2,500 MWh/yr); enough to offset the GHG impacts associated with the production of select patterns of Terratex® brand fabrics. Interface Fabrics is also contributing 50¢ per MWh to a green energy reinvestment fund to create “new” green energy alternatives in Maine.

InterfaceFLOR Commercial has committed to purchase 30,668 MWh of Green-e certified RECs over a 5-year period for its Troup County, Georgia facilties enabling them to operate with 100% renewable electricity.

Bentley Prince Street has committed to purchase 32,656 MWh of Green-e certified renewable energy certificates over a 5-year period. Bentley Prince Street operates with 100 percent renewable electricity.

Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) of Emeryville, California is a private company recognized internationally for its third-party certification programs. The company's environmental division certifies claims related to environmental achievement in product manufacturing. Specific product attributes, such as recycled content and biodegradability, are certified under the Environmental Claims Certification program. SCS also certifies products or services that can demonstrate a reduced environmental impact when compared to other products performing the same function. The U.S. Government's Executive Order 13101 directs federal agencies and their contractors to identify and purchase products designated as "environmentally preferable." Environmentally Preferable Product (EPP) certifications are consistent with international environmental labeling standards, and with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines for responsible environmental marketing.

InterfaceFLOR received the industry's first third-party certification for an Environmentally Preferable Product for carpet, awarded by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) and Bentley Prince Street also received EPP Certification for their products. A new Sustainable Choice™ certification was introduced in 2006, replacing the original EPP Certification for Carpet, and Bentley Prince Street, InterfaceFLOR Commercial and FLOR all certified products to the new Sustainable Carpet Assessment Draft Standard NSF-140 through Scientific Certification Systems. Click here to read more.

www.scscertified.com/sustainablechoice

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