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The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association International is collaborating with NSF International to develop Product Category Rules for the furniture industry. The National Center for Sustainability Standards, founded by NSF, will serve as the program operator for developing the furniture Product Category Rules.
Product Category Rules help to verify environmental product claims and eliminate greenwashing, by defining how to conduct a life cycle assessment for a particular product group and what to include in the resulting report, according to BIFMA. A life cycle assessment measures inputs, outputs and environmental impacts of a product across its lifespan. An Environmental Product Declaration is the ISO-compliant, third-party-verified report that functions like a nutrition label to explain the data generated from a life cycle assessment.
“PCRs and EPDs will provide BIFMA member organizations with a verified, scientific and internationally accepted method of supporting their environmental product claims,” said Jane Wilson, NSF International's director of standards. “BIFMA’s customers will have access to verified life cycle data to use when analyzing and selecting environmentally preferable products.”
Stakeholders interested in development of the Product Category Rules for furniture products should contact Mindy Costello at mcostello@nsf.org or Brad Miller of BIFMA at bmiller@bifma.org.