We at ecoScorecard are working to make green building easier. One way we do this is we collect sustainability data for building products and publish this information in a consistent format. The access to data this provides is great – up to a point. The problem is one of scale. We currently publish information on over twelve thousand products. Twelve thousand products this is just a drop in the bucket.

But we are not the only game in town; other people are trying to do something in a similar space. GreenFormat (an effort of CSI – ) has a framework for publishing sustainability data. Another standard called gbXML defines an XML schema for enhancing CAD models with some product information mainly used for energy modeling. These two standards seem to be leading efforts for reporting sustainability information. But neither of these formats really meets our needs, nor do they meet all the needs of the building community.

So what is a person to do? At least one large architecture firm is gathering data building a database of products on their own. This individual action is of great value, but is much more work for everyone than is necessary. Building product manufacturers should be able to publish information once. Anyone who needs the information should be able to access it with minimal hassle. And handy systems like ecoScorecard should be useful on a much broader range of products.

All the normal things need to be done. A line needs to be drawn around the appropriate stakeholders; we need to clarify the goals and requirements for such a standard. There is a lot of work to do before we can all benefit from a common mechanism for describing the sustainability characteristics for a building materials product, but there really ought to be one.