GREEN BOOK – Reliable Information on the Environmental Safety of Construction Materials

The environmental safety of real estate items is established during their design and construction. Depending on how responsible the builders are in terms of selecting the materials, one can determine the overall safety of the house for the health of the people who live in it and for the environment. Currently, the Russian market has effective tools of assessing the environmental safety of construction materials – EcoMaterial certification standard and GREEN BOOK enlistment.

Their environmental performance not considered, materials that are selected incorrectly can become sources of harmful discharge of chemical compounds into the air in the areas where they are used, phenol, formaldehyde, ammonia among them. What parameters are necessary to consider, how to make the right choice – these are challenging objectives for both ordinary people as well as professionals, because now the quality of building materials is only determined by Construction Rules and Regulations (SNIP), All-Union State Standards (GOST) and Technical Specifications (TS) that in general assess the technological and technical specifications; whereas the environmental performance is not fully disclosed.

With the development of technologies and the chemical industry it has got necessary to create tools to assess the environmental safety of construction materials that can be successfully used in the Russian market. Construction materials can be classified by several parameters: the nature of the raw material and its structure, average specific gravity, modulus of elasticity, durability, ecological compatibility, flammability and fire resistance, thermal conductivity, water absorption, price and so on. It is also necessary to understand that every material is suitable for its field of application.

But to an ordinary consumer these classifications hardly give anything above the general concepts. With one consumer the priority is the price, with another one it is the durability, with a third one the main criterion is the minimum energy loss and with a fourth one it is the environmental safety.

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Text by: Nikolay Krivozertsev, CEO of the EcoStandard Group