What is the life cycle environmental impact of your product? Where and how do you get your raw materials? What is in your product, and is any of it hazardous?

These may seem like reasonable questions to the average sustainability professional, but few manufacturers like to consider a future in which answering these questions publicly is a basic requirement of market entry.

But this dream or nightmare scenario will become a reality in the upcoming era of LEED v4.

The membership of the U.S Green Building Council recently approved major changes to the LEED rating system, now known as LEED v4, including a significant overhaul of the materials and resources credits. As a building products manufacturer, it is our business to keep track of changes in the green building certification world, but why should anyone outside the building industry care about LEED v4?

In short, the changes to LEED, the world's dominant green building standard, with more than 2 billion square feet of certified commercial space, are so dramatic that they will send ripples into other industries and shift expectations on sustainability reporting and performance far beyond the building industry.

LEED v4's materials and resources credits are likely to accelerate four existing sustainable business trends by creating a global incentive for firms to make their products meet the complex and demanding new transparency and performance requirements. As ever in LEED, these credits are optional, but products that contribute to more of the six new LEED points possible are more likely to gain favor with building designers and owners.

1. Harnessing the power of transparency

For the first time, a building product can contribute to a LEED point just by disclosing information related to environmental and health impacts.

Yes, this means that even if your product contains carcinogens and has a King Kong-sized carbon footprint, it theoretically could contribute to two LEED points just by being transparent about these unfortunate facts.

This has created controversy in some quarters, which led to the addition of matching "optimization" or performance-related credits. We have and will continue to argue that transparency drives improvement for business in a way that static performance requirements such as "minimum 30 percent recycled content" or "No Red List Chemicals" do not. So even if a building designer never reads the detailed product disclosures submitted for a LEED v4 project, manufacturers know what they disclosed. This knowledge starts the internal inquiry into how questionable processes or materials could be improved before the next disclosure.

We can only imagine a similar phenomenon occurred when the FDA first started requiring trans-fats to be disclosed on the Nutrition Facts Label. How many food companies reformulated products knowing this transparency mandate was coming? You could argue that it created more change faster, while creating less resistance from a powerful business lobby than banning trans-fats outright.

2. Using LCA as a product differentiator

Earlier versions of LEED have relied on single-attribute proxies, such as recycled, reused or bio-based content for identifying building materials with reduced environment impacts. LEED v4 is pioneering the use of verified life cycle assessment (LCA) data in an attempt to more holistically assess environmental impacts across the entire life cycle of a product. A new credit asks manufacturers to provide Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) or third-party verified life cycle assessments. 

Just having an EPD contributes to one point, while showing that your product's impacts are below industry averages contributes to a second point. Recycled content still will contribute, but only to the credit for responsibly sourced raw materials.

Since LEED v4 was approved this summer, firms that verify LCA data report a flood of new customers that want to produce EPDs. For the first time, businesses see a real possibility of LCA becoming a market differentiator or a baseline requirement to compete in a high-profile market.

3. Responsible sourcing of (all) raw materials

For those familiar with chain-of-custody requirements for certified wood or conflict minerals reporting, the new credit for raw materials sourcing will seem familiar.

The credit requires manufacturers to report extraction locations and supplier commitments to responsible practices for 90 percent of a product's raw materials. It will be interesting to see how manufacturers handle this one, given that supply chain information, when available, can be seen as strategic and highly confidential. It