Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA), is seeking input from industry professionals including, consultants, academics and environmental organisations on the revision of its Hard Surfacing standard.
GECA’s standards are designed to reward top environmentally performing products and services.
This standard sets an environmental performance benchmark for hard surfacing products. The voluntary environmental labelling standard specifies environmental performance criteria for hard surfacing and flooring including a wide range of stone and tile products. This standard stipulates limits for the environmental load of such products throughout the major phases of their life cycle.
All GECA voluntary ecolabelling standards require that products satisfy the relevant Australian or International Standard as a prerequisite for GECA certification.
Why the standard is needed
Naturally occurring substances (e.g. clay, sand and rocks) have been quarried and used for construction work for as long as history can recall. Nowadays, manufacture of hard surfacing products is an established industry and a major part of the multi-billion dollar building industry.
Ranging from the energy spent in sourcing the raw materials and the adverse effects of quarries, to air and water pollutants emitted during the finishing operations, Hard Surfacing products have the potential to create significant burdens on the environment. Considering the size of this particular industry and thus the amount of sourced, finished and installed hard surfacing products, it is important that the key environmental impacts of this group of products are identified and minimised.
Quarrying, fabrication and testing of Hard Surfacing products is more sophisticated than ever before. Technical improvements have been made over the millennia, but nowadays accelerate even more. These circumstances give the clear potential to establish best practice methods to lower the environmental footprint of the stone industry sector.
This Standard identifies the key environmental loads of Hard Surfacing products and specifies requirements to lower the impact of certified products. Specifically, this Standard stipulates criteria for quarrying and mining raw materials, emissions to waterways and air, as well as the responsible use of energy resources. Hard Surfacing products which comply with this Standard will have considerably lower adverse environmental impacts compared to competitors.
Recognised in Green Building Schemes
The standard also enables access to credits under green building and infrastructure rating tools, such as Green Star, WELL and IS (ISCA) and to provide assurance to procurers and specifiers seeking products with a lower environmental, health and social impact.
Open For Public Comment
The standard is open for public comment until 25 August 2018. GECA welcomes feedback from you, your organisation or others in your network to help develop this standard. More information and a draft version of the standard are available on request from the GECA website.
Please email standards@geca.org.au with your feedback, or call the GECA office on (+61) 2 9699 2850.
GECA (Good Environmental Choice Australia) is a purpose driven, not for profit that provides solutions for sustainable consumption and production. GECA runs Australia’s only independent, not-for-profit, multi-sector ecolabelling program and is the only Australian member of the Global Ecolabelling Network (GEN).
